WE TOO HAVE NO OTHER LAND
A Documentary Film by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
HOMELY HEROES: Welcome Home to a Groundless Club
GOAL AHEAD: Bnei Sakhnin unites a minority community
We Too Have No Other Land is a winning soccer-based film diary played out within a democracy in conflict. Against all odds, the tiny Arab soccer club Bnei Sakhnin (literally “the Sons of Sakhnin”) won the Israeli State Cup. The first Arab club in the top league battles for survival in the league, metaphor of the Arab minority’s battles for survival in the “League of Acceptance” of Israeli society. The soul of Arab Sakhnin takes on the soul of Jewish Israel in the mother of all contests, Minority versus Majority: it’s the ultimate match for equal rights and co-existence.
GOAL FOR EQUALITY: Waving the flag and chanting Allahu Akbar
WE TOO HAVE NO OTHER LAND – SYNOPSIS
We Too Have No Other Land is a soccer-based documentary about life around a unique soccer pitch. Neither political treatise nor sociological thesis, nor even sports story, this is live human drama; it kicks-off in Galilee, but scores goals all around Israel and its Arab neighbors.
Bnei Sakhnin (' The Sons of Sakhnin') is an Arab village club, Cinderellas in soccer boots, winners of Israel’s State Cup…. the players of our intimate story which records Sakhnin’s fight for survival in the country’s top soccer division – on and off the pitch.
One of every five Israelis is an Arab; they are part of a minority split between their desire to be fully integrated citizens of their state - Israel, and a desire to be wholly linked to their people - the Palestinians. Some Jews see them as a ‘fifth column’, others as a potential bridge to peace. Many in the Arab world adjudge them to be ‘collaborators’.
Winning on the soccer pitch allows Sakhnin to determine what role they want to play and what challenges they pose - to Jewish Israelis, to fellow Palestinians, to the Arab world, to anyone indeed who cares about the scoring of equal rights. Can the cardinal issues of discrimination, equality, identity and co-existence be squared into the one round ball?
Theirs is a poignant challenge. Several players and the coach are Jewish. “We are more than a club, we are a family,” declares Sakhnin boss Mazen Ghanaim. Harbingers of harmony they may be. But make no mistake, in pursuit of their goals, they play tough. This is real life coexistence, not sentimental Hollywood stuff. It is the ultimate Majority-Minority match.
During the years of the bitter Intifada conflict any willingness of Israelis and Palestinians to understand the historic ‘pain’ of the other side was swept away. Each side has become more and more entrenched in its own pain, more and more oblivious to the other side’s pain. And, the Israeli Arabs are caught in the middle, suffering the pain of both sides, unable to provide a bridge of compassion between the two warring sides.
Now, does their soccer success perhaps hold out hope that if they cannot be a bridge for peace, can they at least provide a model for existence, a model for both Jews and Arabs, for Israelis and Palestinians alike?
We Too Have No Other Land is a documentary of a season of delight and of pain, of dreams and of fears, of how the weak stand up to the strong.
The Film Makers: Jerrold Kessel is a sports addict; Pierre Klochendler thinks himself as anything but a soccer aficionado. Together, for more than a decade as CNN’s Jerusalem-based Middle East reporter/producer team, they dribbled along many lines of defense, in war and peace. Now, offside in the Sakhnin locker-room, they confront an alternative view of this troubled pitch. The focus of their filmmaking and journalism is now exploring “the other in our midst” - (hence the name of their company “The Other Films”).
Here, they try to grapple with the interplay between intolerance and social harmony, between denial and coexistence, the kind of coexistence suggested by the Bnei Sakhnin symbol of an Arab stallion trapping a soccer ball, coexistence as spelt out by the club’s “foreign minister” Ibrahim Bushnak, “not that between horse and rider where one rides and the other is ridden, but coexistence between two equal parties existing together in equality.”
FILMOGRAPHIES
JERROLD KESSEL – Director/Producer
We Too Have No Other Land” (2007, Israel, 62 min): The emblematic Match-up in a democracy – Minority v Majority – through the Arab soccer club Bnei Sakhnin’s bid for acceptance in Israel’s “League of Acceptance”.
Festivals: 1/2006 – “Quintessence” (Benin). 3/2006 – “Docaviv” (Israel). 7/2006 – ZIFF (Zanzibar), Tanzania. 10/2006 – “Docusur” (Spain) 10/2006 – “Sole e Luna” Doc Fest, International Documentary Festival on the Mediterranean & Islam (Palermo, Italy). 10/2006 – ”International TV Bar” Festival (Montenegro).12/2006 – Panorama of Independent Film Makers, Trade Union Center T.U.C.TH (Thessalonica, Greece). 3/2007 – Delray Beach Film Festival (USA). 6/2007 – “Voices Forward” International Film Festival (Toronto, Canada). 5/2008 – Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival (Germany). 6/2008 – Southern Peoples Film Festival (Caracas, Venezuela). 11/2008 – Vienna Jewish Film Festival. 11/08 – Le Scoop d'Angers, Festival International du Journalisme (France). 4/2009 – “Cine Pobre – No-Budget Films Festival” (Cuba).
Public Screenings: Givat Haviva Jewish-Arab Center for Peace (Israel); Yakar Center for Social Concern (Israel); Israel Democracy Institute (Jerusalem); Open University (Tel Aviv, Israel); Tel Aviv University; Willy Brandt Center (Jerusalem); Bet Berl (Israel); Foreign Council of Public Affairs (US Embassy, Israel); Swedish Embassy (Israel); New Israel Fund (New York); The Center for Jewish & Israeli Studies (New York); EU Human Rights Group in Israel (Tel Aviv); The Council for Peace and Security (Israel); Cinémathèque Haifa (Israel); The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace (Hebrew University of Jerusalem); Barbur Cultural Community Center (Jerusalem); Café Yaffa & Books (Tel Aviv-Jaffa); Mondiali Antirazzisti-Antiracist World Cup 2008 (Bologna, Italy); Vienna Jewish Film Festival; ASA 2008, "Ownership & Appropriation" – Joint annual international conference of ASA (Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth), ASAANZ (Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa/New Zealand), and AAS (Australian Anthropological Society), (Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, New Zealand); visual ethnography film festival, Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand).
Television: IBA (Israel); el-Hura (USA); TVP (Poland).
Universities Libraries: Harvard University; Princeton University; Cornell University; University of Maryland; Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Distribution: Ruth Diskin Films, Jerusalem.
PIERRE KLOCHENDLER – Director/Cinematographer
We Too Have No Other Land (2007, Israel, 60 min): See Above.
Swahilini (2005, Tanzania/France/Israel, 52 min): in situ social and musical documentary about daily life in an urban slum of modern Africa.
Festivals: 1/05 – “Quintessence” (Benin). 7/05 – “ZIFF” (Zanzibar, Tanzania). 9/05 – “Amakula Kampala” Film Festival (Uganda). 9/05 – “Cadiz Doc” (Spain). 10/05 – “Pamplona – Visual Value” (Spain). 10/05 – “Bogocine” (Bogotá, Columbia). 11/05 – NYIIFVF (New York International Independent Film & Video Festival, New York). 3/06 – “Cubacine – Santiago Alvarez in Memoriam” (Cuba). 3/06 – Murcia (Spain). 4/06 – “Cine Pobre – No-Budget Films Festival” (Cuba). 5/06 – “Documenta Madrid” (Spain). 5/06 – “CNAC” (Caracas, Venezuela). 5/06 – “Cine Latino” (Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Tübingen, Freiburg, Germany). 10/06 – “Docusur”, Spain. 3/07 – A Conversation in Film (Margaret Mead Film Festival/British Museum/London Review of Books/Department of Anthropology, University College London). 4/07 – Pan African Film Festival (Cannes, France). 4/07 – Langston Hughes African American Film Festival (Seattle, USA). 10/07 –‘’La Imagen del Sur’’ Festival of Documentary Films & Social Cinema, Cordoba (Spain). 10-11/07 – AWFDF (Africa World Festival of Documentary Films), University Missouri-St. Louis (USA)/Lagos (Nigeria). 11/2007 – “Una Vision del Mundo” (Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Morelos-UAEM (Cuernavaca, Mexico). 10/2008 – "Terra di Tutti" Film Festival (Bologna, Italy). 7/2009 – "Caracas Docs" (Venezuela).
Public screenings: La Enana Marron cinema (Madrid); Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace (Hebrew University, Jerusalem); Willy Brandt Center (Jerusalem); Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel); Mobile Cinema Unit Tour of town & villages (Benin); Centro de Iniciativas para la Cooperación – Batá (Spain); "No One Is Illegal!" – Public Screening for African refugees living in Israel (Tel Aviv Youth Community Center); On The Seam museum (Jerusalem).
University: University of North Carolina Charlotte (USA).
Television: Community TV channels (Venezuela). FRANCE Ô.
*
1990-2004: CNN (See Doc. Productions with Jerrold Kessel).
*
PERSONAL INFO
JERROLD KESSEL
Born: Johannesburg. 3.3.1945. Nationality: Israeli (immigrated 1962), South African Higher Education: Hebrew University: B.A. – History (Hons.), English Literature; M.Sc. – Librarianship.
DOCUMENTARY FILM-MAKING 2007: We Too Have No Other Land – A soccer-based social documentary on Arabs and Jews within Israel – the Majority v Minority match.
The Sakhnin Diaries (Israel, 2004 – 5): Channel 2 News/Arabic Service.
BOOK "Goals for Galilee" – a diary book with Pierre Klochendler based on the documentary “We Too Have No Other Land”, J. R. Books (Jeremy Robson Publisher (U.K., Feb 2010).
TELEVISION CORRESPONDENT CNN, 1990-2003: Jerusalem based covering Israel-Palestinian conflict and regional Middle East developments. Also other major world stories e.g. capture of Abdullah Ocelan, 1999 Turkish earthquake, Turkish political crises over the years; U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi; Swiss Banks crisis over Nazi gold dealings and Holocaust bank accounts; World Soccer cup finals, France 1998; Freeing of 'Willy the Whale' in Iceland.
PRINT JOURNALISM & RADIO REPORTING 2004 – 9: Contributor (op-ed pages) – International Herald Tribune.
Correspondent IPS News Agency
Reporter – The Economist. Columnist – The New Anatolian (Turkey). Columnist – Haaretz: “The Sakhnin Diaries” (news feature pages), “On the Couch” Sports Section.
1970-1996: Correspondent from the Middle East on Israeli, Palestinian, and regional affairs (at different times) for: The Wall Street Journal. The Economist. The Guardian. The London Jewish Chronicle. The Middle East Mirror (London and Beirut). Radio: CNN Radio, BBC Radio, ABC (Australia), Radio New Zealand, Auckland Radio, Voice of Israel.
NEWS EDITING
Chief News Editor – The Jerusalem Post (1985-1990).
Sports Editor – The Jerusalem Post (1981-1990).
NEWS AGENCY REPORTER
1967-1970: United Press International – Jerusalem.
Languages: English – Mother tongue. Hebrew – Perfect fluency. Arabic – Conversational. Afrikaans – Reasonable fluency. French – Reading, imperfect fluency.
PIERRE KLOCHENDLER
Higher Education: 1983 – 7: B.A. – Oriental & Middle Eastern Studies; B.Sc. – Mathematics.
We Too Have No Other Land (2007, Israel).
Swahilini (2005, Tanzania, France).
The Sakhnin Diaries (Israel, 2004 – 5): Channel 2 News/Arabic Service.
BOOK
"Goals for Galilee" (See Above).
Collaborator/Editor – Ton Rêve est Mon Cauchemard by French journalist Elisabeth Schemla, on the second Intifada uprising [Flammarion, France, 2001].
Translation: 2009 – "Rencontres en Angola – les Hommes et la Nature dans l'Ombre de la Guerre", Tamar Golan & Tamar Ron, L'Harmattan, Paris ("Gorillot ve-Diplomatia", 'Am Oved, Israël).
TELEVISION
2006-8: APTN Head of News Gathering/Field & Live Producer – Israel-Lebanon border, Israel-Hezbollah war. Freelance Reporter/Cameraman: ARTE (France/Germany); TSR (Switzerland); RTBF (Belgium).
1991 – 2002: CNN field Producer/Reporter – Daily news & Live events/programs – Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Albania, England, Switzerland, Portugal…
RADIO
1991 – 2002: Reporter/Analyst – CNN Radio.
PRINT JOURNALISM
2002 – 8: Contributor – International Herald Tribune (op-ed pages). Analyst/Reporter – IPS (Inter Press News Service). Commentator – Haaretz. The Jerusalem Report (Israel); The New Anatolian, Tempo (Turkey). Reporter/Analyst – www.proche-orient.info (France). Syndicated Commentator – Agence Global (U.S.).
2004 – 5: Reporter – Haaretz news feature section: “The Sakhnin Diaries” (a 35-part series).
2001 – 4: Consultant – Portland Trust Fund & Investment Firm APAX (U.K.). Report on Palestinian economics. Consultant/Editor – with French journalist Elisabeth Schemla on a book which analyzes the Intifada uprising [Flammarion publishers, France].
1991 – 2002: Reporter/Analyst – www.CNN.com
1988 – 2002: News consultant – Le Monde (France). Jerusalem-based Correspondent – Libération (France). Producer/Reporter – Le Nouvel Observateur (France). Jerusalem-based Reporter – AFP (France). Producer – France 3, Bild Zeitung (Germany). Periodic articles – Kol Ha’Ir (Israel) & Francophone Press (France, Belgium).
Languages: French – Mother tongue. English/Hebrew – Perfect fluency.
Kiswahili – Fluent. Arabic – Passable.
