To Request DVD Screeners, Photos, and for Interviews with Filmmaker

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

To Request DVD Screeners, Photos, and for Interviews with Filmmaker OFFICIAL SELECTION OFFICIAL SELECTION OFFICIAL SELECTION San Francisco Jewish Chicago Palestinian Hot Docs 2009 Film Festival 2009 Film Festival 2009 An Israeli filmmaker. An American activist. A tragedy in Gaza. Whatever side you’re on: This is the film you have to see. Drawing by Joe Carr © Ciné-Sud Promotion /Arte France Cinema/ Novak Prod / RTBF - France- Belgium , 2008 To request DVD screeners, photos, and for interviews with filmmaker Simone Bitton, please contact the film’s publicistIsil Bagdadi, CAVU PR at (917) 375-7615 or [email protected] Women Make Movies n www.wmm.com Synopsis RACHEL is a startlingly rigorous, fascinating and deeply moving investigatory documentary that examines the death of peace activist and International Solidarity Movement (ISM) member Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in 2003. A few weeks after her little-reported death, an inquiry by Israeli military police concluded that Corrie died in an accident. Simone Bitton (WALL), an award-winning documentary filmmaker who is a citizen of both France and Israel, has crafted a dispassionate but devastating essay investigating the circumstances of Rachel Corrie’s death—including astounding eyewitness testimony from activists, soldiers, Israeli Defense Force army spokespersons and physicians, as well as insights from Corrie’s parents, mentors and diaries. In assembling a thorough and candid account of the event, using both visual and narrative evidence, Bitton’s quietly persistent questioning manages to accomplish what the inadequate legal proceedings and the overheated press coverage did not: an unflinching examination that refuses to exculpate or equivocate. By aligning her filmmaking methodology with the ISM’s guidelines to state only objective and concrete details without placing judgment, Bitton examines the circumstances surrounding the unresolved case of Corrie’s death. The film begins like a classic documentary, but soon develops, transcending its subject and establishing a candid new visual approach for bearing witness. With understated cinematic techniques, Bitton captures the spirit of Rachel’s youth, idealism, and political commitment amidst sweeping landscapes of Gaza and a portrait of daily life under ever-present military aggression. Women Make Movies n www.wmm.com Credits 2009, 100 Minutes, Color France/Belgium Subtitled (Hebrew, Arabic) Director Simone Bitton Production Thierry Lenouvel/Ciné-Sud Promotion, France Co-Producers Arte France Cinéma; Novak Prod (Belgium), RTBF Screenplay Simone Bitton Camera Jacques Bouquin Sound Cosmas Antoniadis Editors Catherine Poitevin & Jean-Michel Perez Women Make Movies n www.wmm.com Director’s Bio Simone Bitton was born in Morocco in 1955. She is both an Israeli and a French citizen and also considers herself as a Moroccan national and an Arab Jew. She graduated from the French Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques (IDHEC) in 1981 and directed more than 15 documentary films. Her work varies in style from historical inquiries to first-hand reportages and intimate portraits of cutting-edge authors, artists, and political figures. All of her films attest to her deep personal and professional commitment to better representing the complex histories and cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. Several of her works have been broadcast simultaneously on European, Arab, and Israeli television and engendered passionate debate on all sides of the Mid-East conflict. Simone Bitton’s films have won numerous awards, including the Sundance Film Festival, Special Jury Prize and the Cesear Award for WALL, among many others. Women Make Movies n www.wmm.com What People are Saying about Simone Bitton and Rachel “A powerful documentary about the death in Palestine of a young American idealist.” —The Hollywood Reporter “RACHEL finds human surprises and philosophical depth within a symbol of that intractable conflict.” —Salon “Simone Bitton is that rare documentarian, a political activist with the eye and ear of a gifted director. In RACHEL, she applies a light, almost lyrical touch to a socially-charged issue.” —Cineaste “Instead of a sensationalist front-page story about a hapless girl trapped overseas, we get to see the truth...an impressive balance between both sides of the argument.” —Entertainment at AOL.com Canada “An insightful and provocative exploration into the complexities of political solidarity.” —Tribeca Film Festival “Simone Bitton rigorously investigates the circumstances that led to Corrie’s death.” —Seattle Times Festivals n Berlin International Film Festival, Forum 2009 n Sarajevo International Film Festival, 2009 n Tribeca Film Festival, 2009 n Traverse City Film Festival, 2009 n Hot Docs 2009 n San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2009 n Cinema du Réel, 2009 n Haïfa International Film Festival, 2009 n Buenos Aires , BAFICI 2009 n Ramallah International Film Festival, 2009 n Rio De Janeiro International Film Festival, 2009 n Oslo, Films of the South Festival, 2009 n New Zealand International Film Festival, 2009 n Chicago Palestinian Film Festival, 2009 n Mostra de Nuevo Cinema , 2009 Women Make Movies n www.wmm.com More Info Hi-res photos are available for download on this film’s web catalog page at www.wmm.com. To request DVD screeners, photos, and for interviews with filmmaker Simone Bitton, please contact the film’s publicistIsil Bagdadi, CAVU PR at (917) 375-7615 or [email protected] Women Make Movies n www.wmm.com Synopsissynopsis n March 16, 2003, in the almost uninterrupted tide of Middle Easten current affairs and just before the war in Iraq, a small tragic event was reported by some press agencies, just a few lines in the newspaper, or a 45 -second report on television: A young American with Simone bitton peace activist was killed in the Gaza Strip, crushed by an Israeli bulldozer while she was Otrying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian house. Interview A few weeks later, some media reports mentionned that the Israeli military police How would you tell the story of your of itself, without commentary. This type of conducted an inquiry, concluding that Rachel Corrie’s death was accidental. Despite many movie? rigor is essential, because it allows me to eyewitnesses claims that she was intentionnaly murdered by the bulldozer driver, there It is a cinematographic inquiry into the go further, to transcend the subject. was no independant inquiry, and the case was classified and forgotten. death of a young girl who was crushed In a movie, the result of an investigation by a military vehicle in a diseased country. counts for less than the investigation itself. Five years later, director Simone Bitton is somehow doing what a court should have done. This young girl was American, the vehicle The point is to film and to observe places, RACHEL is a cinematic inquiry into the death of a young unknown girl, made with a rigour was an Israeli bulldozer, and the country people and objects; to gather words, ges- and scope normally reserved for first-rate historical characters. It gives word to all the is Palestine and Israel - a region whose tures or silences. To arouse emotions from people involved in Rachel’s story, from Palestinian and international witnesses to Israeli misfortune and occasional beauty I have the coldest and hardest materials, like the military spokespersons and investigators, doctors, activists and soldiers linked to the affair. not ceased to document, film after film. images from a surveillance camera or the Rachel was killed in 2003 in Rafah, at the smooth metal of an autopsy table. The film begins like a classical documentary, but very soon it develops and transcends its southern end of the Gaza strip. At the time, The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish subject, transforming into a cinematographic meditation on youth, war, idealism and political the Israeli army was destroying hundreds often said: “The way home is more im- commitment. Palestine is a reality , but also a metaphor: a tomb for a child of today. of houses and buildings in order to create a portant than home itself.” It is a very good no man’s land and erect a wall at the bor- definition for any artistic endeavor. How In the beginning, there is this: She was called Rachel Corrie. She was 23. She was convinced der with Egypt. Rachel was part of an inter- one searches and what one comes upon that her American nationality would be enough to make her an effective human shield, national group of pacifists who interposed in the process counts for much more than that her simple presence would save lives, olive trees, wells and houses. Like many young themselves between the houses and the what one finds in the end. In this movie, I people of her generation, she kept a travel log in the form of e-mails, which she sent to bulldozers. One of those bulldozers simply tried to inquire poetically. her family and friends in the United States. didn’t stop, and the Israeli army declined all responsibility. Some of the images you show are har- During the eight weeks that she had left to live, Rachel Corrie was to discover that which, My inquiry is rigorous. Since the matter was dly bearable. Was it necessary to show in her own words, no documentary film could have taught her. never brought to trial, I play the role of an Rachel’s corpse? investigating judge: I interrogate witnesses, Yes. It was necessary to show it, even be- I scrutinize their testimonies, I examine the fore the opening credits and several times incriminating evidence, etc. I unravel a during the movie so that everything refers mountain of lies and let the truth emerge back to that image, to the broken body of Women Make Movies n www.wmm.com if they are killed, the image of their body petent journalists had misquoted or misre- is a little obscene to dwell on them.
Recommended publications
  • CATF-Program 2015.Pdf
    2015 World Builders by Johnna Adams • Everything You Touch by Sheila Callaghan • On Clover Road by Steven Dietz • WE ARE PUSSY RIOT by Barbara Hammond • The Full Catastrophe by Michael Weller 2014 The Ashes Under Gait City by Christina Anderson • One Night by Charles Fuller • Uncanny Valley by Thomas Gibbons • North of the Boulevard by Bruce Graham • Dead and Breathing by Chisa Hutchinson 2013 A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisbile World by Liz Duffy Adams • Modern Terrorism, or They Who Want to Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them by Jon Kern • H2O by Jane Martin • Heartless by Sam Shepard • Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah by Mark St. Germain 2012 Gidion’s Knot by Johnna Adams • The Exceptionals by Bob Clyman • In a Forest, Dark and Deep by Neil LaBute • Captors by Evan M. Wiener • Barcelona by Bess Wohl 2011 From Prague by Kyle Bradstreet • Race by David Mamet • Ages of the Moon by Sam Shepard • We Are Here by Tracy Thorne • The Insurgents by Lucy Thurber 2010 The Eelwax Jesus 3-D Pop Music Show by Max Baker & Lee Sellars • Lidless by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig • Breadcrumbs by Jennifer Haley • Inana by Michele Lowe • White People by J.T. Rogers 2009 The History of Light by Eisa Davis • Yankee Tavern by Steven Dietz • Dear Sara Jane by Victor Lodato • Fifty Words by Michael Weller • Farragut North by Beau Willimon 2008 Stick Fly by Lydia R. Diamond • A View of the Harbor by Richard Dresser • Pig Farm by Greg Kotis • WRECKS by Neil LaBute • The Overwhelming by J.T.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Theatre of the Real: an Overview
    Notes 1 Theatre of the Real: An Overview 1. In her essay ‘The Promise of Documentary,’ Janelle Reinelt (2009) cites Stella Bruzzi on the awareness of the spectator of the status of reality, implicitly making the case that quotation marks need not accompany the word ‘real’ every time it is written. I agree and will not place the word ‘real’ in quotation marks through the rest of this book. ‘Real’ in quotation marks insinuates that the real is not real. Real (without quotation marks) insinuates that the real is real. Since much of my discussion is precisely about the real’s ambiguity, I have elected not to use quotation marks. 2. There are many, many published dramatic documentary texts that compete with more conventional historical accounts. Some of these texts that are explicitly about history include: The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth (first per- formed and published 1963) about Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church’s complicity in the Nazi extermination of the Jewish people; The Investigation (first performed in 1965, English publication 1966) by Peter Weiss about the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, In White America (first performed in 1963, pub- lished in 1965) by Martin Duberman about racism in America, famously per- formed in 1964 by The Free Southern Theatre in the still segregated and racist Deep South; Inquest (first performed in 1970) by Donald Freed about the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; Year One of the Empire (first published in 1973 and first performed in 1980) by Elinor Fuchs and Joyce Antler about the US’s first land war in Asia, the Philippine War fought between 1899 and 1902; and, Emily Mann’s Annulla, An Autobiography (1977) and Still Life (1979) about a Holocaust survivor and the Vietnam War, respectively.
    [Show full text]
  • The Use of Verbatim in Carol Ann Duffy and Rufus Norris' My
    humanities Article “Divided by a Common Language”: The Use of Verbatim in Carol Ann Duffy and Rufus Norris’ My Country; A Work in Progress Shauna O’Brien Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Education, Palacký University, 771 47 Olomouc, Czech Republic; [email protected] Received: 22 November 2018; Accepted: 20 March 2019; Published: 22 March 2019 Abstract: ‘My Country; A Work in Progress’ written and arranged by the poet Carol Ann Duffy is a verbatim play that uses interviews conducted with people from various regions in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland to explore the causes of the EU referendum result. With the recent rise of populism across Europe, Britain, and America, an increased scepticism of established news media organisations, and a widespread disillusionment with the so-called political elite class, verbatim theatre’s “claim to veracity” and use of real-life testimonies seems to provide an attractive forum for both playwrights and audiences to investigate the underlying causes prompting these political and social movements. This paper examines how Duffy’s highly-fragmented arrangement of My Country’s verbatim voices in tandem with their re-citation and reterritorialization in the bodies of the performers on the stage ironically undermines the “claim to veracity” that its verbatim approach implies. Keywords: verbatim theatre; brexit; contemporary British society; British theatre The strength of verbatim theatre is that it’s absolutely truthful, it’s exactly what someone said. Nicholas Kent. (Hammond and Steward 2008, p. 152) Speaking frightens me because, by never saying enough, I also say too much. Jacques Derrida. (Derrida 2005, p.
    [Show full text]
  • Venues All Over the City. Artists from All Over the World
    VENUES ALL OVER THE CITY. ARTISTS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. LET YOUR HAIR DOWN WITH LIVE PERFORMANCE. January 16 - February 3, 2008 Vancouver • Canada www.pushfestival.ca Emily Molnar, Artist-in-Residence. Photo by Michael Slobodian. BC’s resource centre for dance Performances and events Resources, information and support for artists Studio rentals at Scotiabank Dance Centre Contact us for further information: The Dance Centre, Level 6, 677 Davie Street, Vancouver BC V6B 2G6 T 604 606 6400 www.thedancecentre.ca 2 Hello! Table of Contents Another year has passed. And here we Welcome Messages . .4 are submerged in the throes of winter. Main Program . 5–19, 22–29 January 2008 will bring the fourth Schedule . 20–21 installment of the Push International Performing Arts Festival. Three weeks Ticket + Pass Info . 20–21 of ground-breaking work from afar and Festival Credits . 21 just around the corner. I could list for Special Events . 31 you the number of productions, of PuSh Assembly . 33–34 artists, of performances—they Post-show Talkbacks . 36 are good numbers. But alas, only numbers. Venue Maps . 36 Acknowledgements . 38 There is a lot of talk these days about the need to quantify the impact of art. In some circles, it’s referred to as Legend “metrics”. In others, one speaks of Norman Armour, circa 1966 “measurables” and “outcomes”. Whatever the case, the task at hand is Wheelchair accessible to quantify the degree that the arts may be argued to have a socially relevant value—in other words, to demonstrate with tangible proof the transformative power of art and the role it plays in our lives.
    [Show full text]
  • “Supercharged Reality”: Documentary and Theatrical Disciplinarity
    “Supercharged Reality”: Documentary and Theatrical Disciplinarity Alan Filewod I have a very dangerous story to tell you. This story is so dangerous that I cannot even tell it. It’s so dangerous I can’t tell it to you. So I will tell you another story. This story is not so dangerous but it starts out the same way. — The Mummers Troupe, Buchans: A Mining Town (73) hen STUDIES IN CANADIAN LITERATURE began pub- lication, I had just spent a year in Newfoundland with a makeshift and aspirationally radical theatre troupe, creatingW plays by and with striking miners in a company town and working-class residents in the East End of St John’s. Our shows were devised in rehearsal without scripts or scenarios, built on research and ideas brought in by the actors. We had no aesthetic model in mind; every decision was a discovery, and we didn’t really ask whether we were creating good theatre art. We were going with what worked in a highly compressed creative process, in which a play could be conceived, researched, devised, and performed in six weeks. We made less than minimum wage, and when there was no money in the budget, we went on the pogey, like so many others in Newfoundland. When I left the Mummers Troupe in 1975 to resume my studies at York University, the group continued making interventionist community theatre for another six years before falling apart, ruptured with dissent, anger, and, inevit- ably because of the pressures of poverty, exhaustion. When I returned to university, I was bemused to hear a professor announce, with the gravity that eminence brings, that there was no political theatre in Canada.
    [Show full text]
  • An Investigation Into Theatre Directing Processes Used with Actors to Discover and Articulate
    Liberating the Actor to Find the Voice of a Play: An investigation into theatre directing processes used with actors to discover and articulate the authentic message of the play, with specific application to My Name is Rachel Corrie A.N Richard Allan Hornsby [email protected] A thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Arts by Dissertation in Theatre Studies Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies University of Essex July 2017 2 Contents Introduction 4 1. Professional Working Environments: A brief overview 8 2. Documentary Theatre 13 3. My Name is Rachel Corrie – R & D (Part One) 19 4. My Name is Rachel Corrie for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 28 5. My Name is Rachel Corrie – R & D (Part Two) 30 6. How is the play still relevant? 35 Conclusion 40 Bibliography 42 3 SUMMARY LIBERATING THE ACTOR TO FIND THE VOICE OF A PLAY: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THEATRE DIRECTING PROCESSES USED WITH ACTORS TO DISCOVER AND ARTICULATE THE AUTHENTIC MESSAGE OF THE PLAY, WITH SPECIFIC APPLICATION TO MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE This dissertation explores the ability of liberating actors in order to find the voice for a play, particularly My Name is Rachel Corrie, a piece of documentary theatre which highlights human rights abuses within the Israel/Palestine dispute; primarily through the use of theatre directing techniques that I have experienced first-hand through professional placements and research. The title My Name is Rachel Corrie already advocates Rachel’s personal journey. I will also examine the plays efficacy in dealing with human rights abuses taking place in the Middle East.
    [Show full text]
  • My Name Is Rachel Corrie Study Guide
    My Name is Rachel Corrie Study Guide 1 Study Guide for Educators Table of Contents: 1. About the Play: An Excerpt from ―The Second Life of Rachel Corrie.‖ 2. Who is Rachel Corrie? 3. Interviews with Allan Rickman and Katharine Viner 2 4. Important terms 5. Timeline on Israeli - Palestinian Conflict 6. Maps 7. Lesson Plan - Peace Conference Project 8. Lesson Plan- Conflict Resolution and Peace 9. Activity - Tolerance 10. Lesson Plan - Taking Action 11. Lesson Plan - Home 13. Writing Exercises/ Discussion questions 14. Further Reading ABOUT THE PLAY An excerpt from The Second Life of Rachel Corrie, By Jason Fitzgerald ―[Rachel Corrie‘s story] caught the attention of actor Alan Rickman, who, with the support of the Corrie family and journalist Katharine Viner as co-editor, turned her diaries and emails into a one-woman play. My Name is Rachel Corrie was produced by the Royal Court Theater in 2005. Not long thereafter, New York Theater Workshop announced and then unannounced the play for its 2006-2007 season, creating a storm of 3 controversy. An open petition from members of the theater community was sent to artistic director James Nicola urging him to change his mind and "come down on the side of peace, justice, and open discussion" (available at: http://www.petitiononline.com/nytw/petition.html). Playwright Eduardo Machado, in a speech to the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, denounced the cancellation as "horrifying and the worst kind of censorship imaginable." Perhaps the harshest words came from Vanessa Redgrave, who called the cancellation a "catastrophe" and "The second death of Rachel Corrie." Inside all the newspaper editorials, panel discussions, and email warfare was a self-congratulatory energy from those who cried censorship--a pride that they had found a martyr for the cause of politically relevant drama.
    [Show full text]
  • Re-Thinking the Figure of the Humanitarian: Sahar Khalifeh's the End of Spring and the Function of Human Rights Narrative
    Postcolonial Text, Vol 14, No 1 (2019) Re-Thinking the Figure of the Humanitarian: Sahar Khalifeh’s The End of Spring and the Function of Human Rights Narrative David Jefferess University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Canada Sahar Khalifeh’s novel, Rabi’ Harr, published in English as The End of Spring (2008), ends with Ahmad committing suicide by driving his ambulance, “like a rocket,” into a group of Israeli soldiers. In the moment preceding this act, he is described as having “lost his senses” as he witnesses his father being beaten by Israeli soldiers, and a young English solidarity activist, Rachel, killed by a bulldozer as she attempts to protect his parents’ home from demolition. His father describes him as a martyr, while the Israeli media brands him a terrorist. Ahmad’s final act follows a narrative of his life growing up in the occupied West Bank, from his early childhood experiments with art and photography, and his infatuation with a young Israeli settler girl, Mira, to his imprisonment and torture by Israeli authorities and his experience of the al-Aqsa Intifada. While Part I of the novel focalizes Ahmad as a child, Part II begins with chapters presented in the first-person voice of his older brother, Majid, as he recuperates from serious injuries in the besieged compound of Palestinian Authority President Arafat, as well as chapters focalizing the home of the mother of Suad, a friend of Ahmad and Majid. In The Palestinian Novel (2016), Bashir Abu-Manneh describes Khalifeh’s fiction “as histories of social and political oppression, capturing Israeli domination, Palestinian processes of resistance and potential transformation, as well as, distinctly, possibilities for Palestinian- Israeli cooperation and solidarity” (119, original emphasis).
    [Show full text]
  • Palestinian Rights: a Literary Multiple-Genre Approach
    The American University in Cairo School of Humanities and Social Sciences Palestinian Rights: A Literary Multiple-Genre Approach A Thesis Submitted to The Department of English and Comparative Literature In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts By Marwa Sayed Hanafy Mahmoud Under the supervision of Dr. Ferial J. Ghazoul May/ 2016 The American University in Cairo Palestinian Rights: A Literary Multiple-Genre Approach A Thesis Submitted by Marwa Sayed Hanafy Mahmoud To the Department of English and Comparative Literature May/ 2016 In partial fulfillment of the requirements for The degree of Master of Arts Has been approved by Dr. Ferial J. Ghazoul Thesis Committee Advisor____________________________________________ Affiliation_________________________________________________________ Dr. Stephen Nimis Thesis Committee Reader____________________________________________ Affiliation_________________________________________________________ Dr. William Melaney Thesis Committee Reader____________________________________________ Affiliation_________________________________________________________ __________________ __________ __________________ ____________ Dept. Chair Date Dean of HUSS Date ii Dedication My thesis is dedicated to the Palestinians everywhere for their long history of resistance and sumud (steadfastness) in the face of the Israeli occupation that tried but in vain to dehumanize them. The thesis is an attempt to cast light on their variable artistic forms of expression that places emphasis on the
    [Show full text]
  • Representation of Violence and Trauma in Contemporary Monologues
    Prague Journal of English Studies Volume 2, No. 1, 2013 '2,SMHV ISSN: 1804-8722 Representation of Violence and Trauma in Contemporary Monologues Hana Pavelková Contrary to the rapid frenzied dialogues and confrontational brutal physical scenes showing acute pain in the “in-yer-face” theatre of the 1990s, contemporary political dramas very oen opt for a purely verbal, verbatim, evocation of violence. is paper focuses on the representation of violence and the ensuing trauma specifically in plays that use a monologue format. e range of contemporary monologues is demonstrated firstly by analysing the media-popular, political awareness-raising, straightforward personal narratives of the documentary monologue My Name is Rachel Corrie (eds. Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner, 2005) and Eve Ensler’s e Vagina Monologues (1998), to the much more complex and audience challenging Nine Parts of Desire (2003) by Heather Raffo, and Doug Wright’s Pulitzer Prize winning monodrama I Am My Own Wife (2004) which questions the reliability of its monologist and examines also the limits of the theatrical monologue as a means of communicating trauma via verbal representation of violence. Cannibalism, masturbation, rape, bodily mutilations, defecation, dis em bo- wel ment, oceans of blood and non-stop swearing – that was British theatre in 1990s London – “in-yer-face” theatre. In the new millennium, however, especially aer 9/11, the theatre scene has changed significantly, the return of political theatre and documentary theatre being the two most visible trends. Although we cannot speak about any artistic movement, the playwrights of “in-yer-face” theatre shared a common sensibility. Extreme violence, both verbal and visual, was undoubtedly one of their trademarks.
    [Show full text]
  • Rachel Corrie Program 0.Pdf
    “When I wake up just before dawn and hear the throbbing voices of birds as they echo against the silence, I am overpowered by yearning. When I ride in the dark on stark roads through dry, bald hills, I ache with desperate longing. I don’t know what I am longing for, maybe for some place of my own within these images, some place where I fit, instead of being the one human being still awake, the only thing moving across the hills in the arid darkness. Maybe that ache is loneliness. I haven’t found a name for the feeling yet, nor do I know exactly what awakes it in me. But instinct warns me that it is too potent for me, that my soul is on the verge of cracking when I feel it that way. I cannot handle the sheer power of those wild emotions by myself. I have to find some way to share them. That is why I write. It’s instinctive. I just have to-- because it is awake like lava in my blood, and sustains me.” - Rachel Corrie, 15 yrs old ---------------- Cast and Crew Sam Stroming - Rachel Corrie Nita June - Director Megan Bowman - Stage Manager Jessica Yost - Set Designer Katy McDonald - Lighting Designer Tyler Lynch - Cinematographer and Editor Special thanks to Craig and Cindy Corrie for their support throughout this production and for sharing Rachel’s writing with the world. ---------------- The creative team of My Name is Rachel Corrie acknowledges that this ​ ​ production has been rehearsed, performed, and filmed on the stolen territory of the Chumash people.
    [Show full text]
  • Handful of Salt
    1 Handful of Salt Volume XXXVIV, Number 1 March –April-May 2015 PJALS hosts Chris Hedges “Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt” Peace and Justice Action Chris Hedges Evening League is excited Appearance to host Pulitzer Tuesday March 10, 2015, at 7:00 pm Prize-winning at the Bing Crosby Theater, journalist and 901 W. Sprague writer Chris Tickets at pjals.org/hedges or TicketsWest Hedges in $18 in advance/ $20 at the door Spokane! $10 student Called Group Rates: Contact Liz: [email protected] “Champion of the 99% – Mortal Special Reception & Dinner Enemy of the 1%” by the LA with Chris Hedges Press Club, Hedges asserts we are riding the Join us for a limited-seat reception & Thai crest of a revolutionary epic, from the Arab dinner with Chris Hedges, 4:00 pm to 6:00 Spring to movements against austerity in pm on Tuesday March 10. Tickets to the Greece to the Occupy movement and beyond. Special Reception and Dinner include From the vantage point of a world on the edge, admission to the Evening Appearance. Chris Hedges investigates what social and Tickets $65. Limited tickets are available psychological factors cause revolution, now only at pjals.org/hedges rebellion and resistance. Hedges’ message is clear: popular uprisings in the United States In This Issue Page and around the world are inevitable in the face of environmental destruction and wealth “My Name is Rachel Corrie” play 4 polarization. Death Penalty Repeal News 5 and 8 Hedges – a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a foreign correspondent 6th annual Action Conference 6 for nearly two decades in Latin America, (Continued on page 7) Young Activist Leaders & interns 8, 9, 11 Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane Affiliate of the Fellowship of Reconciliation 35 W.
    [Show full text]