Wednesday, February 25,
7:00 pm
St. Mark’s Cathedral
Skinner Auditorium
Seattle Washington
About the Film
Before arriving in Israel to shoot the film, French Director and Co-Writer Lorraine Lévy distributed copies of Amos Oz’s “Understanding the Other” to her crew. “I wanted to give them a sense of what direction we were going,” she said. “It goes beyond Israel and Palestine. If in some way I can put together something that suggests a rapprochement between these different sides that would be very important to me. I want it to be a movie that brought people together.”- See more at: http://www.nypress.com/lorraine-levy-an-interview-with-the-director-of-the-other-son/#sthash.we3tfmXD.dpuf
Mideast Focus Ministry Film Series II: Choices in an Occupied Land
Le Fils de L’Autre In The Other Son, a bomb goes off near a hospital in Israel, and two newborn sons are switched at birth. When Joseph, played by Jules Situk, takes a blood test to enter the military, part of the conscription of all Israelis, his blood type reveals that Orith and Alon Silberg cannot be his actual parents. His response is shock, for he has grown up within the Jewish faith and with the privilege of Israeli citizenship. Yacine, played by Medhi Dehbi, lives with Said and Leila Al Bezaaz in the West Bank, and when he is told that he is actually Jewish by birth, he cries. His identity is of his enemy, his oppressor, the group that occupies the land and constructs Apartheid walls. The film endeavors to show two sons—one Israeli, one Palestinian—raised in families, considered enemies; yet the film positions family on both sides of the wall, suggesting a need to break down these walls of segregation. With its endearing close ups, this film claims these two sons as related to Abraham, and this modern Ishmael and Isaac discover the importance of family, reconceiving shared spaces and collective bonds, not just blood, to recalibrate the heart of this divided region. –K.W. Segall
Tonight’s Topic Expert & Discussion Leader: Kimberly Wedeven Segall
Professor Kimberly Wedeven Segall, author of Performing Democracy in Iraq and South Africa: Gender, Media, and Resistance (Syracuse University Press, 2013), teaches reconciliation studies, Middle Eastern diasporic literature and film at Seattle Pacific University. She is also Affiliate Faculty of Gender, Women, and Sexuality at the University of Washington, and partners with the John Perkins Center for Reconciliation. While her central emphasis is on how societies use artistic forms as an attempt to cope with trauma, and at times, work towards conciliation, she has also travelled to Palestine and Israel, beginning in 1995, before moving to Northern Iraq to record traumatic stories in Kurdistan. Returning several times to Palestine Israel, most recently in December 2013, she teaches about this region using film, fiction, and memoir
Thanks to those who have helped make this series possible! Our hosts: John Berg, Gerri Haynes, Ed Mast, Dr. Kimberly Segall, Judith Kolokoff and Amin Odeh. Also: Steve Thomason, Mike Jackson, Liz Sloat, Erik Donner, Glenn Sands, Ian Ford, Rene Marcequ, Camille Jarvis, Warren Guykema, Don Sullivan and Joanne Silvernale, Goodies Mediterranean Market.
Film Credits
Originally released in 2005
Join Us! You are invited to help us in presenting this film series by making a contribution. Funds raised that exceed operational costs will be donated to the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility delegation to Gaza. Details are on the back of the program.
MIDEAST FOCUS MINISTRY
SAINT MARK’S EPISCOPAL CATHEDRAL
1245 10th Avenue East Seattle, WA 98102