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Tension
PALESTINE / 1998 / Arabic / Color / Video / 26 min Director, Script, Editing: Rashid Masharawi Photography: Oraby Sawalma, Klous Youlos Borjer Editor: Hadara Oren Music: Odeh Torjman Produced by: The Palestinian Center for Regional Studies Production Company, Source: Cinema Production Center P.O.Box 2349, Al-Matal, Dar Ibrahim, Al-Tireh St., Ramallah PALESTINE Phone & Fax: 972-2-2986942 E-mail: cpc@p-ol.com		Rashid Masharawi Born in 1962, and raised in the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. At the age of 18, started working in the cinema industry. Worked on over 20 films before starting to work on his own films, as a director. Often works for Channel Four and the BBC. Directed documentary and fiction films: Travel Document (1986), The Shelter (1989), Dar O Dour (1991), Long Days in Gaza (1991), The Magician (1992), Curfew (1993), Intizaar (1994), Haifa (1995), Step and Another (1996), and Rabab (1997).
Without using dialogue or narration, Tension demonstrates that images and music are powerful tools in conveying the unease in the everyday lives of people living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Director's Statement Peace now is a broken mirror. It looks like a rosy old dream turning into a nightmare, or becoming a ghostly mask for the forces of destruction. The old specter is haunting the minds of this "Holy Land." "Do not kill me twice!" is the best that the Palestinians can hope for now, given the fact that the Israeli government has been squeezing them to a degree that he himself has no idea of. The inspiring visions are doomed to turn into revisions. The fusions of the good and the free and the beautiful that were moving the region forward, bewildering even their own creators, became con-fusions. The rosy dreams turned into rejection, rejection into resistance, resistance into a restoration of the old sentiments and old self-defense mechanisms. This is not due to the peace process, but to the fact that peace itself has been "a walking contradiction - half truth, half fiction." Tension is a film about the boiling depths revealed by the surface of things, it is a warning siding with the truth in order to reveal the myth of "this form of peace," in search of a better and a more beautiful and freer future for everyone. But what is "the surface of things"? The film aims at revealing a truth to fight a myth, a myth that does not want to acknowledge that a contradictory peace with a half-hearted act is the best service that the pro-peace forces can render to their opponents - the war-mongers of every type.
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