Munich-based Telepool is handling international sales on the documentary After The Silence, which is the first film project to be supported by the German-Palestinian initiative Cinema Jenin.
Produced by Marcus Vetter, the director of the award-winning The Heart of Jenin, After The Silence has been directed by two young German filmmakers Jule Ott and Stephanie Burger with Manal Abdallah, a Palestinian student from Jenin, following an Israeli woman Yael Armanet-Chernobroda’s decision to visit the family in Jenin of their Palestine suicide bomber son Shadi whose act also killed Gael’s peace activist husband when he blew himself up in a Haifa restaurant in 2002.
Speaking in Berlin at a presentation of Cinema Jenin’s activities, Armanet-Chernobroda said that she hoped the message in the film “will reach the Israeli government that living together is possible. We are not enemies of the people, but of the occupation.”
According to producer Vetter, After The Silence could be having its premiere at this year’s Munich Filmfest in June.
Meanwhile, Vetter’s documentary about the renovation and re-opening in August 2010 of one of Palestine’s largest and most impressive movie houses, Cinema Jenin, is to be released theatrically in Germany this autumn by Senator Film Verleih. International sales are being handled by Tel Aviv-based Cinephil which is also co-producing along with Vetter’s own company Filmperspektive and Berlin-based Boomtown Media.
Vetter stressed that Cinema Jenin “is to be an entertaining film. It is about cinema and it will be fun,” and explained that the film project will feature a special collaboration with the Dresdner Sinfoniker with support from the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
A score specially composed for the documentary will be recorded in Berlin by an orchestra made up of the Dresdner Sinfoniker and Israeli-Palestinian musicians before an avant-premiere in the German capital this autumn.
The film’s official premiere with live musical accompaniment by the Dresdner Sinfoniker and their Israeli-Palestinian colleagues will then be held in Jenin’s renovated cinema with the screening beamed via satellite into selected cinemas and other venues around the globe.
According to Vetter, he will film the premiere and include footage of the orchestra’s performance in the final version of the Cinema Jenin documentary for cinema release.
The Cinema Jenin arts and peace initiative had been launched in 2008 to transform Jenin’s old cinema into a social and cultural centre and attracted support from sources as diverse as the German Foreign Ministry, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, Kodak and the Goethe Institute.
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