As part of the Bristol Palestine Film Festival we screened Open Bethlehem, a film by Leila Sansour about her Palestinian hometown, soon to be completely encircled by a giant illegal wall of concrete raised by Israeli forces. She left the city as a teenager and returns years later armed with her camera, planning to make an epic film about a legendary town in crisis. Just a few months into filming, her life and the film take an unexpected turn when she's persuaded to start a campaign to save the city and keep it open to the world.

Spanning seven momentous years, Open Bethlehem reveals a city of astonishing beauty and political strife under Israeli occupation. Drawing from over 700 hours of original footage, rare archive material and her own personal video-journals, her project has lead to the creation of the largest visual archive of Bethlehem that exists.

At this special event, Sansour was joined on stage by David Owen of the Bristol Palestine Film Festival and Ahmed Damen, director of documentaries The Red Stone: Jerusalem's Other Side (2013) and Forbidden Pilgrimage (2014), a panel well placed to examine the current situation in Palestine. 

"I realised at whatever cost I would have to complete the film, and the idea became clear to me that [...] we need a strong tool to explain the situation in Bethlehem and invite audiences to join us on this journey", says Sansour. In this video, she discusses the challenges behind making the film and starting the campaign, and explains where this ambitious international project is currently at and what its next steps are.

Related links:
openbethlehem.org
The Red Stone: Jerusalem's Other Side
Forbidden Pilgrimage
Bristol Palestine Film Festival

Posted on Tue 16 Dec 2014.

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