Martin Luther King Jr. In Palestine is a documentary project by filmmaker Connie Field, director-producer of both Have You Heard From Johannesburg and the Academy Award nominated Freedom On My Mind about the civil rights movement in the US.
The film documents the Palestinian production of Passages of Martin Luther King by esteemed King Scholar Clayborne Carson.
Stanford’s Martin Luther King scholar Clay Carson took his play, Passages of Martin Luther King, to the Palestinian National Theatre in East Jerusalem and West Bank communities in March and early April. The production, translated into Arabic and directed by Kamel El Basha, featured eight Palestinian actors, along with six African American singers who depicted King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church choir and civil rights freedom fighters.
Field is raising funds thru a Kickstarter project, she’s got 15 days left.
This is a great story that can reach new audiences who would not necessarily come see a film about Palestine, incorporating the inherent drama of the theatre and propelled by the foot-stomping rhythms of gospel music. It was an intense cultural exchange between two peoples encompassing the joy of new friendships, creative collaborations and eye opening experiences. No one who participated remained unchanged.
We traveled through the Holy Land that the Christian choir were so passionately excited to see, as they were introduced to the other side of the land where Jesus once walked: a man whose front yard has been bisected by the Security Wall and whose children have to play in the dust of its continued construction; the ease with which they as foreigners were able to pass through checkpoints while their Palestinian counterparts took hours to navigate the same distance; a home which had no water because a settlement had taken over their well, where Palestinian women teach them songs in Arabic and join them in singing American gospel songs. And yet, amidst the hardships of occupied life, the choir is greeted with food, humor, and generosity, a mixture that brought some of them to tears.
I feel like Martin is looking out for us and we have the wind on our backs.
(Hat tip Antony Loewenstein)
