In its nine years, the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, now underway at the Gene Siskel Film Center, has had to navigate its share of controversies, given the fragile state of affairs in its homeland. Peter Farah, a Palestinian native, became an organizing committee member for the festival when he moved to Chicago five years ago. “A lot of people are reluctant to say they don’t understand much about Palestine…[the film festival] is a noncontroversial and noncombative way to educate people and entertain them,” Farah says. On Aprl 24 at 5pm, the festival will screen “American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein,” a film with a particular Chicago connection. Finkelstein, the son of two Holocaust survivors, has been at the center of many academic and political controversies over his criticism of Israel and U.S. Middle East policy, including his denied tenure by DePaul University in 2007. “We have films that obviously some people aren’t going to like,” says Farah, “but we look at our selections as to the value of the film rather than whether or not it may offend people.” A series of short films by children ages 10-16, “Voices Beyond Walls: Youth Visions of Jerusalem,” will screen on April 25 at 3pm. Farah says the committee chose these films to try to help younger viewers to learn about life in Palestine: “It’s a powerful venue: film and new technologies can empower people to have their voices heard.” The festival runs until April 29. (Andrew Rhoades)
Counting Down: Cinema As A Million Reasons A mix of polemic and hierarchy, Sight and Sound magazine's once-a-decade ten-best-films, or, immodestly, "The Greatest Films of All Time," collated from submissions to an invited range of programmers, filmmakers, academics and reviewers will be published in the magazine this month along with a vertiginous online roster of individual lists.Â
