Visiting Cinema Jenin

In the kitchen of the Cinema Jenin Guest House

For the last 5 days I was in the Palestinian town of Jenin, visiting Cinema Jenin, one of the projects the betterplace Incbator has supported over the last 16 months. After having been so deeply involved in the project and accompanying the two project managers Marcus Vetter and Fakhri Hamad on many occasions, I was obviously very curious to finally see the project site with my own eyes.

The renovation of the cinema, located in the city center in a stately building from the 1960s, has been nearly completed and early next year the cinema-technology will be installed. Over the summer a spacious house next door has been turned into the Cinema Jenin Guest House,housing some 30 people in (single-sex) dormitories and double bedrooms. Its here were I stayed together with a large group of mainly German volunteers, who are helping with the renovation process, run workshops or research their MAs. The lively atmosphere is supplemented with visiting locals and (a few) expats who call Jenin their home.

What kind of films do the locals want to see?
My task consisted of a preliminary study about the expectations the local population has regarding the cinema and especially the kinds of films people want to see once it is operating. Jenin is known as a very conservative Palestinian town – the majority of women are veiled, pictures of martyrs line the streets and during the Intifadas many of the suicide bombers came from here. Leisure activities in Jenin are scarce: TV in people’s homes, a few restaurants, an internet café reminiscent of the early days of the computer industry and private visits and festivities. The next cinemas are in Nablus and Ramallah, more than an hours bus ride away. Thus many of the young people I interviewed had never been to a cinema, while the older ones remembered their last visit to the cinema in Jenin to date back to the early 1980s (the cinema was closed with the begin of the 1st Intifada).

But what kind of films are acceptable in a society where it would be impossible for a young man to take out a girlfriend to the cinema? Should men and women sit next to one another in the cinema or are women-only screenings advisable?

Together with Feda, a witty and self-confident young translator, I spent the days talking to a broad range of people: from entrepreneurs and market traders to women from the surrounding villages to NGO representatives and dvd-store owners. The result was a differentiated profile of tastes and expectations: yes, many people wanted the cinema to show the same fare as they get on TV already: US action movies and Egyptian comedies and a few Bollywood films. But they are also interested in good documentaries for their children, high-quality comedies for their families and selected films by Palestinian filmemakers, films they have no access to so far.

Screenings on the Roof
Especially exciting were the evenings, when we watched a number of films in a mixed German, Dutch and Palestinian group. Marcus and I had brought a number of dvds with us in order to establish a list of films to be shown at the opening festival of Cinema Jenin. One of Marcus favourite documentaries The Monastary was rejected by our Arab viewers as far too slow (and thus boring) for the viewing conventions of their copatriates. The Earth received favourable reviews, while the British children film Son of Rambo pleased the Palestinians, but got very mixed reactions from the Germans (I liked it). Univocally we enjoyed Persepolis, the life story of a young Iranian women before and after in Islamic revolution, rendered in the form of a wonderful cartoon. Very often the discussions following the films included counter-intuitive interpretations, making them really rewarding for us Westerners, who had entered Jenin with certain expectations regarding „local culture“. Even though nearly all of my interview partners had stressed the special cultural code of the city which needed to be taken into consideration when choosing films, the faultlines between what kind of nudity and explicit behaviour was acceptable and which not, often surprised me. Unfortunately I had to leave before a visit from the Mufti of Jenin, the highest religious authority, who is going to attend a screening tomorrow. He is also in the committee, which will decide on the final group of films to be shown at the festival.

The visit confirmed by earlier conviction that Cinema Jenin is a courageuos and very necessary cultural project, run by a group of highly motivated people. I am very much looking forward to the opening of the cinema and hope that a number of betterplacers will also find their way to Jenin in the summer of 2010.