Still from Arna's Children.
Palestine With Love: Creation under Occupation
Rachel Lever of Hastings Palestine Solidarity Campaign provides a HOT-line to HPSC’s three-day arts festival for Coastal Currents at the White Rock Hotel from 2 to 4 September.
FIRST NIGHT ● Tues 2 Sept 7pm 
● A Theatre for Resistance
“Israel is now destroying not only the economic and political infrastructure but the very neurological system of Palestinian society, which is its culture, identity, communication. It is pushing Palestinians back into the stone age. The Freedom Theatre project is the best way to fight this deconstruction of identity of the Palestinians.”
These words, spoken by Jenin Freedom Theatre director Juliano Mer-Khamis before his death in April 2011, explain why we are holding Palestine With Love: Creation Under Occupation at this time, and why we are launching it with an evening about the Freedom Theatre.
Even as sheer physical survival is under such threat not only in Gaza but also in East Jerusalem, in Syria, in the West Bank, these words inspire Hastings Palestine Campaign to hold our mini-festival next week, bringing Palestine into Coastal Currents.
We open with a showing of the film Arna’s Children. “Arna Mer-Khamis was a legendary activist for the rights of the Palestinian people who founded a theatre group at Jenin refugee camp, teaching children to express themselves through acting. Her son Juliano filmed Arna working with the children over a six-year period. Following Arna’s death, he returns to the camp to find out what became of the young refugees. Best Documentary Feature winner at the 2004 Tribeca Festival.”
The film has no easy answers to the many questions about trying to fight oppression with culture, a tightrope with no safety net in the middle of a war zone. We will have the Freedom Theatre’s current assistant director Zoe Lafferty to guide us with an introduction to Arna’s Children and Q&A after.
Come early (from 6pm) to see videos and exhibition about the Freedom Theatre’s current work.
SECOND NIGHT ● Wed 3 Sept 7.30pm
● Award-winning feature film Omar
“This is a subtle political film: one that fully dramatises a situation and lets us think out its contradictions for ourselves.”
“… a nerve-rattling entertainment flavoured by vigorous, deeply felt polemic. “
THIRD NIGHT ● Thurs 4 Sept
● Art for Gaza #2
● 4-6pm Browse & Buy Art Sale
● 6-7pm Art Auction
● 7pm till late Partying, Poetry, Food,
Music and maybe even Dancing
Following our first sale four weeks earlier when we raised an amazing £4,000 for
medical aid, another chance to buy wonderful work donated by Hastings artists and raise some life-saving cash for Gaza’s hard-pressed hospitals.
Palestine With Love: Creation Under Occupation White Rock Hotel, 1-10 White Rock, Hastings TN34 1JU, Tuesday 2-Thursday 4 September.
Hastings Palestine Solidarity Campaign
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