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The Daily Star – Arts & Culture – 'Paradise Now,' what's next?

Posted on May 4th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Arts & culture.

The Daily Star – Arts & Culture – ‘Paradise Now,’ what’s next?
‘Paradise Now,’ what’s next?
Hany Abu-Assad discusses making art that is full of politics but free of rage

By Jim Quilty
Daily Star staff
Thursday, May 04, 2006

‘Paradise Now,’ what’s next?

Interview

BEIRUT: “My aim is to make art that lasts, not a piece of analysis. There are political scientists to do that.”Hany Abu-Assad is talking about his next project. This is an exotic turn for the Netherlands-based Palestinian filmmaker who has been doing variations of the same interview for the last year and a half – all in support of his last project, “Paradise Now.”

That film won a plethora of awards, including the Blue Angel for Best European Film at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival, the Amnesty International Award and the Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Film. It was Palestine’s official entry for best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.

Awards and critical praise were balanced by controversy.

“Paradise Now” tells the story of Khaled (Ali Suliman) and Said (Kais Nashef), childhood friends from the West Bank town of Nablus who’ve been selected to carry out a suicide operation in Tel Aviv.

Both men, and their dead-end working class existence, could be transplanted anywhere in the world – were it not for the Israeli occupation and the ambient humiliation it causes.

Khaled is so lumbered with inchoate rage that he can’t hold down a job. Said’s father was executed as a collaborator, leaving him weighed down by an ambivalent mix of shame and hatred for the occupation that made his father a traitor.

When the resistance calls on them to sacrifice themselves, they accept.

Said’s foil, in more ways than one, is Suha (Lubna Azabal), the daughter of a slain resistance leader returned from overseas. She works with a human rights NGO and opposes any militancy that gives Israeli soldiers an excuse to kill more Palestinians.

The film begins shortly before Khaled and Said are given their mission and follows them as they prepare but then find it impossible to carry out the operation as planned. This gives both men an opportunity to re-evaluate.

As Abu-Assad has pointed out in previous interviews, “Paradise Now” is a thriller – a genre to which contemporary Palestine is particularly well suited. It’s an unusually well-devised thriller, leading the audience through an uncharacteristically human depiction of what can be wrought from humiliation and rage.

It does so without being unremittingly bleak. There are several moments of dark humor here.

“Life is neither exclusively comic nor tragic,” the writer-director says. “And when you move from comedy to tragedy … it’s the shift in direction that makes you feel.” (more…)

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The Daily Star – Arts & Culture – ‘Paradise Now,’ what’s next?

Posted on May 4th, 2006 by .
Categories: Arts & culture.

The Daily Star – Arts & Culture – ‘Paradise Now,’ what’s next?
‘Paradise Now,’ what’s next?
Hany Abu-Assad discusses making art that is full of politics but free of rage

By Jim Quilty
Daily Star staff
Thursday, May 04, 2006

‘Paradise Now,’ what’s next?

Interview

BEIRUT: “My aim is to make art that lasts, not a piece of analysis. There are political scientists to do that.”Hany Abu-Assad is talking about his next project. This is an exotic turn for the Netherlands-based Palestinian filmmaker who has been doing variations of the same interview for the last year and a half – all in support of his last project, “Paradise Now.”

That film won a plethora of awards, including the Blue Angel for Best European Film at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival, the Amnesty International Award and the Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Film. It was Palestine’s official entry for best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.

Awards and critical praise were balanced by controversy.

“Paradise Now” tells the story of Khaled (Ali Suliman) and Said (Kais Nashef), childhood friends from the West Bank town of Nablus who’ve been selected to carry out a suicide operation in Tel Aviv.

Both men, and their dead-end working class existence, could be transplanted anywhere in the world – were it not for the Israeli occupation and the ambient humiliation it causes.

Khaled is so lumbered with inchoate rage that he can’t hold down a job. Said’s father was executed as a collaborator, leaving him weighed down by an ambivalent mix of shame and hatred for the occupation that made his father a traitor.

When the resistance calls on them to sacrifice themselves, they accept.

Said’s foil, in more ways than one, is Suha (Lubna Azabal), the daughter of a slain resistance leader returned from overseas. She works with a human rights NGO and opposes any militancy that gives Israeli soldiers an excuse to kill more Palestinians.

The film begins shortly before Khaled and Said are given their mission and follows them as they prepare but then find it impossible to carry out the operation as planned. This gives both men an opportunity to re-evaluate.

As Abu-Assad has pointed out in previous interviews, “Paradise Now” is a thriller – a genre to which contemporary Palestine is particularly well suited. It’s an unusually well-devised thriller, leading the audience through an uncharacteristically human depiction of what can be wrought from humiliation and rage.

It does so without being unremittingly bleak. There are several moments of dark humor here.

“Life is neither exclusively comic nor tragic,” the writer-director says. “And when you move from comedy to tragedy … it’s the shift in direction that makes you feel.” (more…)

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Protected: AD.nl – Extreemrechts, net als hun ouders

Posted on May 4th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Multiculti Issues.

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Protected: AD.nl – ’Elk weekeinde rassenrellen’

Posted on May 4th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Multiculti Issues.

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