Brighton to Palestine with Love – Brighton & Hove Palestine Campaign

Date/Time
Date(s) - 21 May 2015 until 21 May 2015
11:00 AM - 10:00 PM

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SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN A Play for Gaza
11.30am & 1.00pm

Playwright Caryl Churchill, a Patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, wrote this 10-minute play in response to the 2008-2009 Israeli military strike on Gaza. It was first produced at The Royal Court Theatre in 2009, and since then she has allowed anyone to produce it “so gratis”, on the condition that there is a collection at the end for the people of Gaza.

The play is divided into 7 scenes spanning over approximately 70 years. In each scene, Jewish adults discuss what should or should not be told to their children, about events in recent Jewish history during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Cast
Michael Chance, Sandi Clark, Keith Drinkel, Kate Dyson, Don Faulkner,Trevor Jones, Di Langford, Ashley Veit Lily Whiteside. Directed by Johnny Worthy

K.W. Productions
Kate Dyson and Johnny Worthy are two actors who between them have appeared in over 40 West End and National Theatre Productions. These include Sweet Bird of Youth, Les Liasons Dangereuses, Death of a Salesman, View From The Bridge,The Cripple of Inishmaan, Porgy and Bess, Once On This Island, Showboat, Blood Brothers , Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music. Johnny has also directed and choreographed both in Europe and the USA.
Previous K W productions include Jacque Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, Just Good Friends and 2 productions of Seven Jewish Children.

“For Cultural Purposes Only”
Sarah Wood
The film and talk will start at 2.15pm

As part of this day of celebration of Palestinian culture and society, Sarah Wood will introduce her film, “For Cultural Purposes Only”, together with some of the surviving film fragments that have inspired her work on lost Palestinian cinema.

In an age dominated by the moving image what would it feel like to never see an image of the place that you came from?

The Palestinian Film Archive contained over 100 films showing the daily life and struggle of the Palestinian people. It was lost in the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982. Here interviewees describe from memory key moments from the history of Palestinian cinema. These scenes are drawn and animated. Where film survives, the artist’s impressions are corroborated. This is a film about reconstruction and the idea that cinema is an expression of cultural identity – that cinema fuels memory.

There is no charge for the film show and talk but donations to support the Palestinian people are always welcome.

Sarah Wood
Sarah Wood has been working for the last ten years as a curator and artist filmmaker. Her latest film projects have all been an exploration into ideas of the archive using found footage. Her films include Living Space (2003), Manifesto for Love (2003), Surrender! (2005) and I Want To Be A Secretary (2006), which won best film at the Halloween Film Festival in the same year. She more recently completed three found footage commissions, Gallery (2008) for Whitechapel Art Gallery’s Art Plus Party, The Angel of History (2008) for Branchage Film Festival with Jersey Film Archives, and The Book of Love (2009) for London Short Film Festival’s Soundtracks Project. Her most recent film, For Cultural Purposes Only (2009), an Animate Projects commission for Channel 4 about the lost Palestinian Film Archive, was shortlisted for a VPRO Tiger Award at 2010 Rotterdam Film Festival and won prizes at 25fps, Zagreb, Exis, Seoul and L’Alternativa, Barcelona. She is currently editing a new film, I Am A Spy.

“I work with the found object, particularly the still and moving image, as an act of reclamation and re-interrogation. I work mainly with the documentary image to interrogate the relationship between the narrating of history and individual memory. Recently I’ve been focussing on the meaning of the archive, in particular the politics of memory, asking not only why some objects are preserved while others are ignored but also why preservation is made at certain historical moments”. Sarah Wood.