‘Where Should the Birds Fly’ is showing twice in NY today

Several times here we’ve sought to promote Fida Qishta’s penetrating, subtle, anguished documentary about Gaza, “Where Should the Birds Fly?” which is distinguished by the remarkable relationship between the filmmaker and a 1o-year-old girl who survived a massacre in Cast Lead. 

Well, it’s showing in New York today and tonight. And you should do your utmost to try and see it. My own take on the film is below the flyer.

TWO SCREENINGS OF Where Should the Birds Fly       Where Should the Birds Fly Presented by Manhattan Film Festival and Deep Dish TV   Friday, June 21st @ 3:15PM Quad Cinema 34 W 13th St. (between 5th and 6th Avenue)  Map   7th Annual Manhattan Film Festival   Click HERE to purchase tickets online!!     AND   Where Should the Birds Fly Presented by The American Indian Community House and Deep Dish TV   Friday, June 21st @ 7PM American Indian Community House 134 W 29th Street, 4th Floor (between 6th and 7th Avenue) MAP       In December of 2008 Israel launched a devastating attack on Gaza. A month of bullets, bombs, rockets, white phosphorus, tanks and bulldozers left 1400, mostly civilians, dead and this section of Occupied Palestine in rubble. Where Should the Birds Fly is a compelling and moving Palestinian film based on the story of two remarkable young women, the future of Palestine, who personify the struggle to maintain humanity, humor, hope, and to find some degree of normality in the brutal abnormality that has been imposed on them and Palestinians. This is the first film documenting the impact of the attacks made by Palestinians themselves.      FIDA QISHTA is a Palestinian filmmaker/videographer who was born in Rafah, Gaza. She began her video work as a wedding photographer in the Gaza Strip, and then began accompanying human rights observers in Gaza, documenting their work. Her reporting, photography and video journalism has appeared in the UK Guardian, the Observer, and the International Herald Tribune. Fida is also a qualified teacher and, in 2004, co-founded with her sister Faten, The Lifemakers Center, an after school and tutoring program which serves several hundred children in Rafah.  Her first full-length documentary, Where Should the Birds Fly, is a powerful reflection of her work and life in Gaza from 2004 through 2009.

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My take on the film:

The film follows Qishta’s own development from the girlhood experience of seeing her house destroyed by bulldozers to the discovery of her vocation, work as a wedding photographer that leads in turn to her documenting the slaughter of the Israeli operation called Cast Lead in 2009. Then Qishta finds the other focus of the film, the softspoken 10-year-old Mona al-Samouni, who when asked how many of her family were killed in the al-Samouni massacre of Cast Lead, says, “Not many,” before reciting a list beginning with her mother and father. The film will give pause to anyone who dares to write off an entire society as terrorists or fundamentalists.