Alex Ritman - Writer and Editor in Dubai now working for The National. Esquire, Time Out, LA Times, Sunday Times, Dazed & Confused.

Faith, Hope and Charity

This is the story of Cinema Jenin, the picturehouse struggling to bring artistic relief to Palestine’s West Bank.

The high-pitched growls of Israeli Air Force F-16s making regular sorties overhead weren’t the only clues that this wasn’t your normal red-carpet experience. Numerous heavily-armed Palestinian special police forces, clad in blue camouflage and bulletproof vests, were also loud indications. Then there was the carpet itself, a rather forlorn and threadbare affair, speckled in cigarette burns and just long enough to make it down the four steps leading to the cinema’s entrance, which itself faced the bustle of a somewhat un-glitzy bus depot, crowded with scruffy yellow minivans.

But while the lack of aesthetics and razzmatazz may have dramatically separated this event from anything in Hollywood, or even this month’s Dubai International Film Festival, for many of the residents of Jenin in the West Bank this sunny day in August was something that would be remembered for a long time. Hundreds of people lined the entrance to witness the ribbon cutting ceremony for the largest cultural celebration in the city’s troubled modern history. After a two-year and $1 million renovation, its only picturehouse, Cinema Jenin, was to open its doors for the first time in 23 years.

The West Bank’s third largest city and the most northerly of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Jenin is a bumpy fifteen kilometres drive from the Israeli border and notorious Barta’a checkpoint. This proximity to the occupier has been the noose around the neck of its 50,000 residents, with some of the bloodiest fighting of the second Intifada witnessed in the town Yasser Arafat used to refer to as “Jeningrad”.

Accused of being the launch site for a significant percentage of suicide attacks on Israel, Jenin was heavily targeted during the Israel Defense Force’s Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, which reduced much of the city to rubble. Worst hit was the town’s refugee camp, now permanent home for over 10,000 Palestinians forced from their land when Israel was created in 1948.

Almost every local has a tale to tell about the incursions. Some talk of friends who were shot dead. Others show photos of their cars being crushed under the caterpillar tracks of the IDF’s armoured bulldozers. One resident points at a patch of land where a house used to sit. The woman who lived there – 29-year-old trainee lawyer Hanadi Jaradat – became a suicide bomber after witnessing the murder of two family members by the IDF in 2003, just two years after her fiancé had been killed the same way. The house was subsequently demolished by Israel in retaliation.

It was one of these many sad tales that became the catalyst for Cinema Jenin’s resurrection. In 2005, 12-year-old Ahmed Khatib was shot dead by an IDF sniper while playing on the street, his plastic gun allegedly mistaken for the real thing. Ahmed’s family, in an astonishing act of compassion, donated their son’s organs, and in doing so saved the life of a girl from an orthodox Jewish family living in Jerusalem.

On hearing about this gesture of humanity, German director Marcus Vetter – who already had a string of politically-charged films under his belt – headed to the West Bank to film Heart of Jenin, a quiet, emotional documentary following Ahmed’s father, Ismail, as he visited the donor families.

But on visiting Jenin in 2007, Marcus realised that the town didn’t even have a cinema that could screen the film. The only one closed during the First Intifada in 1987, seen as an easy spot for the IDF to round up the local youths, and was left to ruin on the main road. Together with Fakhri Hamad, a Jenin-resident who had been helping Marcus during the filming, he decided to bring life back to this boarded up and forgotten shell. Project Cinema Jenin was borne.

“I thought now was the time to actually take responsibility and help change something, at least for one film,” Marcus says to me several months before the cinema’s opening. We’re sitting drinking thick Arabic coffee on the balcony of the purpose-built Cinema Jenin Guesthouse as a team of volunteers prepare their dinner inside. “Here the injustice was so great that I thought I had to do something.”

So Marcus and Fakhri got to work. Their first task was to secure a ten-year lease of the property from the children of the former owners, a somewhat time-consuming activity given that they were numerous and spread far and wide. They then had to clear out the building’s residents, the hundreds of pigeons who had been nesting there since it fell into disrepair; then came the asbestos roof, which needed replacing. Having set themselves up as an NGO, one of the first donations came from a Palestinian company, who sold them the material at cost price and did the work for free.

With a €172,000 donation from the German foreign ministry, the first of several from Marcus’ homeland, the real process could begin. “We brought in experts in sound isolation and cinema work, plus architects working from Germany,” explains Fakhri, who eventually joins myself and Marcus on the balcony in a waft of smoke from a Gauloises. Born in a refugee camp next to Nablus, Fakhri studied law, before moving into the fields of media and politics for various local TV networks and humanitarian organisations. “I have a long CV,” he says.

Several months into the project, a team of volunteers, both international and Palestinian, had become involved, some for just a few days, others for months at time. But providing them with somewhere to stay was proving problematic.

“At the beginning, I was hosting everyone at my place,” says Fakhri. “But as the team expanded it become impossible to have fifteen people staying in just one house with one toilet.”

Further donations were used to lease and renovate a four-storey building around the corner from the cinema. The income from the Cinema Jenin Guesthouse, now a fully functioning hostel with clean dormitories, kitchen and balcony, which offers a handy secluded spot for a few beers in an otherwise conservative Muslim town, are all pumped back into the cinema.

With the project almost entirely dependant on donations, much of Marcus and Fakhri’s time was spent chasing potential donors, using Heart of Jenin as a fundraising and marketing tool at various international events. At the Berlin International Film Festival in 2008, they attracted the attention of Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, who they invited to Jenin. He came in 2009, loved the project and donated the cinema’s state-of-the-art sound system, promising to return one day to perform there.

With each new trickle of funds, the dishevelled building opposite the bus station slowly began to return to its old roots. Indeed, the 300 original seats, which had been left to rot under a pile of pigeons, were eventually restored to their former glory by local craftsmen. But, while re-opening the cinema was one element of the process, Marcus and Fahkri wanted to create something that was sustainable.

“We thought that if we could bring the art of cinema making, and of dubbing and subtitling to Jenin, we could keep the cinema going,” says Marcus.

And in developing its own miniature film industry, Jenin would give itself an almost unique export: something that couldn’t be stopped at an Israeli checkpoint. “If Palestinians want to sell a tomato, they have to do it through the border. But if they want to sell their subtitling skills, or similar, it’s borderless,” says Marcus.

Workshops were set up, film-making equipment donated and the cinema was soon welcoming amateur documentary makers to practice their craft. And, under the “Cinema Jenin” banner, a brand was being established that Marcus hoped could be eventually spread elsewhere, something that went far beyond mere bricks and mortar. “And If they do destroy the cinema, the brand can survive,” he says.

The “they” are, of course, the Israeli armed forces. And, while nobody in Jenin would be so optimistic as to ever rule out the return of the tank battalions, one hope is that the cinema might give their neighbours reason to visit on more peaceful terms.

And on August 5 2010, they did just that, with several Israelis coming to Jenin for the launch, a trip that would have been unheard of just a few years earlier. Also present at the first day ceremony were Bianca Jagger, former Rolling Stone wife turned human rights activist, along with Palestinian National Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and one hundred journalists from across the world.

Despite continued electricity shortages (they couldn’t afford a transformer), the opening was an outstanding success, and a sell-out among the locals. Talks, press conferences and musical performances were held in the cool, minimalist interior of the revamped building, work on which had been going through-the-night right up to the last minute in preparation. And by nightfall, hundreds from across town gathered on plastic chairs in the cinema’s newly cleared backyard to watch the film that started it all, Heart of Jenin, the spluttering generator quickly deployed to power the projector providing its own unique soundtrack.

Adding to the charmingly un-glitzy nature of the event, the town’s limited accommodation offerings were stretched far beyond capacity. The rooftop of the guesthouse, usually a quiet spot to retire with a shisha and admire the rolling Nablus mountains to the south, became a sea of bodies, as forty people struggled to find a space to sleep under the open sky. A nearby school for the blind donated several dozen beds as well.

“It was a beautiful event. The town was very happy that day,” says Marcus.

But now, just a few months on, the cinema is in crisis. “It’s a productive crisis,” Marcus assures me over the phone while on another fundraising trip to Germany, but he’s clearly very concerned with the situation. The main issue is, as per usual, money. The cinema simply doesn’t have enough funds to keep running.

Having gone over budget in getting it ready for the launch, the excess Marcus thought would be left over to give the cinema the necessary stimulus simply wasn’t there. In fact, the project is currently around €100,000 in debt, which the German government has thankfully agreed to pay. The saddest news is that the cinema itself has closed again.

“For the first month after opening, the party continued and it was amazing. It was Ramadan and we had 500 to 600 people coming each night,” says Marcus. But then, unable to survive on ticket sales alone (they charge just five shekels) the money dried up and the budget wasn’t there to buy new titles. “We only had European films, but we didn’t want to show these because then people would think we were a Western cinema not showing Arabic films.”

To keep costs spiralling out of control, the cinema’s doors were shut once more. It now opens for special events, such as private parties, children’s group or musical performances. An orchestra from Berlin is heading over this month.

“We’re doing everything else,” says Marcus. “We’ve got the workshops, the film-making and the guesthouse, just no cinema.”

It’s a very sad state of affairs. The cinema, still sparkling with fresh paint, has everything waiting to be used and enjoyed. “We even have a 3D screen,” Marcus laughs. But without the initial money to bring in films and to employ people full-time, the ball of self-sustainability can’t start rolling.

“We realise that it’s a business and that it’s not just about the cinema and the building,” says Marcus. “You also need the financial means to run it, and to pay the people. We could run it ourselves, but that doesn’t make sense.”

There are currently twenty international volunteers – mainly German – currently working at the cinema, plus a larger group of local Palestinians, many of whom are vying for full-time positions when they become available. Initially, the idea is to employ five people to keep it running, with plans to increase this figure to 25 once the film development side is fully functional.

In charitable terms, the figures aren’t astronomical. Marcus is currently looking at around €200,000 to €300,000 to give it the initial push needed to get going.

But until the money comes in, it’s Marcus himself who is paying the way. “I am the only bank,” he says, adding that it’s a position that is pushing him towards bankruptcy.

“You have to take into consideration that there is simply no money in Jenin.”

Despite acknowledging that his entire project currently sits on rather “precarious” ledge, there is hope on the horizon.

Currently in the editing stages is Cinema Jenin, a documentary about the whole mission, co-produced by Cinema Jenin and three other production houses.

“It’s going to show life in Jenin, the ups and downs, the culture clashes between Germans and Palestinians who love each other one minute then the next are arguing. It’s going to be funny,” says Marcus.

The world premier, set for June 30 2011, will naturally be held at Cinema Jenin. “That was the whole point,” says Marcus, who hopes that Roger Waters will be able to attend to perform.

Where Heart of Jenin helped gather the interest and investment needed to restore the cinema, the Cinema Jenin documentary is hoped to help fuel the donations required to keep it running.

“When it’s finished, I don’t think we’ll have any problems, as it should be the perfect fundraising tool,” says Marcus, who plans to take the film on the festival circuit.

“But until then, we’ll probably suffer.”

Suffering, of course, is relative. And, as anyone there will tell you, it’s not something unknown in Jenin. Just a few minutes around the corner from the cinema, the walls of the refugee camp are covered in posters of the “martyrs” who fell in 2002. It’s just a hope, and perhaps a naïve one at that, but with the right investment these walls could instead soon display posters advertising the latest Arabian blockbuster or, better still, the latest production by Cinema Jenin. It wouldn’t change the world, or even this troubled part of it, but it could give make things seem brighter, if only for 90 minutes.