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e niv rsar n
Years
37
MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2011
LIFESTYLE M u s i c
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M o v i e s
Arab teens rap out angry politics in Nazare ai and Amane, Arab Israeli teenagers living in Nazareth, are happy to leave talk about boys and make-up to their peers. They have a political message and they’re telling it through rap music. The girls, only 15 and 16, make up the duo “Damar”-Arabic for “destruction”-whose mission is to expose what they say is the routine discrimination they experience growing up as part of Israel’s Arab minority. Mai Zarqawi and Amane Tattur formed Damar after meeting at school in the Jewish-Arab city of Nazareth in 2009, and discovering a shared interest in fighting for Palestinian rights. “We don’t hate Jews,” says Zarqawi. “We hate the idea of how Zionism came and took over our land and our culture and left us nothing.” They refuse to identify themselves as Arab Israeli, but rather as Palestinians living in Nazareth, home to some 72,000 people. And their lyrics are just as direct. “Do you think the third generation will be Israeli, bro? Time will not make them forget but instead it will add history...we don’t want your silence, we don’t want prisons and borders,” they rap in their song “Third Generation”.
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Ghost of Michael Jackson, haze of meds, hangs over trial t times the wood-lined courtroom could have passed for a medical lecture theater: experts with saline drip stands and complicated graphs earnestly demonstrating the half-life of benzodiazepines. Except that you don’t usually see Janet and LaToya Jackson sitting in the back of a pharmacology class, listening attentively to explanations of sedation thresholds and titration techniques. But this has been the scene in the plainly furnished room on the ninth floor of the LA Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles, where Michael Jackson’s doctor Conrad Murray has been on trial for the last five weeks. Michael Jackson has been the spectre hanging over proceedings which come to a climax this week. “Let’s deal with the elephant in the room here,” defense attorney Michael Flanagan intoned last Thursday. “Conrad Murray has been accused of infusing a dose of propofol and leaving his patient. Can you justify that?” His star witness, Dr Paul White, couldn’t. But that was what he was here for, to debunk the prosecution claim that Grenada-born medic Murray was guilty of involuntary manslaughter over the King of Pop’s 2009 death. Murraywho has sat grim-faced throughout the sometimes harrowing, sometimes eyeglazingly dull testimony-denies the charge. His iPad-wielding lawyers Ed Chernoff and lugubrious sidekick Flanagan have done their best to defy the odds and get him off, arguing that Jackson was a desperate addict who would have killed himself accidentally anyway. They have been helped by a spectacular litany of medical problems from which Jackson apparently suffered for years before his untimely death on June 25, 2009, on the eve of an ill-fated series of comeback shows in London. Incontinence, insomnia and mental instability were just three revealed in painful detail at the trial, which heard how Jackson died from a cocktail of the sedatives lorazepam, midazolam and propofol, given to help him sleep. A condom catheter, intravenous (IV) drug tube and oxygen nasal canulla were attached to Jackson’s body when paramedics arrived, while pictures of his naked corpse on a hospital gurney had his family running from the courtroom. Led by his mother Katherine and father Joe, the family has filed in every day since September 27, some members more often than others-to sit on the wooden benches reserved for them at the front of the court’s public seating. Occasionally, they would turn to exchange words with journalists sat behind them, while Jackson fans-winners of a daily ballot for tickets for the handful of spare seats in court-were consigned to the back row. Genial judge Michael Pastor has drawn praise, sharing jokes with the jurors and court staff-but he is not to be crossed: when a fan’s phone went off near the trial’s start, she was escorted smartly out, the device confiscated. Early witnesses included a cocktail waitress and a quintessentially Hollywood actress, Murray’s girlfriend-who couldn’t contain her breathless excitement at having met Michael Jackson, even as she discussed his death. A string of friendly character witnesses came on proclaiming how the “caring” Murray saved their lives and treated them for free-prompting the 58-year-old medic to dab his eyes at one stage. But the last week descended into a dizzying blizzard of medical testimony, as key witnesses argued over exactly what Murray might have done, or not done, in the fateful hours before Jackson’s death. —AFP
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“They buy us with money to recruit us all the time, they steal our culture even humus and ful... The minority is fighting for freedom, Palestine is in our hearts, not forgotten,” it continues. Israel’s Arab community of 1.6 million, which represents about 20 percent of the population, is made up of the 160,000 Palestinians who stayed behind after establishment of the Jewish state in 1948, and their descendants. Although they hold Israeli nationality, Arab Israelis in practice remain second-class citizens, with the sector receiving far fewer government resources for health, education and economic development. They struggle to maintain their cultural and political identity as Palestinians in a Jewish state where any expression of Arab national sentiment is viewed as a threat. “As a Palestinian, I want to have a voice. I want to have freedom of expression. I love hip-hop and I love my identity. So when you bring them both together, you get Damar,” Zarqawi says. Inspired by American singer-songwriter Lauryn Hill and US rapper Nas, the girls’ music criticizes Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians
and takes on issues like the towering security barrier that cuts across the West Bank.
our music we’re going to build a new generation that really understands what is going on here.” Their lyrics,
Arab Israeli youths Amani Tatour and Mai Dmar sing the rap duo “Damar” (Arabic for destruction) in a studio in the city of Nazareth, northern Israel, on October 27, 2011. —AFP ‘We want to be role models’ “Everywhere we go, we just see the wall in front of us,” Tattur says. “It destroyed our dreams, so through
mostly written by Tattur, also reflect their own teen experience. “Our first song is about Arab schools being completely different to Israeli
schools. We rap about what it’s like growing up with two sides fighting and how this affects us,” says Zarqawi. “We would talk about how Arab teenagers don’t understand where they are from. They have an identity crisis because they have Israeli ID’s and Palestinian heritage.” At first, no-one took them seriously. The girls struggled with a taboo against female musicians, and parents who thought the group was a passing fad. “In the beginning, my parents were like, ‘OK, she’s a teenager, she will forget everything.’ But when we recorded our first song, they started to take me seriously and supported me a lot,” Zarqawi says. “They let me go perform in Jordan myself, which was a big deal.” Tattur says her parents also support the group. “They love what we are doing. It’s the same with our friends. In the beginning no one accepted the idea of us rapping, but they began to understand the lyrics and what message we are trying to get across.” Their gradual acceptance has paid off with growing success in the Arabic hip hop scene, one of the fastest-growing genres in the Middle East. It first made an appear-
ance on the Palestinian scene in the late 1990s with the formation of the three-piece outfit DAM, otherwise known as Da Arabic MCs. Another name attracting interest is Shadia Mansour, a BritishPalestinian rapper in her mid-20s who has the moniker “the first lady of Arabic hip hop”. DAM and Mansour both rap about politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but what makes Damar unique is the girls’ young age. So far, the pair has toured the West Bank and Jordan, and are working on a first album. As for the future, Tattur is an aspiring actress while Zarqawi wants to pursue a career in music. Both, however, insist they will stick with Damar to continue spreading their political message. “Hair, makeup and boys don’t concern us,” says Tattur. “As a teenager, Israel concerns us. There are a lot of problems here. Some people tell you you’re Israeli, some people tell you you’re Palestinian. So you get confused. “We want to build a new generation through our music and words,” she adds. “We want to be role models for other teenagers.” —AFP
Algerian film wins
top award at Qatar festiva
Director Merzak Allouache winner of the Best Arab Narrative film (Normal) at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival is seen on stage during the award ceremony. —AFP photos atar’s annual film festival gave its top award to filmmaker Merzak Allouache’s production of “Normal”, a movie that follows disillusioned Algerian youth in the wake of the “Arab Spring” revolutions. The award, which carries a bonus of $100,000 dollars, was announced at the third annual Doha Tribeca Film Festival awards ceremony Saturday, alongside seven other prizes, including, best Arab documentary film, best Arab short film, and best performance by an Arab actor. The winners were chosen by a five-member panel of judges headed by award winning Syrian director Mohammed Malas, well-known throughout the Arab world for his movies. Allouache dedicated his award to the “Syrian people’s struggle”, referencing the eight-month uprising against President Bashar Al-Assad, who has spearheaded a brutal crackdown on protesters that according to UN figures, has claimed more than 3,000 lives. A highlight of the festival was the Moroccan-French production “Omar Killed Me”, a true story about a Moroccan immigrant to France who was convicted of murdering his wealthy French employer and pardoned by French President Jacques Chirac seven years later. The movie’s director, Moroccan Roschdy Zem, was awarded the “Best Arab Narrative Filmmaker” prize, which carries a bonus of $50,000 dollars.
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Nick Broomfield, Azize Tan and Hakim Belabbes award Rania Stephan best Arab Documentary Film for ‘The Three Disappearances of Souad Hosni’.
(From left) Antonio Banderas and Omar Sharif congratulate Abdullaziz Al-Nujaym who won Best Arab Short Film with ‘Where Are You (Wenak)’. The only Arab woman to be recognized by the panel of judges was the Lebanese documentary producer Rania Stephan, who was awarded the “Best Arab Documentary Filmmaker” prize for her portrayal of the life of Souad Hosni, a famous Egyptian actress who died in London in 2001. The Best Documentary film prize was awarded to “The Virgin, the Copts and Me” directed by French-Egyptian Namir Abdel Messeeh. The film festival opened Tuesday with a screening of “Black Gold,” a movie by French director Jacques Annaud partly filmed in the gas-rich Gulf country. Starring Antonio Banderas and Freida Pinto, “Black Gold” tells the story of two emirs locked in a feud after the discovery of oil, as a young leader emerges to unite the desert tribes. US actor and the founder of New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, Robert De Niro, helped organize the first Doha festival in 2009. Doha launched its festival this year four days after the end of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, in what is seen as a growing cultural competition between Gulf cities. Dubai is holding its own festival from December 7 to 14. Film festivals in the Gulf states, spared the uprisings across the Arab world, have stolen the limelight this year after Damascus and Cairo cancelled their annual events due to unrest in both Egypt and Syria. —AFP
Antonio Banderas and Omar Sharif award top honors.
Lebanese actress and director Nadine Labaki and her husband, music composer Khaled Mouzannar.
British singer Leona Lewis arrives to attend the closing night after party at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival.
(Right to left) Actress Michelle Yeoh, director Luc Besson and producer Virginie Besson-Silla.
US actor Robert De Niro arrives with his wife Grace Hightower De Niro.