Filmmaker/founder of International Solidarity Movement visits CU

Adam Shapiro has spent the majority of the last few years of his life in some of the most conflict-ridden areas of the world.

“You name the war zone, I’ve been there,” said Shapiro, a filmmaker and founder of the International Solidarity Movement, about his extensive involvement in nonviolent resistance.

Around 30 students and community members gathered in Benson Earth Sciences 185 at 7 p.m. on Tuesday to watch the fruits of Shapiro’s resistant labor. After the film was screened, participants discussed the impact of the film and possible steps Palestinian refugees can take towards home.

At the event, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, Shapiro illustrated his dedication to a nonviolent movement for justice in Palestine with part five of his documentary series, Chronicles of a Refugee, entitled “The Talk of Return.”

After having been an activist since 2000 when he lived in the West Bank, Shapiro said that he was subsequently detained, arrested and expelled by the Israelis because of his participation in a protest villagers in Huwara were holding against a curfew.

Since then, Shapiro told attendees of the documentary screening, his work in strategic resistance has lead him to pursue creative ways to help civilians shake the general fatigue about Palestine.

“[When] I was working, living in Jerusalem in the West Bank in 2000 I started seeing how Palestinians were protesting and how the Israeli army was using lethal force against unarmed civilians,” Shapiro said in an interview. “That’s when myself and some others especially started thinking strategically how we could promote and encourage non-violence.”

What was born from the ashes of his expulsion, Shapiro said as he introduced his film, was a better understanding of the refugee experience and what it means to not be allowed to return.

“One intent was to look more deeply not just at some of the key issues facing the Palestinian refugees, but the Palestinian movement in general,” Shapiro said. “Because Palestine doesn’t exist as a state, because it doesn’t have a national archive, because it’s a diaspora community, there are a lot of historians but very little has been done in terms of collecting oral history. So that’s what this project is partially about.”

According to the Chronicles of a Refugee Web site, episode 5, “The Talk of Return” “highlights the situation of Palestinian refugees 60 years after their expulsion and dispossession of their country and land.”

Over the course of about 50 minutes, Shapiro and his colleagues explored the work that has been done towards moving refugees back home and the obstacles they still face on their journey back.

The film utilizes the personal accounts of Palestinian refugees and their perspectives on the lack of institutional progress that has been implemented while focusing on the stories of people who took the “right to return” into their own hands.

In this chapter of the series, Shapiro used maps from “The Return Journey,” a book containing comprehensive maps of Palestine before the damage of its villages, towns and highways. Shapiro used these maps to find the destroyed villages and tie in the rhetoric of the right to return with the personal accounts of the displaced.

Amir Sadafi, a 22-year-old senior international affairs major, said he heard about the film from the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center’s e-mail list.

“I came today because I have always been active and engaged in Palestinian activism. I also had the opportunity to go to Gaza in May of his year,” Sadafi said. “And in Gaza where the population is 80 percent refugees, the questions of refugees and their right to return was a major issue.”

Sadafi said he had seen clips from the other films in the series, but that this was the first time he’d seen an entire chapter.

“It’s easy to generalize about the Palestine refugee situation, but the Palestine refugees are very diverse from the refugees who are displaced in Gaza to refugee camps in surrounding countries,” Sadafi said. “So the series kind of looks and examines the different layers of identity or lack of identity.”

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sheila V Kumar at Sheila.kumar@colorado.edu.

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