Road 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel
Nov. 18, 2003

ArteEast co-sponsors the US premiere screening at Columbia University

Miller Theater, 116th and Broadway
Event starts at 6:00PM
6pm - Film showing, Fragment 1: the south
8pm - Film showing, Fragment 2: the Center
9:30 - discussion with directors

Since the beginning of the second Intifada in October 2000, the bloodshed has not stopped in Palestine–Israel. Two filmmakers, faced with the tragic torments shaking their societies, want to produce a sort of filmic act of faith. Palestinian director Michel Khleifi and Israeli director Eyal Sivan continue to believe in the virtues of a common and peaceful coexistence in which citizens, both Arab and Jewish, can live together. Through their cameras, they film the daily realities of men and women, young and old. Both are convinced that the situation in the Middle East is an ideological construct made by human beings, which can therefore be unmade by them. The filmmakers follow the demarcation line drawn up by UN Resolution 181 in 1947 to separate a Jewish from an Arab state, interviewing those who live along the border. While filming the people in their cities and villages, a hidden reality emerges.

The film is a poetic journey through the daily lives of Israeli and Palestinian citizens, during which the filmmakers encounter dreams and passions, hope and despair, as well fear and anxiety about a future in which nothing might change. Khleifi and Sivan strive to create a film that resists the idea that the only thing Israelis and Palestinians can do together is fight a war until they are both driven to oblivion. The events in their country make this project a matter of urgency, as the filmmakers attempt to overturn all considerations of “common sense” or principle. This is, after all, an important function of cinema.

A film by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan

Michel Khleifi
Born in Nazareth in 1950, Michel Khleifi is a filmmaker, director, and producer. He studied at the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle (INSAS) in Belgium, where he has also taught directing and producing. Khleifi is a winner of several prestigious awards, including the Cannes International Critics’ Award and the San Sebastian Golden Conch in 1987 for his debut feature film Wedding in Galilee. Among his many other film credits are Fertile Memory, Canticle of the Stones, L’order du Jour, Sous l’ombre du ciel, and Tale of the Three Jewels.

Eyal Sivan
Eyal Sivan was born in Haifa in 1964, and grew up in Jerusalem. In 1985 Sivan left Israel and settled in Paris. He has produced and directed many full-length documentaries for which he won several prestigious international awards, including ‘Cinema du Reel Price’ at the Centre Pompidou in Paris for his first film Aqabat Jaber, Passing Through.

His films include Israland and The Specialist, as well as On Science and Values and On Law and the State, a two-part documentary based on interviews with the Israeli philosopher Professor Y. Leibovitz. Through his writing, lectures, and cinema work, Sivan deals with the political use of memory, the question of civil disobedience, and the representation of genocide.