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منحة القطان للفنون الأدائية

يأتي مشروع منحة القطان للفنون الأدائية استمراراً لمشروع تطوير حقل الفنون الأدائية الذي أطلقه برنامج الثقافة والفنون في العام 2008، بتمويل مشارك من مؤسسة فورد. وتم تطوير هذا المشروع الجديد ليقدم الدعم في مسارين بشكل تكاملي، أولهما منحة الإنتاج، وتجمع ما بين بناء القدرات، وتقديم العروض، وتوثيق الإنتاج و/أو نشره. أما المسار الثاني فيتمثل في توفير وتنظيم برامج تدريب متخصصة في مجالات ضرورية لتطور القطاع.

 

الأهداف العامة للمشروع:

·       زيادة القدرة التقنيّة والمؤهّلات المهنيّة في أوساط العاملين في حقل الفنون الأدائية، وبخاصة في تخصصات جديدة أو غير متوفّرة في السابق.

·       زيادة الإنتاج في حقل الفنون الأدائية في فلسطين وتحسين نوعيّته.

·       زيادة فرص التدريب العملي للمهنيّين والمبتدئين.

·       تمثيل أفضل لحقل الفنون الأدائية في المهرجانات والمنابر العربيّة والدوليّة.

·       جمهور أوسع في جميع أنحاء فلسطين، وبخاصة خارج مركز الضفة الغربية، عن طريق زيادة عدد العروض الفنية العامة، ولاسيما في مناطق مهمشة اجتماعياً وجغرافياً، وعبر استهداف طلاب المدارس والجامعات.

·       زيادة التعاون والاتصال بين العاملين في الحقل من مختلف أنحاء فلسطين، ما يسمح بتحسين تبادل الأفكار واستغلال الموارد المتوفرة.

 

الفئة المستهدفة:

·       يستهدف المشروع، بشكل أساسي، الأفراد الفلسطينيّين (سواء من ذوي الخبرة في مجال عملهم و/أو أولئك ذوي المواهب الواعدة) أو الفرق أو المؤسسات الفلسطينية، وغيرهم من العاملين في مجال الفنون الأدائيةً.

 

معايير هامة:

·       سوف تعطى الأولوية للمشاريع التي تتمتع بالجدية والإمتياز والإبداع والتي تستدخل ضمن طواقمها مهنيين محليين و/أو أجانب بمستوى عال و/أو ترفد الحقل بأفراد وطاقات جديدة وطازجة، وتتوفر فيها العناصر المتعلقة ببناء القدرات، و/أو تطوير خبرات محددة في المجال، و/أو توسيع قاعدة الجمهور.

·       أخذا بعين الإعتبار المحدوديات التقنية للكثير من أماكن العرض ولا سيما في الأماكن البعيدة عن المركز، وفي المدارس، ورغبة في توسيع قاعدة الجمهور، سوف تعطى الأولوية للأعمال ذات الجودة العالية التي تثبت قدرتها على التكيف مع تلك المحدوديات التقنية والمالية لأماكن العرض المختلفة.

·       تعطي الأولوية للمشاريع التي تثبت قدرها على الوصول إلى قطاعات أوسع من الجمهور ولا سيما في المناطق المهمشة، إضافة إلى استهدافها لطلاب المدارس والجامعات.

 

 

سوف يقدّم المشروع هذا العام منحاً على الشاكلة التالية:

 

أ‌)      منحة لإنتاج أعمال أدائية جديدة وترويجها وتوثيقها

يقدم البرنامج نموذج المنحة الرزمة، والتي تتضمن لدعم إنتاج أعمال جديدة في حقل الفنون الأدائية؛ سواء أكانت هذه الإنتاجات على شكل عروض فنية حيّة على خشبة المسرح أم مسجلة (على DVD، أو CD مثلاً). إضافة لترويج العمل المنتج من خلال تنفيذ جولة عروض والوصول إلى قطاع أوسع من الجمهور، ولا سيما في المناطق المهمشة، ويشمل ذلك طلاب المدارس والجامعات. كما تشمل المنحة عملية توثيق العمل إما من خلال تصويره بشكل مهني يصلح لأغراض البث التلفزيوني و/أو النشر على DVD إضافة لنشر النص الخاص بالعمل في كتاب.

 

ب‌)  منحة ترويج و/أو توثيق و/أو نشر لأعمال أدائية منتجة سابقاً (3 سنوات بحد أقصى)

يقدم البرنامج منحاً لدعم ترويج أعمال أدائية أنتجت خلال العامين الماضيين، من خلال تنفيذ جولة عروض والوصول إلى قطاع أوسع من الجمهور، ولا سيما في المناطق المهمشة، ويشمل ذلك طلاب المدارس والجامعات. كما يقدم منح لدعم توثيق و/أو نشر هذه الأعمال حيث سيحصل الإنتاج على دعم لتوثيقه من خلال:

I.            تصويره بشكل مهني يصلح لأغراض البث التلفزيوني، أو النشر على DVD.

II.        نشر النصوص المسرحية (حيث ينطبق) وما يتعلق بالإنتاج من تغطية صحافية، وطاقم الإنتاج، ومقدمات ومواد نقدية أخرى في كتاب.

 

ت‌)  منح التدريب المتخصّص

تهدف هذه المنحة إلى دعم ورش عمل تدريبيّة متخصصة (تقنيّاً أو فنياً) أو برامج تدريبية مكثفة، لبناء خبرات مهنية يحتاجها قطاع الفنون الأدائية، مع التركيز على المجالات التقنية ذات صلة بخبرات توثيق الأعمال الأدائية، وتصميم الإضاءة، والسينوغرافيا، والصوت والمؤثرات الصوتية والبصرية وغيرها.

 

المواعيد:

يستقبل برنامج الثقافة والفنون الطلبات في أي مجال من المجالات أعلاه في موعد أقصاه 11 نيسان 2011، ويعلن عن النتائج قبل نهاية أيار 2011.

 

ويجب أن يتم تنفيذ المشاريع بشكل كامل، وتسليم التقارير النهائية المالية والإدارية قبل نهاية شهر آذار 2012.

للاستفسار ولمزيد من المعلومات عن شروط التقديم، ومتطلباته، يرجى الإتصال بـ:

هاتف: 022960544 (فرعي 201)

أو الكتابة على: amal@qattanfoundation.org

www.qattanfoundation.org

The Palestine Papers have brought me optimism

I am optimistic.

The ‘peace process’ has been jammed from the start. It never even took off really. Alistair Cooke offers an insightful argument as to why that is over on AlJazeera English. Many of us feel slight smugness at being right all along. Many of us never really thought there were any benefit to these ‘peace talks’, and never expected them to bring about a lasting situation acceptable to us, the Palestinians. Yet, over the years my stance against compromise with the Zionist had softened. My arguments became more humanitarian. If these talks, if this process, if this humiliation brought the Palestinians some peace, or some reprieve from the pain of Zionist persecution, then let us proceed. But in the past few years we realised that not even this objective was being achieved.

The Palestinians split, Gaza from the West Bank. The suffering continued. With one being blasted with white phosphorous and the other slowly, but brutally surely compressed into bantustans, complete with walls and gates to contain them. Yet the talks continued. Maybe the world really bought the myth that you just cannot talk with the Palestinians, all they understand is the language of the sword. Our silver lining from the shameful revelations of the Palestine papers is that this Myth has now been debunked.

It is clearer now than ever before that the US has no interest in democracy and never quite ‘got’ the plight of the Palestinians. To suggest shipping the Palestinian refugees to South America as a lasting ‘solution’ is a heinous transgression of their ‘human’ status. The Palestinians were never the problem, merely the annoying victim in this charade they called the ‘fight against antisemitism’ and the creation of a safe haven for Jews from the antisemitism of Europe. The “sweep the victims under the carpet” mentality can never lead to any good, and has in cases lead to the creation of racist states so self defensive and paranoid that they create victims of racism all of their own. We know this and we are living it. It is time the world learned from it.

Yet I am optimistic.

These Palestine Papers have blown the process out. The Palestinians negotiated till they were blue in the face and until they had nothing left to offer except the mass suicide of all Palestinians. For us, the Palestinians we are no longer in disagreement with each other on whether to negotiate a peace treaty or not, it is clear that we cannot offer anything more or negotiate our way to any form of autonomy. The shame that seems to be resonating through the Palestinian population, culminating in the attack on Al-Jazeera in Ramallah to ‘hide’ it somehow, clearly shows that no one knew what was going on and if we had we would not have accepted it.

I am no political analyst, and so analysis of the future is hard for me. The incumbent alternative is not appealing and has not been appealing since Ahmed Yassin, who even made it palatable to refer to a party as ‘Islamic’ (which in my opinion by defacto implies that those voting for the other party are somehow voting for ‘no Islam’ and makes choice difficult for many). I echo the call of Karma Nabulsi (former representative of the PLO at the UN) when she calls for the removal of those in charge in the PA. But I do not call for a Tunisian style uprising. That is naïve and will not work for a people under occupation. Remove the PA heads yes, reconnect with the Hamas government in Gaza yes, simply give the people what they voted for, and take things from there.

I am optimistic because maybe now we can move forward.

But please, no civil wars and no revolutions. Lets be smart about this.

Alistair Crooke: http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/201112412224387862.html

Karma Nabulsi: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/23/middle-east-peace-process-over-palestinians

When is suicide not suicide?

Disclaimer 1: I add the usual disclaimer, I am not a scholar of Islam and what is presented here is merely my opinion.

Disclaimer 2: neither am I a scholar of psychology and what is presented here is merely my opinion.

When is suicide not suicide?

This is a question that I have been asking myself for a while now. We know that suicide in Islam is a sin, and we also know that Islamic law and duties only apply to those of ‘sound mind’, which essentially absolves those with mental health problems or impaired cognitive abilities from the various requirements of Islam. Hence, it is not surprising that the janaaza* is prayed over those who committed suicide if the Imaam is shown evidence that the person had mental problems. However, I never understood the loophole that Hamas found for creating ‘martyr’ bombers, known in the west as ‘suicide’ bombers. People who, as the name suggests, strap a bomb to their body and blow themselves up. Naturally, this is a question I have shied away from, because who am I with my privileged life free from oppression, humiliation, trauma, terror and poverty to judge the actions of those living under these conditions?

The psychology of such a bomber (to protect the sensibilities of my readers I refrain from adding to this label), can be understood easily. Especially the psychology of the male or old woman bomber. All the Palestinians in Palestine (and beyond) experience (and witness) gross trespasses on their basic human rights. They have all experienced the humiliation of the nakbe, and the ease with which it seemed to happen, making refugees of nearly half the population. Poverty for many is the norm, and any progress that is made en-masse is often crushed by the mighty force of Zionism. People feel powerless, lonely in their dilemma, and hopeless. This may lead to depression, or to desperate acts. To buoy their spirits and achieve something in their life. So, they choose to fight the cause of their problems, and choose to blow themselves up. I dont quite understand the psychology of the young mother who blew herself up, and my suspicion she truly was desperate. It is mind boggling that her childrens need for a mother did not stop her. So why did Hamas, a self-proclaimed Islamic party, allow, arrange or glorify it? Why did they ever start with these bombings in the first place? The arguments about why these bombing are not suicide, even though the person clearly willingly took their own life, from an Islamic perspective, continue to confuse me.

This thinking came to a head with the suicide of Bouazizi, the Tunisian man who set fire to himself after his market stall was removed by police and who sparked an astounding revolution, the subsequent attempts of death by fire in Tunisia and Egypt and the comments by one Qardawi. Qardawi never passed judgement on Bouazizi, he prayed for the mans soul (as one does when someone dies) and believed him to be in a state of intense emotion which caused him to lose his senses. He then went to implore the youth of Arabia to preserve their lives and not follow in Bouazizis footsteps. This logic makes sense, a young man in the heat of passion does something to himself that he may or may not have done in a calmer state of mind. Because the act was so tragic, we assume the best, that he only killed himself because he had temporarily lost his senses, and hence the caveat of ‘sound mind’ does not apply and he gets a janaaza*. So this was a forgivable suicide so to speak.

So why are the human bombers of Palestine not suicide bombers?

*Janaaza is the Islamic prayer for the dead

choice, fate and the phoenix

Choice.

The video I attach to this post I first came across on chocolate mints in a jar blog. It contrasts two myths, the cinderella myth vs the phoenix myth. Both myths deal with change, but cinderella requires some external fairy godmother to come along and ‘save us’ from whatever situation we are in. The phoenix on the other hand is within us, by picking apart what makes us ‘us’ by getting down to the nitty gritty, we get to the core of our being. We can rebuild our lives in the image that we want, away from the chains of society. We can decide what is important and what is not. This in turn opens up the channels of creativity, allowing for new ideas and such.

The Phoenix does not necessarily need to facilitate profound change in our lives or our achievements. But it can lead to greater fulfillment and happiness. I have have burned some of my phoenixes, boiled down my beliefs to their very essence, and as a result I know I chose to be Muslim for example.

I really connected with the speakers example of the ‘good girl’ who does everything according to ‘expectation’ and desires recognition for that by those who imposed the expectations on her, only to b badly burned and left feeling trapped and depressed.

This also reminds me of a friend of mine who truly is a victim of the fatalistic mentality. She is of the opinion that things will come to you. So, for example, even if you fell into a well (her example not mine) the man you will end up marrying will fall into that well with you. This total surrender to the whims of time and chance scare the living daylights out of me.

But I wonder, what false beliefs do I hold that may be holding me back from trying to achieve certain things in my life?

62 years, memories from my village

A few months ago I attended the debut play by the Irish-Palestinian playwright Hannah Khalil. The play entitled “Plan D” was a look at the lives of a small family living in a generic Palestinian village during the spring of 1948. I was moved by the play, and it haunted me for a while afterwards, actually I still think about it every now and then. It was disturbing in the most subtle of ways, and it certainly got into my head. One of the things that bothered me and the people I was with was the fact that the family in question never fought back. They heard whispers of something coming, and knew that their neighbors had disappeared. Playing it safe, they decided to camp out in the hills near their home, and keep a lookout to see what unfolded. The father eventually goes back to check on the house, and upon entering the kitchen he sees  a man seated at the kitchen table grinning at him. The father leaves back to the hills, and takes his family to Jerusalem on foot, when asked what prompted his sudden departure he said “I felt like I never existed”. I asked Hannah afterwards about this, I mean we were brought up to believe that we fought back, and only when we ran out of ammo did we leave, to catch up with the Arabs, form an army and return, assuming a timescale of a month or two at most. Hannah said that that part was based on a true story. I was stunned.

This year I went back to Jordan, my first ‘proper’ visit in 9 years. I spent loads of time with my Aunts and remaining Uncle, and found them to be unusually open and chatty about their experience of the Palestinian Nakbe. I say unusually, because I have found that my relatives tend to speak about the pre-Nakbe period or they focus on politics or life in Irbid. They tend to avoid massive chunks of their experiences, namely their experience of occupation, ethnic cleansing, and their times in the refugee camps of Karami (Jordan). With Hannah’s play still playing on my mind, I pressed my Aunt for more details of our village and what happened there.

My Aunt was eight at the time and she remembers how she used to play with the European soldiers, who gave her sweets, and how one day when she skipped up to them they angrily told her to get lost “rookh!”. Confused, she returned home. Not long after, her sisters and younger brothers, along with their Mum and elders moved to the hills surrounding the village. They left behind the young men.

No shots were fired when my village was invaded, or so my Aunt says. The Iraqi army, from whom the Palestinian ‘fighters’ took orders, entered one night and told the Palestinians not to fire, as people walked into the village. Who these people were, what exactly the Iraqi army said or did and how the Palestinians reacted I may never know. My grandfather and eldest Uncle are dead, and they would have been on the front lines so to speak. My Aunt does remember that her brother in laws father remained in the village, and was never seen or heard from again and she remembers whisperings of what happened in Deir Yassin. Someone said that they saw his dead body in front of his house.

So my Aunt remembers, starting the long walk to Jerusalem. Along the way, her heavily pregnant 16 year old sister goes into labour, in the middle of a valley with planes flying over their heads. No army was formed when they arrived in Jerusalem, and thus began the refugee camp years. She remembered later meeting someone whose village had also been invaded. The villagers were locked up in the village hall. One girl caught the eyes of the soldiers and was dragged off, only to be returned later looking sullen. They came again for her, and the girl was terrified, she kicked and she screamed, her parents clung to her, but the soldiers dragged her off. She was never seen again either.

These stories are rarely told and are rarely heard. Rape is viewed as the failure of the man to protect his womenfolk. This may be why so many people left the villages, the idea was to get the women to safety. This was deemed more important than land.

This vagueness I have regarding the history of my own village pains me really. And is why the oral history project, spearheaded by www.palestineremembered.com is so important to us and future generations.

Here is commemorating the 62nd year of the Nakbe