L Y D I N E X I L E The story of a city that once connected Palestine to the world.

By Sarah Friedland, Rami Younis, and Fivel Rothberg Contact : [email protected] Contents - Synopsis - Project Narrative - Director Statements - Project Relevance - Artistic Approach - Distribution & Marketing Strategy - Audience Engagement & Social Impact - Timeline - Crew Biographies - Funding & Support - Budget -Contact

Technical Details and Crew Title: Lyd In Exile Genre: Creative Documentary Runtime: 70 minutes DCP Color HD 1920 x 1080 Country: US and Palestine/Israel Producers: Rami Younis and Fivel Rothberg Directors: Sarah Friedland and Rami Younis Horse Training in Lyd Abu Munir Synopsis In 1947 the ancient city of Lyd was in the center of Palestine, a thriving hub that connected Lebanon to Egypt by train and Palestine to the world by plane. A year later, when Lyd fell under siege by Zionist soldiers, the city resisted and was forever changed. These days, the train no longer runs between Lebanon and Egypt, and the airport is no longer open to most Palestinians. Lyd (Lod in Hebrew) re- mains a contested space. Within Israel’s Green Line, it is best known as the epicenter of Israel’s drug trade, plagued by violence and racism. For the Palestinians that still call the city home, its former glory is not forgotten. Through the voices of Palestinians expelled in 1948 and the Zionist soldiers who expelled them, Lyd In Exile reconstructs the events of the massacre and expulsion that splintered the city. It chronicles the ongoing battle for the Lyd through the stories of a Palestinian educator struggling to keep her identity alive for the next generation, a third generation Lydian living in Balata refugee camp who may never return home, and a far right wing mayor who subsidizes the construction of Jewish-only housing while endorsing the demolition of Palestinian homes. This feature documentary is the story of the ongoing destruction of a city that once connected Palestine to the world, and now represents the continuation of the Nakba that never ended.

Project Narrative The rumble of planes pass overhead as people move freely about the bustling city that is called Lod by the State of Israel. A voiceover informs, “Al-Lyd was the center of Palestine, there was an airport and a train that would leave every morning from Lebanon to Egypt.” The voice is revealed and the gentle eyes of Abu Munir make contact with the viewer. “My family worked on the train for three genera- tions, after the occupation in 1948 the Israelis kept us here so they could put us to work, so they could use us, but they expelled every- one else.”

In a bustling cafe called “Lyd Restaurant” in Balata Refugee camp in the West Bank, we meet Jihad Baba. As he jokes with his friends the mood grows increasingly serious when they start talking about Lyd and life in the camp. Jihad leads us through the camp’s serpen- tine alleys to his grandfather’s house where he listens to him describe the massacre he witnessed in Lyd and the expulsion that forced the family to the camp 70 years ago. 67 Kilometers from Balata and a world away, Lyd’s name has been changed to Lod by the State of Israel. The Garin Torani, an intentional community of self-described Orthodox Jewish settlers, aim to increase the Jewish population in Lyd. Through their spokesperson, Benny Printz, we learn that the organization sees their mission as a continuation of the Zionist principles that founded Israel. They are well-connected to the political machinery, and have received enormous subsidies from the mu- nicipality and support from national-level politicians. Meanwhile Lyd’s Palestinian community is woefully under-resourced and seen as security threat by the current mayor Yair Revivo. Manar Memeh an educator in Lyd who, as Palestinian citizens of Israel, expresses this inequality through her daily struggle to teach Palestinian history and identity within the Israeli school system. Dina and Lulu Dahmash currently living in London and Dubai, return to Lyd to reconnect with their roots. We follow them to the mosque where the 1948 massa- cre took place. Founded by their great-grandfather it bears their family name and now sits directly in front of Palmach Square, named after the military group that committed the massacre. It is revealed through interviews with Mayor Yair Revivo and cell phone footage, that Dahmash mosque remains a contested space. The mayor bursts into the mosque in middle of the night to demand that the call to prayer be silenced for the sake of Jewish Orthadox neighbors. Eissa Fanous, an older Palestinian resident of Lyd remembers the 1948 massacre and knows the mosque and Palmach square well. At 12-years-old, Zionist soldiers forced him to help them burn the bodies of the civilian victims in Palmach square. The stories of these characters are interspersed with archival footage with former Zionist guerrilla fighters, the Palmach, who returned to Lyd in 1989 and described on camera the details of the 1948 bloodshed.

As the film cuts between this archival footage and the present day stories, the viewer is left hanging while the details of the massacre and expulsion unfold and and a line between the past and the present is drawn.

Director Statements Sarah Friedland Director Statement As a Jewish American, I have been grappling with why I should tell this story, especially in light of documentary filmmaking’s colonialist legacy. However, I believe that it is important for Jewish Americans to deliberately challenge the Jewish narrative around the founding of the State of Israel. A narrative that is responsible for repressing a history of cultural erasure and thereby enabled huge amounts of philanthropic and U.S. government aid to Israel. Thus sustaining the occupation for almost 70 years. In the U. S. we grow up with an origin story that purposefully excludes the attempted genocide of Indigenous people. My first memories are of a family vacation to Israel at age four –– touching a land I was taught I had claim to, only to find out later that it was also built on a myth that excludes the attempt- ed genocide of an Indigenous people. With this film, I want to make visible the processes of cultural erasure in Palestine and add to a growing amount of critical analysis around this history, because without it there is no hope for justice or peace.

Rami Younis Director Statement As a Palestinian activist from Lyd and the co-director of this film, my vision is to help create a “go to film” for all people who want to learn about the Nakba. But why make a film about Lyd specifically? The sad truth is you won’t find too many depictions of the ethnic cleansing and expulsions that took place in my hometown, especially when compared to other atrocities from the Nakba like Deir Ya- seen or Tantura. I know first hand that my hometown still suffers from an ongoing Nakba, a creeping Nakba. Our national catastrophe didn’t quite end in 1948, and Lyd serves as a case study to show exactly that: Judification of the city; ongoing discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel; Palestinian house demolitions; sky high crime rates; and unbearable poverty. Lyd, a true symbol of Pales- tine’s ongoing loss, pain, and resilience. Balata Refugee Camp Jiahd Baba Drone Footage of Balata Refugee Camp Project Relevance Documentaries about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict often begin with the 1967 occupation of the estW Bank and Gaza following the Six Day War. Further, they are often told solely from the point of view of Israeli soldiers or officials (Waltz With Bashir, The Gatekeepers). Few films touch on the Nakba, the foundational violence that created the State of Israel, and even fewer tell this history from the Pales- tinian point of view. Thus erasing its history from canonical documentary film that reaches an international audience.

In its treatment of the present day, Lyd In Exile offers stories about the challenges faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel who, during the Nakba, were not expelled to East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, or elsewhere. These Palestinians make up twenty percent of Isra- el’s population but are often invisible in the Palestinian narrative and are systematically discriminated against in all sectors of Israeli so- ciety. One character described her challenge to “walk between drops of rain,” as she manages the constant precarity of being a citizen of an oppressive state while living in the land of her ancestors.

According to UNRWA, there are over 5 million Palestinian refugees worldwide. Lyd In Exile shows a broad range of this experience by portraying refugees trapped in camps in the West Bank and Palestinian families exiled across the globe. We hope that greater un- derstanding of how the founding of Israel created the Palestinian refugee crisis will lead towards greater support for Palestinian human rights. Additionally, we hope to release this film during 2018, which marks the 70th anniversary of the Nakba and we will use the events surrounding the anniversary to focus attention on this buried history.

Artistic Approach This film weaves together multiple character-driven stories that are all connected to ydL and to the massacre and expulsion of 1948. We purposefully chose not to follow one character because each story refracts history differently, allowing us to construct a multi-di- mensional narrative. The style of this film is observational and essayistic –– combining vérité, drone footage, archival, and testimonies to create a visually striking and cohesive storyscape. Shot in full resolution HD and 4K, the present day footage is visually striking in contrast to the pixely and faded feel of the 1989 VHS archival footage of Zionist soldiers. Exact matching shots between the 1989 land- scape and the present day landscape take the viewer back and forth in time and thread the past and the present together. Visuals of everyday life weave through the film: street scenes, Palestinian horse training, stores, markets, shells of Palestinian homes abandoned in 1948, etc. These visuals depict the everyday life lived on top of a buried history and a contentious present. Portraits of city residents staring directly into the camera, silently returning the viewer’s, are also a reoccurring element. Street signs named after Zionist leaders or battles –– speaking of triumph to most Israelis and visual occupation to Palestinians –– are another recurring visual. The airport and train station form a visual motif that speaks of freedom of travel by Israelis and foreign visitors, in contrast to the restriction of movement that most Palestinians experience. Brett Story’s A Prison in Twelve Landscapes and Viktor Kossakovsky’s ¡Vivan las Antipodas! are similar in structure and the way they foreground place. Lyd In Exile differs from both of these examples through our use of personal nar- ratives to further connect to the audience and humanize the film’s participants, while constructing a multi-vocal and complex narrative. Distribution & Marketing Strategy We have already started building buzz for the film through screenings and media. We have held work-in-progress screenings at LABA House of Study, Jewish Voices For Peace and the Duke Documentary Center/ Middle Eastern Studies Center Film Festival. Rami You- nis is a reporter for the websites +972 and Local Call, where he has already referenced the film in one article. He will publish excerpts from the film in anticipation of its festival release. We plan to do this on other platforms as well including: Al Jazeera, New York Times OpDocs and Field of Vision. We hope to premiere at IDFA in 2018. We feel that the international scope of this festival will broaden our reach. We will pitch the film to PBS (Friedland has contacts at WNET and PBS World) and Al Jazeera (where Younis has contacts through Palestine Music Expo and activist journalism). Rothberg has contacts at ITVS, and affiliated funders, through his work on “Is- land Soldier” and “My Brooklyn.” Rothberg also recently went with “Island Soldier” to Full Frame and Hot Docs festivals and will go with “Island Soldier” to DOC NYC in November 2017. He will use his contacts at those festivals, to help further the potential festival run of this film. Educational and Community-based screenings are at the heart of our distribution plan and are further elaborated on in our social impact section.

Audience Engagement & Social Impact We hope this film will accomplish two goals: 1) To hold discussions around what the founding of the State of Israel means today and ask difficult questions about this history through the lens of human rights. 2)T o continue the Palestinian practice of remembering the Nakba and reflect Palestinian culture in a nuanced and positive way. We intend for this film to be the go to film for Palestinian youth who want to learn about the Nakba. We plan to have a robust educational and grassroots campaign, which will include community-based screenings and accompanying educational material for the film. We will use the contacts that we have already established through our own networks and those of our advisory board to promote the film on a grassroots level worldwide.Advisory Board member Tamer Na- far has a huge following (46,000 on Facebook) and will help us spread the word about screenings and events. He recently starred in the film “Junction 48” and is the lead rapper of the hip hop group DAM. RamiY ounis’s activist and journalism work positions us closely to major Palestinian human rights organizations in Palestine/ Israel. Friedland’s work as a college educator and Director of a Documentary Institute at Skidmore College allows her to network with fellow academics and arrange institutional screenings in the U.S. and abroad. During her Palestinian American Research Center Fellowship, Friedland met media professors at every major university in the West Bank and will reach out to these contacts for screenings. We will partner with the Yaffa Cultural Center to screen the film at Balata Ref- ugee camp in the West Bank and to help us arrange screenings at other refugee camps. Dina and Lulu Dahmash are also interested in organizing screenings of the film in their Palestinian Diaspora community once it is completed. eW also have contacts in the U.S. soli- darity movement including JVP, SJP, Adalah NY, Dream Defenders and more. We will work with these partners to promote educational screenings in the U.S. The goal of all of these screenings is to further our two main goals mentioned above and to provide specific ways that people, especially in the international community, can engage with the struggle for Justice for Palestine. Timeline

We are currently in the post-production stage of our project. We have filmed with and secured releases from all of the film’s partici- pants. We have also secured the rights to use the archival material of Palmach soldiers. The project has been supported by grants and fellowships from: the LABA House of Study, the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), and Meerkat Media. This support has enabled us to complete 3 production trips. In order to complete this film for festival release in 2018 (the 70th anniversary of the Nakba), we have a rigorous post-production schedule beginning in September that we urgently need to raise money for.

2017: Post-Production Production Sept.-Jan. Begin post-production, transcribe, translate and organize footage, hire an editor and continue fundraising through grants and kickstarter campaign

2018: Post Production Post-production through May Fine edit complete in approximately May to June Color correction/ sound mix Begin submitting to festivals Fundraising for outreach & impact campaign November - Final version locked, masters and duplicates made Festival run through following year Create educational materials Secure educational and broadcast distribution

2019: Release Educational tour of campuses and community based screenings Broadcast Continued educational tour Outreach and impact campaign Mayor Yair Revivo Manar Mameh teaching Palestinian Children in Lyd Garin Torani Members in front of Dahmash Mosque Sarah Friedland’s, Director/Cinematographer, documentaries have screened wide- Crew Biographies ly in the U.S. and abroad and have aired nationally on PBS. In 2009, after the debut of her feature documentary Thing With No Name, she was named one of the “Top 10 Independent Filmmakers to Watch” by the Independent Magazine. She has received grants, residencies and fellowships from many organizations including Jerome Foun- dation, the Paul Newman Foundation, and the Ford Foundation JustFilms, the Center of Contemporary Art in Pont- Aven France, and the MacDowell Colony. Friedland is the Director of MDOCS Documentary Storyteller’s Institute at Skidmore College.

Rami Younis, Director/Producer, is a Palestinian writer and activist from Lyd, who graduated From Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He currently writes for the online magazine +972, and serves as a writer an editor at the Hebrew sister site: “Local Call”. He is one of the founders of the Palestinian activist group, “Khotweh,” which was active on the issues of home demolitions and Palestinian identity in Lyd and Ramleh, mixed Jewish-Arab cities in occupied historical Palestine. Rami served as a parliamentary consultant and spokesperson for Palestinian member of Knesset Haneen Zoabi. Rami Sarah Friedland is also co-founder and manager of the first ever “Palestine Music Expo”: an event that connects local Palestinian music scene to the world wide industry.

Fivel Rothberg, Producer, specializes in producing short nonfiction films for NGOs and long-format documentaries. Last year he received the 2015 DoGooder Award for Best Impact Video from YouTube and See3 Communications, for our production on behalf of the Fund for Modern Courts, Now Is the Time. Currently, he is producing a feature-length documentary by Nathan Fitch, Island Soldier, about Micronesian citizens serving in the US military. Island Soldier has the backing of the PBS-affiliated funder Pacific Islanders in Communications. Previously, he was the Associate Producer of Kelly Anderson’s film, My Brooklyn, which aired in 2014 on the PBS series America

Fivel Rothberg and Rami Younis Advisors Tamer Nafar: Musician, actor, and activist. Member of the Lyd based Hip Hop group DAM. Star of Junction 48, fiction film based in Lyd. Hannah Mermelstein: Founder of Librarians and Archivists for Palestine. Suha Arraf: Fiction film director and screenwriter. Director of Fiction Film, Villa Touma. Orwa Switat: City planner and doctoral candidate in geography whose research in- cludes the erasure of Palestinian features of “mixed cities” in Israel. Funding & Support

We have applied to or are planning to apply to all of the grants listed below. We are also applying to film labs and markets such as the CPH Forum and IDFA Doclab. In the fall of 2017 we will do a comprehensive crowdsourcing campaign with the goal of raising $50,000. We plan to advertise our fundraising campaign through the networks of connections we have built at the following organizations with connections to our subject matter: PARC, LABA, +972, The Yafa Cultural Center, JVP, Adalah New York, #ifnotnowwhen, JFREJ, SJP, Mondoweis, Electronic Intifada, JStreet, Zuchrot, ans SJP. In addition to the planned fundraising, we have the committed ongoing sup- port of Meerkat Media’s in kind donations production and post-production rental equipment.

FUNDER NAME AMOUNT AWARDED/PENDING/APLIED LABA House of Study 5,933 Awarded Anonymous Donation 5,000 Awarded Meerkat Media Cooperative 2,000 Awarded Sarah Friedland’s Cash 20,000 Awarded Fivel Rothberg’s Cash 10,000 Awarded Skidmore College Faculty Support 20,000 Awarded Sundance Inst Documentary Fund 50,000 Pending/ Applied Fledgling Fund 15,000 Pending Tribeca All Access 20,000 Pending The Bertha Doc Society Journalism Fund 20,000 Pending AFAC Documentary Program 50,000 Pending A M Quattan Foundation 30,0000 Pending New Film Fund (Yeni Film Fonu) 20,000 Pending Cinereach 20,000 Pending Ford Foundation / Just Films 20,000.00 Pending Individual donations 50,000.00 Pending Dina and Lulu Dahmash in front of Dahmash Mosque Archival footage of Palmach re-enacting soldier firing into Dahmash Mosque Drone Footage of Palmach Square Eisa Fanous Dina Dahmash praying in Dahmash Mosque Contact

Perinspire LLC By Sarah Friedland, Rami Younis, and Fivel Rothberg Contact : [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]