The Black Panthers (in Israel) Speak by Eli Hamo and Sami Chetri (Israel, 2003, 53 minutes, BetaSP)

Synopsis:
The uprising of the Black Panthers in the early 1970s had a radical effect on Israeli society. It signaled an awakening of Mizrahi cultural consciousness that continues to this day. The movement took the Mizrahi/class struggle out of its local and nationalist Jewish framework, linking it to the civil rights struggle in the United States, Third World Marxism, and, for the first time, to the Palestinian struggle in Israel. In this film, key players in the movement talk about the Mizrahi struggle in the 1970s and now.
In Hebrew with English subtitles.

Post-screening panel discussion with filmmaker Sami Shalom Chetrit, Ammiel Alcalay (Queens College), Mustafa Bayoumi (Brooklyn College) and Ella Shohat (NYU)

Biography:
Sami Shalom Chetrit was born in 1960 in Ksar-Suk in Morocco and relocated to Israel with his Arab-Jewish family in 1963. He grew up in an immigrant working class neighborhood in the port city of Ashdod (former Palestinian village Asdud). He writes and publishes poetry, political essays and scholarly articles in many journals and papers. Sami is active in Mizrahi oppressed communities on alternative equal education and community empowerment. In 1993 he was among the founders of Kedma – the alternative educational organization for equality in education in Israel, and served as the school principle of Kedma High School in southern Tel-Aviv (see:http://www.kedma.co.il/Kedma/Kedma.htm). In 1996 he was among the founders of the social movement The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition that has been struggling for economic and social justice in Israel. (see: http://www.hakeshet.org/). In 2001 he finished his Ph.D. dissertation on the Mizrahi struggle in Israel. It will be published in Hebrew in 2003. Today, Sami teaches critical studies and works on new publications. He is the editor of the alternative web portal: Kedma – Middle Eastern Gate to Israel (www.kedma.co.il). He is a Visiting Research Scholar at UCLA, for the 2003 academic year. The Black Panthers (in Israel) Speak is Sami’s first film.

Eli Hamo is filmmaker and social activist. He was born and raised in the Mizrahi immigrant neighborhood Katamonim in Jerusalem. Hamo was among the founders of the Community Theater in Jerusalem in mid ‘70s and the social movement The Tents. He has been teaching theater and cinema to youngsters throughout the years. In the mid ‘90s Hamo was among the founders group of the Mizrahi democratic movement The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition, a social movement struggling for social justice and cultural freedom in Israel-Palestine. Eli Hamo is well known as the documenter of the social and cultural struggle of the Mizrahim in Israel for the last twenty-five years. He studied cinema in San Francisco and was the editor of many films.

Festivals & Awards:
Screening at the Tel Aviv Cinemateque, 2003
Screening at the Jerusalem Cinemateque, 2003