Screen/Society--Documenting the Middle East--"The Wanted 18" + "Al-Nakba and the City of Lyd: A Work in Progress"

Film Screening: "Al-Nakba and the City of Lyd: A Work in Progress" [10 min trailer](Director: Sarah Friedland; Writer/Producer: Rami Younis; Producer: Fivel Rothberg) // "The Wanted 18" (Paul Cowan & Amer Shomali, 2014, 75 min, Canada/Palestine/France, in Arabic and English w/ English Subtitles, Color/B&W, Digital) / It's 1987, and the first Palestinian popular movement in the West Bank is rising, Residents want local alternatives to Israeli goods, including milk, which they've been buying from an Israeli company. And so begins the strange story of the 18 cows. The plot is hatched by pacifist intellectuals and professionals. Not you typical dairy farmers. These "lactivists" forge ahead anyway, buying 18 cows and smuggling them into the West Bank town of Beit Sahour. But who know anything about the cows? These newly min ted farmers have to learn the most basic skills - even how to milk their charges, which isn't as easy as it looks. Eventually, the cows come to the attention of Israeli authorities, and the chase is on - a cat-and-mouse (or soldier-and-cow) game writ large, as the cows shuttle from barn to barn, with their pursuers determined to find them. The cows became legendary and the "intifada milk" (sometimes distributed under cover of darkness) becomes a part of daily life. / "The film is funny and serious, it's one of the greatest films I've seen in the past ten years" - Intishal al Timini, Abu Dhabi Film Festival / Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlKZ8daLtO