GAZAFISH preceeded by ARTICLE 17

SUNDAY 2 NOVEMBER AT 1PM UGC SHAFTESBURY AVE SCREEN 2

GAZAFISH Country USA Running Time 52 mins Format 16mm Director Nadav Harel, Ramon Bloomberg Producers George Eid, Ben Evansky Print Source Wildfist Pictures E george@wildfist.com ARTICLE 17 Country UK Running Time 57 mins Format 16mm Director/Producer/DoP Saleyha Ahsan Print Source Saleyha Ahsan E saleyha@yahoo.co.uk

Through artwork and poetry, men in Pentonville prison translate their experiences of the cell.

Article 17 refers to the UN ruling insisting that medical support must be given free passage in conflict zones. Director Saleyha Ahsan follows international and Palestinian medics as they attempt to get help to the people of Ramallah and Nablus during heavy fighting. The intelligence and sensitivity of the medical teams is apparent, as they face death or deportation attempting to get aid through to the innocents caught up in the fighting. This is raw filmmaking, giving us recent, bloody, terrifying images from the front line of the world's most deliberately ignored battleground. Ahsan, a medical student herself, gets a unique insight into the work of the medical teams and their patients.

Gazafish looks at the problem in another place, the fishing grounds off Gaza, and uses a time of co-operation to comment on the issues and to show a way out of them. In the '90s, the small Israeli settlement of Dugit made a deal with local Palestinian fishing families, allowing access to their waters if the fishermen gave them a percentage of their cash. These are people that need each other, and have realised it - and their interdependence shines out as the only sanity in an insane time and place. Though the deal has been rendered void by the escalation of the conflict and the Second Intifada, people on both sides remember it as a time of peace and plenty. It is this realisation that each side needs the other, and the courage to do something about it, that is seen to be lacking in the wider problem. NS