Spore Hosts: Arna's Children

17:00: Whose Child Not Ours?  A  reading with clarinet. Leila Boukarim and J.K. Langford
19:00: Screening: Arna's Children
20:30: A moderated Q&A with Freedom Theaters

Juliano Mer Khamis tells the story of a theatre group that was established by his mother, Arna Mer Khamis. Arna comes from a Zionist family and in the 1950s married a Palestinian Arab, Saliba Khamis. On the West Bank, she opened an alternative education system for children whose regular life was disrupted by the Israeli occupation. The theatre group that she started engaged children from Jenin, helping them to express their everyday frustrations, anger, bitterness and fear. Arna's son Juliano, director of this film, was also one of the directors of Jenin's theatre. With his camera, he filmed the children during rehearsal periods from 1989 to 1996. Now, he goes back to see what happened to them.

The film will be preceeded by Whose Child Not Ours?  A  reading with clarinet. Leila Boukarim and J.K. Langford turn to the voices of children and young writers in Gaza, reading poems and testimonies from Gaza, as well as from their own work. 

Some related sources: Passages Through Genocide, Hands Up Project / Hubcasts, The Palestine Museum, We Are Not Numbers, and A Million Kites.

Following the screening, we will be joined by one of the main actors from the Freedom Theater in Jenin.