GAZA CITY: To the sound of drums and flutes, a freshly coiffed Palestinian groom dances with his brothers, cousins and friends, anxiously waiting for his veiled bride to arrive in her shimmering gown.
It might have been a normal Gaza wedding, except for the venue — not a luxurious seaside hall, but a narrow alley in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City.
Welcome to Gaza’s new pandemic-era weddings: they are small because of strict crowd limits, they are held outdoors, and they finish early to beat the curfews.
And they are a whole lot cheaper than usual.
“I’m not entirely happy because I would have preferred to celebrate it in a wedding hall,” said the groom, Mohammed Ahmed Ashour, wearing a blazer and burgundy tie.
But for his family, the 24-year-old merchant told AFP between dances, the pared-down nuptials have also brought welcome savings at a time of economic hardship.
Weddings in the Palestinian coastal enclave are usually extravagant affairs, held in large halls that dot the Mediterranean coastline.
Despite staggering poverty and unemployment rates of around 50 percent even before the pandemic, many Gazans spend several thousand dollars on weddings.
This year the virus has further impacted the economy in the strip, which has been under Israeli blockade since 2007, and is currently spreading rapidly across Gaza.
In recent weeks infections have multiplied and “the situation is getting out of control,” warned Doctor Ahmad Al-Jadba of Gaza City’s Shifa hospital.
On Friday, the Palestinian health ministry announced 922 new cases for the last 24 hours in Gaza, a daily record which takes the total number of people known to have been infected with the virus in the enclave to 18,333, including 86 deaths.
Hamas, the group that runs the strip, has banned large indoor gatherings to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Families have been forced to hold smaller weddings in less-than-fairytale settings — like alleys and backyards — but saved bundles in the process.
Ashour said these days many couples opt for scaled-back daytime nuptials which take “a little over an hour.”
Once the Ashours’ wedding was over, the musicians — three percussionists and a player of the traditional reed flute called a ney — headed home before the evening curfew.
They had more performances booked for the next day, as their small, traveling business is now thriving.
A few days later they were in Jabaliya, a town in the north of the strip, for the wedding of Ahmed Omar Khallah, a 28-year-old postman.
Khallah said that for him, too, the timing is good: “There is no work, no money, but we have saved a lot by marrying now,” he told AFP.
He was picking up his bride from a beauty salon.
Its proprietor, Fadwi, confirmed that “many young couples prefer to get married during the corona period because the costs are lower. They don’t have to rent wedding halls or pay for large buffets.”
Fadwi has changed his business hours to accommodate the new routine as Hamas police patrols enforce the night-time curfews.
“We now start work around 7:00 am,” he said, “because people only get married in ceremonies until 5:00 pm.”
Small is beautiful: Gaza’s toned-down coronavirus-era weddings
https://arab.news/yuxtg
Small is beautiful: Gaza’s toned-down coronavirus-era weddings
- Pandemic-era weddings in Gaza are small because of strict crowd limits and finish early to beat the curfews
- Weddings in the Palestinian coastal enclave are usually extravagant affairs, held in large halls that dot the Mediterranean coastline
Adidas, Puma family feud to be turned into TV series
Hollywood-based film producer No Fat Ego is backing the project, which has the blessing of the family behind the Adidas empire founded by Adolf “Adi” Dassler.
It will delve into one of the most fascinating fraternal blow-ups in corporate history, which pitted Adi against his brother Rudolf (“Rudi“) who went on to create rival Puma.
The two men jointly ran a family-owned footwear company before falling out during World War II, with their post-conflict animus splitting their town of Herzogenaurach to this day.
Scriptwriter Mark Williams, behind the hit Netflix series “Ozark,” has been hired to lead the project and is currently going through Dassler family home videos and memorabilia to work on the story.
“Everybody knows the brands, but the story behind them is something we don’t really fully know,” Williams told AFP at the Cannes film festival.
One of the most sensitive areas — particularly for the reputations of the multi-billion-dollar footwear companies today — will be how the brothers are portrayed during the war period.
Both became members of the Nazi party in the 1930s, as was customary for the business elite at the time.
Rudi went to fight, however, and was arrested by Allied forces on his return to a defeated Germany.
“Adi stayed home and tried to keep the company alive,” Williams added.
Their factory was seized as part of the war effort and converted into a munitions plant.
The series promises to be a “Succession-type drama between the family” set over several generations, Williams explained, comparing it to the earlier hit HBO series.
The head of No Fat Ego, Niels Juul, who has produced Martin Scorsese’s most recent movies, said he was originally drawn to the story after learning about Adidas’s collaboration with legendary black American runner Jesse Owens.
Partly thanks to Adidas’s innovative spiked shoes, Owens became one of the stars of the 1936 Berlin Olympics which Hitler had hoped would showcase white German supremacy.
No Fat Ego intends to develop the series with full editorial independence before offering it to streaming platforms.
“We want to have the creative control, and Mark has to have absolute silence and quiet to do what he does,” Juul told AFP.
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Palestinian Film Institute amplifies local stories at Cannes
DUBAI: The Palestinian Film Institute is making a resounding statement at the Cannes Film Festival with its largest presence to date under the banner #HereThereAndForever.
This year’s Pavilion Program spans a range of activities including exhibitions, screenings, producer talks, and intimate meet-and-greet sessions, reflecting a commitment to amplifying Palestinian voices on the global stage.
“We’re not celebrating being in Cannes,” PFI programmer Mohanad Yaqubi said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “There’s nothing to celebrate for us … it’s really about orienting the narrative surrounding Palestinian cinema and Palestinian stories through the filmmakers themselves.
“We feel the responsibility, and it’s very hard,” he said. “Some of our members actually have families in Gaza now, and they are here in Cannes. It’s uncomfortable, but this is not an industry only for rich people. We have to make that industry accommodate us and our needs as an oppressed and underrepresented (group).”
A major highlight of the program is the official launch of the PFI Film Fund. According to Yaqubi, the fund represents a dream long in the making. “The aim for the first three rounds is to fund or support four to six projects in different formats, at least, to give them a base so that they can start working,” he said.
In addition, PFI is hosting a special spotlight session on Palestinian producers, as well as a reception featuring filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser, whose film “Once Upon a Time in Gaza” is part of the Un Certain Regard lineup. Another notable event is the screening and reception for “From Ground Zero,” an initiative spearheaded by filmmaker Rashid Masharawi. The anthology film is a collection of eight short documentaries and two feature-length films by 22 Palestinian directors, each offering raw glimpses into life under airstrikes in Gaza.
With four Palestinian producers participating in the Producers’ Network, Yaqubi encouraged attendees to explore their slates, which he described as “the upcoming Palestinian films and narratives that need to be supported.”
Yaqubi’s aims are clear. “We hope to be here every year,” he said. “The presence is important, and to stay away won’t make a change. We have to dip our toes in the cold water and change things.”
Iraq’s first filmmaker in Cannes says sanctions no piece of cake
CANNES: Hasan Hadi, the first filmmaker from Iraq to be selected for the prestigious Cannes Festival, said economic embargoes like those imposed in his childhood under Saddam Hussein did not work.
“Sanctions empower dictators,” he told AFP, as they concentrate scant resources in their hands and only make them “more brutal.”
“In the history of the world, there was no one time when they (imposed) sanctions and the president couldn’t eat.”
Hadi’s first feature film, “The President’s Cake,” has received very good reviews since premiering Friday in the Directors’ Fortnight section.
Cinema publication Deadline said it was “head and shoulders above” some of the films in the running for the festival’s Palme d’Or top prize, and “could turn out to be Iraq’s first nominee for an Oscar.”
The film follows nine-year-old Lamia after she has the misfortune of being picked by her school teacher to bake the class a cake for the president’s birthday, or be denounced for disloyalty.
It is the early 1990s, the country is under crippling UN sanctions. She and her grandmother — with whom she shares a reed home in Iraq’s southern marshlands — can barely afford to eat.
As they set off into town to hunt down unaffordable ingredients, with Lamia’s pet cockerel and their last meagre belongings to sell, the film plunges into the social reality — and everyday petty corruption — of 1990s Iraq.
The near-total trade and financial embargo imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait “demolished the moral fabric of society,” Hadi said.
It sent the country “hundreds of years back.”
The filmmaker said he did not taste cake until he was in his early teens, after the US-led invasion in 2003 toppled Saddam and sanctions were lifted.
Instead, with processed sugar and eggs out of reach, there was “date cake” — whose main ingredient was squished dates, sometimes with a candle on top.
“As a kid you’re sad that you’re not getting your cake,” he said. But as you grow up, you realize what your parents must have gone through to put food on the table.
“Not only my family, but all of these people had to sell literally everything,” he said. “There were people that were even selling their door frames.”
Hadi and his team shot the film entirely in Iraq.
It beautifully captures the ancient wetlands in the south of the country, listed as a World Heritage Site since 2016 and reputedly the home of the biblical Garden of Eden.
Saddam drained them in the 1990s, trying to flush out rebels hiding in the reeds.
But after the US-led invasion, authorities opened up the valves and the wetlands flourished again — even if they are now threatened by climate change.
Hadi said he chose the location partly to make the point that “the marshes stayed and Saddam went away.”
To re-create the Iraq of his youth, Hadi and his crew paid close attention to detail, amassing vintage clothes and bringing a barber on set to trim the hair and moustaches of everyone down to the extras.
They scouted out the best locations, shooting one scene in a small eatery reputed to have been frequented by Saddam himself.
They chose non-actors to play ordinary Iraqis under the ever-present eyes of the president in posters, pictures frames and murals.
Hadi said hearing US President Donald Trump say recently that he planned to lift sanctions on Syria after Islamists toppled president Bashar Assad last year was “amazing.”
“I don’t think the sanctions helped in any way to get rid of Bashar, but definitely empowered him to kill more people, and torture more people,” he said.
Man badly hurt by falling palm tree at Cannes film festival
- The Asian man, believed to have been attending the festival, was badly injured
- A sudden gust of wind brought the tree down
CANNES: A man was seriously hurt after a palm tree fell onto him at the Cannes film festival on Saturday.
The Asian man, believed to have been attending the festival, was badly injured, firemen who treated him at the scene said.
A sudden gust of wind brought the tree down near the Palais des Festivals on the Croisette esplanade overlooking the Mediterranean, an AFP journalist at the scene said.
The accident happened as the American movie “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Pedro Pascal was being shown.
The Croisette was crowded with festivalgoers when the tree fell, witnesses said.
“There was a terrible gust of wind and I heard a cry,” said Marthy Fink from Luxembourg.
Amal Clooney stuns in black at Cannes Film Festival
DUBAI: Lebanese British human rights lawyer Amal Clooney made a head-turning appearance at the 78th Cannes Film Festival this week, wearing a black gown by British designer John Galliano.
Clooney attended the premiere of “Bono: Stories of Surrender” in a sleek, off-the-shoulder dress featuring a fitted bodice with subtle draping and a floor-length skirt with a gentle train. She completed the look with a black clutch and Cartier statement earrings, styling her hair in soft, voluminous waves.
On the red carpet, Clooney was joined by U2 guitarist the Edge and frontman Bono, the subject of “Bono: Stories of Surrender.”
The black-and-white film, directed by Andrew Dominik, adapts Bono’s 2022 memoir “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story” and his one-man stage show of the same name.
Set to some of U2’s most iconic tracks, Bono opens up about the tragedy that marked his childhood, with his mother Iris collapsing and dying at her own father’s funeral when the singer was 14.
His father, Brendan “Bob” Hewson, already a man of few words, retreated into shock, anger and depression.
The film is also a love letter to the singer’s wife, Ali Hewson, who he met when they were both 15, the same fateful day U2 was formed in a Dublin school. The film streams on Apple TV+ from May 30.
Bono, who has spent decades fighting for more aid to Africa and to lift the debt burden from poor countries, told the audience at the premiere that the world is again being threatened by fascism as it was when the festival was set up in 1939.
“Mussolini and the little man with a moustache, and his mate Goebbels had taken over the Venice Film Festival, so this festival was set up to fight fascism,” the singer said.
“It took it until 1946 (for the festival to get going) but it stands for that freedom now.”
He said that Hollywood star Sean Penn — a vocal advocate for Ukraine — had “brought us some friends from the actual trenches, from the front line in Ukraine, and they’re here tonight.
“I just want to thank you because you’re keeping us free,” Bono added to loud cheers.
