Oakland filmmaker screens film on Arab youth at La Pena

For Immediate Release Contact: Erica Marcus


510.459.4182


Award winning Oakland filmmaker screens new film Alive In Limbo at La Peña
about five Arab youth in the Middle East


Oakland filmmaker Erica Marcus's new film Alive In Limbo, co-Directed by Hrabba Gunnarsdottir and former Berkeley resident Tina Naccache, will screen at La Pena Cultural Center, Friday, December 10 at 7:30pm. La Pena is located at 3105 Shattuck Ave, Berkley. Tickets are sliding scale $6-$10. Proceeds from the screening will support the distribution of this important new documentary about the reality of life for Arab youth in the Middle East. For more info. call 510-459-4182. Erica will be at the screening for audience discussion following the screening.

Ten years in the making, ALIVE IN LIMBO follows the stories of four Palestinian refugee youth from the Shatila refugee camp and one Lebanese boy from just outside the former Israeli occupied zone. In 1993 Marcus went to Lebanon and filmed the five youth. At the time, many people around the world were celebrating the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords between the Israelis and the Palestinians that was supposed to signal a new future for peace in the Middle East.

In 1999, 2000 and 2002, Erica teamed up with Hrabba and Tina and searched for these same youth as they were entering adulthood. These youth, like kids everywhere, talk about girlfriends and boyfriends and dream of the future. Yet their dreams are nurtured against a backdrop of history and politics that they can't wish away.

The film received the Spirit Award in the Documentary competition at the Brooklyn International Film Festival. It also was shown to a packed house at Cinemayaat, The Arab Film Festival and at the Castro Theater during the Film Arts Festival. The December 10th screening at La Pena is a benefit towards a grassroots distribution campaign for the film.

Erica Marcus, a Jewish filmmaker has been working in film and video for over twenty years. Her film MY HOME, MY PRISON about one of the first Palestinians to initiate dialogue with the Israelis premiered at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. Hrabba Gunnarsdottir and Tina Naccache collaborated on STRAIGHT OUT about queer Icelandic youth. STRAIGHT OUT shared the $10,000 Prize for Best Documentary at the SF Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in 2003.


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