Paradise Lost

A film by Ibtisam Salh Mara'ana

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SYNOPSIS

Arab Israeli filmmaker Ibtisam Salh Mara'ana grew up in Paradise (Fureidis in Arabic), a small fishing village overlooking the Mediterranean. One of the few Arab communities remaining after the 1948 war, Paradise became culturally and politically isolated as Jewish settlements sprung up around it, and today it is a place defined by silence and repression.

This thought-provoking and intimate film diary follows the director’s attempt to recreate the village’s lost history, including the story of her childhood hero Suuad, the legendary local “bad girl” who was imprisoned as a PLO activist in the 1970’s and banished from the community. The director’s frustration builds as her questions are resisted, and her hopes soar when she finally meets Suuad, now a Doctor of Law living in the UK. Stunning cinematography and evocative music underscore the power of Mara’ana’s film, whose lyrical, emotionally charged tone is strikingly honest and straightforward. Presenting the rarely heard voice of an Arab Israeli, this important film offers valuable insight into the contradictions and complexities of modern womanhood and national identity in the Middle East.

PRESS

“A superb feminist exploration of relations contextualized within internal oppression and external colonialism and estrangement…”

Nahlia Abdo Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University

“Recommended…provides much insight into the lives of Palestinians.”

Debra Mandel Educational Media Reviews Online

“A moving and sometimes humorous record of the travails and joys of women’s struggles to redefine the meaning of belonging in a traditional society, in a security state, in a global world.”

Jami Khader, PhD Stetson University

“Sensitive and complex…a gem of third wave feminism.”

Dorit Naaman Queens University

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

DocAviv Int'l Documentary Film Festival, Best Debut Documentary and Best Cinematography
Int'l Spring Doc Festival, Best Script award for Co-productions, First-Creation Photography Award
Women's Festival in Rehovot, Documentary Award

London Human Rights Film Festival

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Ibtisam Salh Mara'ana

Ibtisam Salh Mara'ana, a Palestinian Israeli citizen, was born in Paradise in 1975. She studied cinema the school of film and television at the Jewish-Arab academic center of Givat Haviva and has since directed a number of documentaries focused on the women of her native land. Mara’ana began her career directing a number of reports for the programs "Feminine Outlook" and "Arabeska," on Israel's Channel One, and assistant directing films with Simon Bitton, Ram Levi and Duki Dror. Her first film, Paradise Lost, is a documentary about Paradise, her hometown, a small fishing village. Other works by Mara’ana include Wake Up to the Native Land, a film about unrecognized Palestinian villages inside Israel which aired on Israel’s Channel Two and 3 Times Divorced, about a Palestinian woman’s abuse at the hand of her Arab-Israeli husband.
Mara’ana’s most recent film, Lady Kul el-Arab, tells the story of Duah Fares, the first Druze woman to participate in the Lady Kul el-Arab beauty pageant for Arab women. Guided by fashion designer Jack Yaakob, Duah even takes part in the more prestigious Miss Israel contest and works towards an appearance at the Miss Universe Pageant and an international career despite death threats from those in her strictly conservative Druze community. Lady Kul el-Arab was shown at the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival and is set to show at the 2009 International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam. (08/09)

Subject Areas

Anthropology Arab Human Rights Immigration and Exile Islam Middle East Politics Religion War

MATERIALS

Press Kit

My Terrorist

In 1978, filmmaker Yulie Cohen was wounded in a terrorist attack by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A stewardess for the Israeli airline El Al, she was attacked along with other crewmembers when getting off the bus to the hotel in London. In a remarkable twist of faith, twenty-three years later Cohen began questioning the causes of violence between Israelis and Palestinians and started to consider helping release the man who almost killed her, Fahad Mihyi. From the time she was a young girl, Cohen considered herself a staunch Israeli nationalist. Growing up in an upper middle class neighborhood in Israel (where her neighbors included future Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Arik Sharon, and military hero Moshe Dayan), she patriotically served in the military. After working as an Israel coordinator on a film shoot and visiting the occupied territories, Cohen came to realize that both Israelis and Palestinians played a role in perpetuating the cycle of hostility and bloodshed. It was her goal to stand up as a survivor and call for reconciliation on each side. An inspiring story of forgiveness, Cohen’s poignant documentary is a moving testimony of human compassion and a call for peace.

Learn more

My Israel – Revisiting the Trilogy

Few filmmakers have probed issues of Israeli nationalism and Israeli-Palestinian relations more completely or intimately than Tel Aviv-born Yulie Cohen. In My Israel, Cohen revisits her acclaimed trilogy My Terrorist (2002), My Land Zion (2004), and My Brother (2007) with new footage, fresh perspective, and her trademark fearlessness. For Cohen, Israel is the land of her ancestors, the land her parents fought for during the 1948 war and the land she herself served as an Air Force Officer during the Entebbe crisis. In 1978, working as an El Al stewardess, she survived a terrorist attack in London that killed a colleague and left her with shrapnel in her arm. Embarking on a difficult and emotional journey, she attempts to free the surviving terrorist who attacked her, to question the myths of the state that she grew up in, and to reconcile with her ultra-orthodox brother after 25 years of estrangement. My Israel is an account of remarkable courage and understanding set against the last turbulent decade of Israeli history, successfully combining Cohen’s 10-year oeuvre in an incisive and refreshing new way.