THIS IS NOT LIVING

For two hours let the screens of Tower City be a place where Palestinians and Israelis can co-exist and air their grievances and aspirations, without fear of reprisal. Would that every problem be so easily resolved in this infamously disputed, blood and tear-stained corner of the map. THIS IS NOT LIVING interviews eight Palestinian women from varying social and religious backgrounds; from the farms, the theaters, the schools, the markets and the kitchens. The ordinary lives which make up the news, and which the news makes invisible. In Alia Arasoughly's “video-essay,” they speak of profound losses (life, land, purpose) and their weariness with the terrorizing drama of war. FOR MY CHILDREN ironically revives vintage Israeli propaganda films of Zionists bravely settling in an `empty' desert, and juxtaposes the myth-making footage with the latter-day descendants of those pioneers, watching the second Intifada unfold on TV. Fragments of daily family life mix with the anxiety of an unthinkable choice: remain here, in uncertainty and violence, or uproot and depart for another safe haven? As filmmaker Michal Avaid explores her personal dilemmas of home, hearth and survival, she asks penetrating questions about the kind of country that will be inherited by the children of the children of the children of 1948. (In Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles)