Neta Alexander / Dan Keinan

WHAT MAKES ARAFAT RUN?

Ghazi Albuliwis new film about a Palestinian guy who marries an Israeli woman opened the Jerusalem Cinematheques Jewish Film Festival last week, after being boycotted by the press in Abu Dhabi for being pro-Israeli. The director talks about sex and cinema as means to resolve the Middle East conflict
NEW YORK A sexual jihad. A huge orgy of Israelis and Palestinians, in which everyone puts their politics aside and concentrates on whats really important: sex. That is the unconventional solution to the Middle East conflict proposed by the Jordanian-born and Brooklyn-raised director Ghazi Albuliwi, 37. A former standup comic and current director and screenwriter, he notes with a smile that for some reason the audience did not laugh when he raised this suggestion at the world premiere of his new film, Peace After Marriage, at the recent Abu Dhabi Film Festival. On November 30, a few weeks after its Persian Gulf screening, Peace After Marriage opened the 15th Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival, held at the citys Cinematheque. It was an unusual slot for a wild, provocative comedy in English, Arabic and Hebrew, made by a Muslim director who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp near Amman. Everyone who lives in New York long enough turns into a neurotic Jew, Albuliwi says reassuringly. I am an Arab, but my brand of humor is deeply influenced by Woody Allen, and I think he appeals to Jewish audiences a lot more than to Muslim ones. I dont know why, but Arabs have a problem with humor. We dont like to laugh at ourselves. In fact, we dont like to laugh in general. In a New York cafe, where I met with him before he went to Israel to attend the screening there, Albuliwi turns out to be an amusing hybrid of Woody Allen and (Haaretz columnist and author )Sayed Kashua. Like the comedians he admires among them Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, George Carlin and Louis C.K. Albuliwi has a healthy fondness for provocation and a deep belief that humor can topple walls and illuminate the human and absurd facets of traumatic events such as the second intifada, 9/11 or, in an entirely different realm, the New York dating scene. Not surprisingly, then, Peace After Marriage is an uninhibited film, with nothing politically correct about it. The plot involves a sex-crazed young Palestinian named Arafat (played by Albuliwi himself ), who decides to marry a young Israeli woman named Michaela (Israeli actress Einat Tubi ) so she can get a green card. The deal is simple: He will get quick money (and maybe also some sex ), and she will get a visa that will allow her to stay in New York and maintain her relationship with her Israeli boyfriend ( played by Omer Barnea ). Of course, there are complications: The families discover the plan, and Arafat starts to develop feelings for his Jewish bride. Peace After Marriage is a Turkish-FrenchAmerican coproduction. The screenplay won a grant from the Tribeca Film Institute, a laboratory involved in producing movie scripts which operates as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. The film garnered the Audience Award at the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival and has been screened before full houses in Abu Dhabi, Brazil and New York. Furthermore, Albuliwi notes with some surprise, The movie has become a hit in Jewish film festivals. I dont even submit it, usually someone from the festival hears about it and contacts me.

Brooklyn childhood
Probably the reason for the popularity of the Jordanian-American director among festival organizers and film reviewers is due to their thirst for a movie that offers a comic take on religious-nationalist tensions. Variety wrote that its refreshing to see a lighthearted Muslim-Jewish romantic comedy without a heavy political agenda. In addition, despite the fierce criticism Albuliwi levels at Judaism, Islam and, indeed, every religion as such, ultimately he advocates multiculturalism, a message that every international film festival is happy to adopt. Peace After Marriage was originally entitled Only in New York, and its plot really could only take place in one of the urban epitomies of multiculturalism. I was born in the Zarqa refugee camp in Jordan to a Jordanian father and a Palestinian mother she fled to Zarqa after the 1967 war, Albuliwi says. The family moved to New York when he was 2 years old. I grew up in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood where there were representatives of almost every possible minority: Italians, Hispanics, blacks. There were very few whites in my school. Most of us were children of migrants, but that meant that no one bugged me. An immense disparity existed between the society he grew up in and the education he received at home, Albuliwi observes: I am the eldest of five children, and my parents are villagers by origin. My mother looked after the house, and my father, who is now 80, worked for years as a merchant. With the exception of my brother, who produced the film with me, no one else in the family has artistic tendencies. All our relaGhazi Albuliwi. My brand of humor is deeply influenced by Woody Allen. I dont know why, but Arabs have a problem with humor.

tives are bus drivers or merchants in Jordan. To this day, my father thinks that moving to the United States was the biggest mistake of his life. Every day he says, Why did I bring all of you here? He always asks, Why do you put on perfume before a date? Western culture just doesnt speak to him. Albuliwi says he hardly met any Jews until his twenties. What got him interested in Jewishness, and more specifically in Israeli women, was the rough time he experienced in the New York dating scene, which he describes as hell on earth. Like Arafat, the character in his film, Albuliwi dated quite a few Israeli women. Write that I am looking for an Israeli bride, he instructs me, adding, Do you think there will be single women at the festival? Thats the only reason Im going to Jerusalem. When not busy looking for an Israeli bride (preferably one who served in the army and kept her uniform ), Albuliwi makes do with working with Israeli actors. I ask him how the connection between him and actor/model Omer Barnea came about. I met him through a mutual friend, the says. He is gorgeous and talented. I filmed him in an audition and informed him that same day that the part was his. I re-

In my view, good comedy is the ability to express yourself honestly, so for me cinema is therapy. The audience is like a psychologist, sitting and listening to my problems. Its a weird feeling, but addictive.
ally liked the way he looked on the screen. He found Einat Tubi through a casting agency: She is a smart, beautiful girl, and she is from Tel Aviv originally. It was important for me to cast someone who speaks fluent Hebrew, not an American woman who attended a Jewish school here. Albuliwis highly developed sense of humor landed him in standup-comedy clubs when he was just 17, and also got him a job as a writer for the iconic televi-

sion show Saturday Night Live (I was there a few weeks. It was a high-school internship that became a temporary job ). He says he abandoned standup and switched to the movies after despairing at the life led by comics. Its grueling work, he explains. Sometimes the audience laughs, sometimes not. You spend most of the time not onstage, but waiting to go on. You waste hours so you can wait for your five minutes onstage in a small room with a bunch of frustrated comedians with drug and alcohol problems who cant get over not having been accepted for television. It got me depressed very fast and I stopped doing it. In 2002, without ever having studied filmmaking, Albuliwi wrote and directed his first movie, West Side Brooklyn, a drama about four Arab friends who grew up in a Muslim-Jewish neighborhood in that borough. I was really into the news then, and the movie was influenced by Ariel Sharons visit to the Temple Mount and by the second intifada, he relates. The film tries to show how the tensions between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East affect the life of those communities in New York, despite the physical distance [between them].

Sex toys and the subway

Although Albuliwi insists he is not a political person, Peace After Marriage contains a number of politically charged scenes. A notable one shows Arafat, who is trying to earn money as an actor, going to an audition in which he is asked to portray a mentally unstable Palestinian who is about to perpetrate a suicide attack. Wearing an improvised explosive belt, Arafat tells the American casting people, I dont know if this character is credible. Theres nothing anywhere in the Koran about 72 virgins. And who would want to blow himself up for 72 virgins anyway? Give me one whore who can get the job done and Id be happy. Later, after he and Michaela sleep together for the first time, he tells his best friend proudly: This is the first time a Palestinian ever exploded next to an Israeli without causing loss of life. I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite a few references to the Middle East conflict, including a scene that takes place at a West Bank checkpoint, Peace After Marriage generally resembles comedies by Judd Apatow ( The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad ) more than films by Dutch-

HAARETZ MAGAZINE DECEMBER 6, 2013

16

HAARETZ MAGAZINE DECEMBER 6, 2013 HAARETZ MAGAZINE DECEMBER 6, 2013

HAARETZ MAGAZINE DECEMBER 6, 2013

17

Tal Niv

Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad ( Paradise Now, Omar ). In the amusing opening scene, Arafat, still living with his parents in Brooklyn, buys an inflatable sex doll and takes it home on a packed subway. Back in his room, when he starts to fool around with the doll, his mother (Hiam Abbass ) knocks on the door and demands that her 30-year-old son open it immediately. Asked how he persuaded Abbass, a successful Palestinian actress and director (her acting credits Scenes from Peace After Marriage. The whole idea is to get Israelis to become include Lemon Tree and acquainted with a different type of Muslim Arab, says its director. The Syrian Bride ), to take part in a low-budget comedy, Albuliwi replies that the connection between them was made by her agent, who liked the screenplay. Hiam is an amazing woman, Albuliwi gushes. She is talented and she is involved in a great many projects at once. I think she liked the opportunity to do something funny. She doesnt come across many roles like that. After working together in Peace After Marriage, Albuliwi and Abbass co-wrote the script for Abbass directorial debut, The Inheritance, which was screened at the Venice and Haifa film festivals in 2012. I recently finished writing a script entitled Ramadan Holiday, which will be shot in Jordan with Abbass as the star, Albuliwi says. Its about a young Jordanian man who grew up in the United States, and goes with his mother on a familyroots trip during Ramadan. I have also finished writing another screenplay that will make Peace After Marriage look harmless and innocent.

Abstinence and politics

What sacred cows do you intend to slaughter in that film? All of them, he says, and laughs. Ive written a comedy about how Osama bin Laden ruined my sex life. Can you elaborate? After the 9/11 disaster, no American girl would go out with me. It was the pits. The attitude toward Muslims changed overnight. The whole dating scene was off-limits. Bin Laden forced a period of abstinence on me, and I will never forgive him for it. Do you think enough time has passed for people to laugh at that traumatic event? I am not laughing at the disaster or at the victims. I am laughing at the situation that was created for tens of thousands of Muslims in New York. I think the American audience is ready for a different representation of that event. Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator while the war was still raging in Europe. The smart thing is to be honest and clever about the way you laugh at things. From this point of view, you have to judge movies like works of music: If you take one scene out of context, it definitely could be offensive, but its better to look at a film like a symphony, not a lone chord. Beyond that, he continues, like everything I write, these are my personal experiences, so I see no need to apologize for them. All in all, my imagination is very limited. I cant imagine things that didnt happen to me. Almost everything I write is based on real events. In my view, good comedy is the ability to express yourself honestly so for me cinema is therapy. The audience is like a psychologist, sitting and listen-

I am aware of the situation in Palestine. I traveled around the territories enough to know that sooner or later you will encounter a checkpoint. I wanted to turn it into a comic situation.

ing to my problems. Its a weird feeling, but addictive. As an example of how he blurs fiction and reality, there is a scene that Albuliwi has created in Peace After Marriage that is based on a traumatic incident from his past. A flashback that is meant to make it clear to the audience why Arafats parents are so desperate to marry him off shows the family in an Arab village in the West Bank about to marry him to a Muslim

girl. But he changes his mind and refuses to sign the marriage contract. The brides family pursues him and threatens to kill him. In an attempt to save his life, Arafat runs toward an Israeli army checkpoint, holds up his hands and shouts, in English, Dont shoot! The soldiers aim their weapons at him, but in the end save him. A few years ago, Albuliwi relates, I went to Tul Karm to visit my uncle and other relatives who live there, and they arranged for me to marry a village girl. She was beautiful; she looked like Audrey Hepburn. I only wanted to date her, but because she was from a religious family they made me sign an engagement contract. I signed, and it was obvious right away that Id made a horrible mistake. Her family was completely crazy. I had to escape from the village in the middle of the night, and to this day they threaten to kill me if I ever go back. After I hired a lawyer, my parents had to go there to make sure the divorce was valid. This whole story took a few years. By the way, I even used her real name in the film, as revenge. I hope she sees it. You declare that you are not interested in politics, but you write a scene in which Israeli soldiers save the Palestinian protagonist. Dont you consider that a political statement? No. I write comedy, so I always try to think of comic situations. From my point of view, it was more appropriate to make the character a Palestinian than a Jordanian, because it makes the green card marriage with the Israeli woman funnier. When I wrote that scene, I asked myself how it would play out funniest. The answer was: if in the end the Israeli soldiers save Arafat. I am of course aware of the situation in Palestine. I traveled around the territories enough to know that sooner or later you will encounter a checkpoint. I wanted to turn it into a comic situation. You noted that in Abu Dhabi the Arab press boycotted your film because it was considered pro-Israeli. In the wake of the choice to have the film open the Jewish Film Festival, were you urged to take part in the boycott against Israel? Not personally, but I know that tendency exists. I find no logic in it. A cultural boycott is a paradox: To resolve conflicts, dialogue is necessary, the sides have to talk to each other. The whole idea of the movie is to get Israelis to become acquainted with a different type of Muslim Arab: a down-and-out guy who is looking for love in the big city, just like a lot of other young guys. I am a great believer in the ability of the cinema to advance understanding and dialogue, and in that sense I am an idealist. In the meantime, until peace comes to the Middle East, Tul Karm is apparently not the only place in which Albuliwi is persona non grata. Every time I arrive at Ben-Gurion airport I undergo a security check of four hours at least, he says. I usually try to make them laugh and start up with the female checkers, and at some point they realize that I am actually enjoying it and then they let me go. Do you think they will believe you when you tell them that you are the director of the opening film of the Jewish Film Festival? Thats hard to imagine, he laughs. Theyll probably think, Wow, these Hamas guys are really sophisticated. Weve never heard that story before. My dream is to be so famous that even the security people at BenGurion airport will recognize me. W

TRUe COLORS

An IDF soldier taking cover behind boxes during clashes with Palestinian protesters in the center of Hebron, November 29, 2013. Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images.

What is the perspective of this photo, showing a soldier confronting Palestinians in Hebron on November 29? Does it diminish him, or make fun of him, or does it view him as an outsider? The soldier is hiding behind some vegetable crates in full battle dress, ready to shoot. He looks quite calm. Hes found cover and an observation point, just as hes been trained to do. When one seizes control of a city and takes positions among the local residents, one hides wherever one can. Better to hide among eggplants than among people. The eggplants can be seen next to his head, in a carton featuring tomatoes on its side. A few heads of lettuce can also be seen, resembling human heads. These lettuce heads are not the cannon balls seen lying in the middle of a dirt track in Roger Fentons famous photo The Valley of the Shadow of Death from the Crimean War (Fenton apparently rolled them there ). But they lie there, green colored. A Jackson Pollock-style stain on one crate looks like a fleck of blood, but isnt. This photo is not impressed with the soldier and keeps its distance from him. It doesnt incriminate or condemn him, but does not value him either. Hes sitting in the area, waiting among the vegetables, uncamouflaged. Hebron residents have been throwing stones. One photo captured a boy in a Spiderman outfit throwing one. The soldiers fired rubber bullets and tear gas in response. In contrast to photographs taken by those the IDF permits to document its activities, showing houses and handcuffed men, this photograph has a different perspective than that of the soldier, although it doesnt highlight the violence of his very presence there. This is the routine here, the settling of Hebron through force of arms. The very next day, a Border Police volunteer shot and killed 24-year old Antar al-Akra at the Yarkon cemetery, during a roundup of illegal Palestinian laborers. He simply shot him. Its unclear why this worker had to

be killed this way. Violence is spreading, just as in the normal routine of Hebron, this time providing the irony of killing someone in a cemetery. Its all the same thing.

One cant stop thinking about the film Six Acts, even many days after watching it. Its hard to suppress the insights it evokes, including the self-examination it calls for. The film completely controls its cinematic modes of expression, stating exactly what it intends to. It resembles films produced by the Dardenne brothers of Belgium or by the early Lars von Trier. The more one reflects on this significant and intelligent film, written by Rona Segal and directed by Jonathan Gurfinkel, the more one is stuck with the smile of its anti-hero (Eviatar Mor ). His captivating, charming smile is mesmerizing, becoming manic and psychopathic as he texts Sweetie to the girl hes tormenting. He wants her not to disturb him, to leave him to conduct his business, expecting her to disappear after serving his purposes. Six Acts describes in six acts the deterioration of Gili (the talented Sivan Levi ), a

girl who tries to be accepted by a bunch of rich kids in Herzliya. She offers them physical contact and comes under the sway of one of them, played by Mor in his first acting role. Mor used to be a model and is now studying medicine. His clean-cut looks serve as an ironic commentary throughout the film, including a scene at a club in which he cries after another person who offered to share Gili with him is deterred by the coercion and by her state, no longer seeking physical contact with her. Gili is trapped in a system that operates like a boomerang, passing from hand to hand. She is invited to his house and then sent packing, after performing for him what theyve seen in movies, an act witnessed by another friend. She becomes an object tainted by abuse, not the hunter she pretends to be. Segals screenplay is surgically precise, describing a world in which everyone pays a price, including those who take possession of Gili. The boy who tags along with the rich kids, although softer himself, imitates them while trying to compete with them. He is like a psychopath, for whom she has no real existence. His light, unconcerned use of the word Sweetie when he texts her resembles the way the rich kids kiss each other on the cheek when they meet, as though they were very refined. The text indicates how Gili is just a symbol for him, not a real person. The language used is empty, but functions as a reward. She hangs on every word of his, reading his laconic and vacuous texts as though they were love letters. A boomerang is not a murder weapon, but rather a weapon of suicide. Six Acts is a movie that must be seen in order to understand this.

3
Eviatar Mor in "Six Acts."

Outside the cinematheque where the film was shown were rows of bicycles. I didnt lock mine, and while watching the film I felt that someone was stealing my bike. I couldnt leave or watch the screen. Walking home, I saw his SMS. Good night in German. He couldnt make it.

Violence is spreading, just as in the normal routine of Hebron, this time providing the irony of killing someone in a cemetery. Its all the same thing.
HAARETZ MAGAZINE DECEMBER 6, 2013 HAARETZ MAGAZINE DECEMBER 6, 2013

18

HAARETZ MAGAZINE DECEMBER 6, 2013 HAARETZ MAGAZINE DECEMBER 6, 2013

19