The Process
Preparation and Participant Selection

City-Wide Outreach

Prior to each workshop, announcements are sent around the city to high school principals, heads of the communication & film departments in the high schools and to centers that encourage joint programs between Arab and Jewish youth. All these parties are asked to make recommendations with regard to candidates.

Personal Interviews

Applicants are invited to personal interviews and are chosen according to their potential talent and their openness to cooperate and work with the "others."

Time Frame

The workshop takes place during summer vacation. This allows for the intense work that is necessary including full days of involvement and often at night as well.

The workshops always begin at the conclusion of the Jerusalem Film Festival, which is produced annually in July by the Jerusalem Cinematheque. The duration of the workshop is 4-6 weeks.

Language   

The workshop is facilitated in Hebrew and Arabic, with on-going translation for the entire process, by professional Jewish and Arab facilitators.

Cultural Enrichment and Getting Acquainted

The first part of the project is a one-week-long series of workshops and meetings. The primary purpose of the workshops is to expose the participants to the arts, to the cinematic language and to convey to them the inextricable connection of art and creation with self-identity, definition and representation.

The week entails a workshop in still photography, a creative drama and role-playing workshop and visit to the Israel Museum. The students also meet with an Israeli artist who gives a lecture on self-representation through art and with an Israeli and a Palestinian filmmaker who speak about self-expression through filmmaking. Another meaningful meeting is with a psychologist who introduces them to the various aspects of human identity.

The introductory period provides the tools and the time for beginning to get to know each other. The encounter with art, photography and drama lays a broader cultural groundwork from which to draw when it comes to the moment when the students themselves will begin to create.

Technical Enrichment

The first week also provides the opportunity for the participants to learn the basics of film-making: how to operate lighting, script-writing, directing and shooting. The participants also view numerous films for the purpose of learning the "code of film-making" that creates the message (What is a close-up? What is a zoom? How is a scene developed'?)

Script Development

At the conclusion of the first week the process of identifying the subject matter of the films takes place -- a forum in which each participant is invited to present his/her idea, which are discussed in the plenary. By means of a democratic process, 4-5 subjects are chosen for production. The participants are then divided into four or five mixed groups (Arab and Jewish, male and female).

Film Process

Supervised by the staff, beginning with the second week of the workshop, each group works separately, setting its own agendas and schedules. The work in small groups continues in this fashion until the conclusion of the filmmaking portion of the program. The group assigns the roles of the director, the cinematographer, the producer etc. Each group then sets about to make a film, learning as they go, in an "on-the-job-training" atmosphere.

Post-production

The editing takes place in a master-class format, the participants learning while watching professional editors work on their films in his/her editing room. The music and sound-effects that accompany the film are chosen by the participants. Upon completion, the films are sent for translation into Hebrew, Arabic and English and, finally, for the adding of subtitles and credits.

Conclusion and Gala

Prior to the gala screenings of the new films the students meet for the purpose of sharing impressions and evaluating the end-products as well as the workshop process. Both the staff and the young participants share equally in this review.

The program concludes with a celebratory screening of the films, at the Jerusalem Cinematheque to which family, friends and the public at-large are all invited. A diploma is awarded to each of the participants and they each receive a copy of the films they have produced.