LOS ANGELES, 12 November 2003 — Palestinian director Hanna Latif Elias has pulled off a feat that few world leaders, let alone filmmakers, could manage; he made his feature film debut, “The Olive Harvest,” in Ramallah, Palestine’s cultural center, with an Arab cast and an Israeli crew.
Making the rounds on this year’s festival circuit, “Harvest” screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival, was a finalist at Brazil’s Sao Paulo festival, and won Special Jury Prize and Best Arab Film at last month’s Cairo Film Festival. The film, the story of two Palestinian brothers who love the same woman, will screen Wednesday and Saturday at the American Film Institute Fest in Los Angeles.
Elias honed his filmmaking skills on other Israeli-Palestinian co-productions, including 60 episodes of “Sesame Street” and the short film “My Jerusalem,” written, directed and produced by Palestinian and Israeli teenagers.
“I knew that if I wanted to talk about peace,” says the UCLA film school grad, who splits his time between Los Angeles and Ramallah, “I would have to go to ‘the other side.’ When you do that, when you pray at their synagogue or mosque, your mind opens up.”
When Iranian-American venture capitalist Kamran Elahian heard Elias talk about film as the language of peace at a Jewish-Arab dialogue group in Los Angeles, the two formed a friendship. Elahian, moved by the idea of “a film that portrays Palestinians as human beings, instead of suicide bombers,” eventually produced “Olive Harvest.”
Elias says he would like to see more Palestinian filmmakers carry the message of peace. “We have enough energy to make great cinema. We could invite everybody who believes in peace, from Ramallah to Rawanda, to line up and join hands, and let the Israelis come and break us; let the whole world know what it means to have a settlement in your backyard,” he says. “We have a cause, but no film school. There is a casino in Jericho. A casino in the desert! But where are the film studios? Occupation is no excuse.”
No time was lost agonizing over a script. Elias recalls the date — Nov. 14, 2000 — when “images came to me with such urgency, I had to go out and shoot the film immediately. There was no time to write.” There was barely time to get the requisite olive harvest scenes; by mid-November, harvest season is over. Worse yet, 2000 was a very bad year for olives in Palestine. Elias found olives on neglected trees, cut down the branches, and reattached them to trees in the harvest fields. But a poor harvest was probably Elias’ smallest problem: Production was shut down during the intifada, a provocative scene between villagers and settlers was canceled to avoid fueling a volatile real-life atmosphere.