Product Description

Winner!
- Film Festival Ragazzi, Bellinzona

Winner!
- Festival of Mediterranean Culture, Bastia

Winner!
- Isfahan Children Film Festival

Winner!
- Nantes Film Festival

Official Selection
- Cannes International Film Festival

From acclaimed director Michel Khleifi (Wedding In Galilee), Tale of the Three Jewels is the first feature ever filmed in the Gaza Strip. Made in the days following the Hebron Massacre and before the arrival of the Palestinian Authority, the film tells the story of twelve-year-old Yusef, who escapes from the chaos of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict by looking for birds in the tranquil countryside. One day his hunt is interrupted by Aida, a ravishing gypsy girl from a nearby neighborhood. Yusef is immediately smitten, but when he declares his intention of making Aida his bride, she says he must first find the three jewels missing from a necklace that was brought from South America by her grandfather. Yusef quickly formulates a plan to cross the sea in order to fulfill Aida's request and win her love.

Screened in the Director's Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival in 1995, Tale of the Three Jewels effectively utilizes the grim backdrop of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip as contrast for Michel Khleifi's whimsical story of romantic longing and the power of imagination.

DVD Features:

Full Frame 1.33
Trailers
Audio: English, Arabic
Subtitles: English

Review

A glimmering parable about the meaning of life, about beauty and freedom and about the 'three borders' that govern our destiny: time, space and flesh. . . a jewel. --The Independent on Sunday

The daily life and stability of Palestinians is beautifully portrayed. Despite the violence of everyday life, there is a recognition that hope and love can transcend. --MultiCultural Review

In Tale of the Three Jewels, which is notable for being the first feature film ever shot in the Gaza Strip, Khleifi deftly blends the crushing reality of the region's strife-torn environment with Yusef's mystical imagination to create a moving tale of the innocence of youth in a harsh social and political landscape. Highly recommended. --Phil Hall, Video Librarian Magazine

About the Actor

MAKRAM KHOURY:

Palestinian-Israeli actor Makram Khoury was the youngest artist and the first Arab to win the Israel Prize, the highest artistic honor in the country.He is one of Israel's most respected actors, playing leads in all the major theaters as well as acting in films and on television.

Khoury is an actor's actor: subtle, powerful and protean. He embodies many of the paradoxes of Israeli society. He was born to a Christian-Arab family who belonged to the Greek Orthodox church: Greek Orthodox, Christian, Arab, Palestinian. He and his family fled to Lebanon during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. After five months of unemployment, Makram's lawyer father decided to risk returning rather than live in a refugee camp.Makram's family found housing in the Northern Israeli city of Acco. When he graduated high school in 1963, he went to study at The Hebrew University but soon dropped out to act. He trained with Jacqueline Kronberg-an American teacher who had worked with Second City-and also got involved with an Arab Theatre in Haifa. Eventually he went to Drama School in England.

When he returned, even though he soon began getting work at The Cameri Theatre and the Haifa Municipal Theatre, he experienced an identity crisis. The Cameri arranged coaching for him in voice, diction and Hebrew. No professional Arabic theatre existed in Israel, only amateur companies. To fulfill himself as an actor, he had to work in Hebrew. Khoury came to a compromise with this situation through dreams. With help from his friend Anton Shamas, a distinguished Palestinian-Israeli writer, he decoded a message from his own unconscious. He saw himself as a clown in a circus sitting on a unicycle going around a circle, balancing with arms spread out, saying, I'm breathing, I'm alive! & saw a coin with two heads on the handlebars. On one side it said Israeli-Arab, on the other, Israeli. Acting managed to cure his wounds.

Two of his children Clara & Jamil are also actors. His daughter Clara Khoury stars in AFD/Typecast Films title *Rana's Wedding* which is also available on her on .

MOHAMMAD BAKRI

Bakri began his professional acting career in plays in several theaters in Israel and the West Bank notably the Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv, the Haifa theater and al-Kasaba theater in Ramallah. During this period he became well known as a star in Palestinian film and Israeli television. His one-man plays, The Pessoptimist, 1986, The Anchor, 1991, Season of Migration to the North 1993, and Abu Marmar, 1999, were performed as often in Hebrew as in Arabic, a reflection of his early wish to tell the truth of Palestinian history and tell it first and foremost to Israelis.

After a few years of acting in Palestinian and Israeli film, Bakri began to act in international films in countries such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Canada. Bakri also directed two documentary films including the controversial Jenin, Jenin. Almost all of Bakri's films were influenced by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and internal struggles of the Palestinian people.

About the Director

MICHEL KHLEIFI

Born in Nazareth in 1950. In 1970 he travelled to Belgium where he studied television and theatre directing. His films include: FERTILE MEMORY (1980), MA'LOUL CELEBRATES ITS DESTRUCTION (1985), WEDDING IN GALILEE (1987 - International Critics Prize, Cannes 1987), CANTICLE OF THE STONES (1990), L'ORDRE DU JOUR (1993), and TALE OF THE THREE JEWELS (1995).

On Tale of the Three Jewels, he said: To dream of making a film in Gaza with the people of Gaza in their daily reality; to look closely in order to unveil the magical reality of this strip of land where so much humiliation has accumulated, so much terror and violence, hatred and passion, strength and fragility, so much reality and myth...

I wanted to be a Volkswagen mechanic. Not just any mechanic - but a specialist. Told Director Michel Khleifi of his filmmaking career. We shot TALE OF THE THREE JEWELS after the Oslo accords and before the Israeli army pulled out of Gaza. There were areas in Gaza where the army did not enter. The day after the we arrived with the film crew there was an explosion in Jerusalem. We started shooting on a Thursday and on Friday the Hebron Massacre took place. The country was in uproar; curfews, demonstration, deaths. The film schedule was cancelled and for 3 weeks I doubted our ability to shoot at all. Just to travel 2 or 3 miles was an adventure. Little by little we decided to stay and make the film in Gaza because it could be made ONLY in Gaza. By then were considered mad and known by the locals as 'The Fools'.

It is impossible to do a film like this with a crew of 30-40 people in secret. So the film script was submitted to the Israeli army from the start. The army said we can't film any scene with weapons or demonstrations. I would have liked to shoot some scenes differently. For example, we filmed one scene with weapons anyway, when the four young men are killed, and we had to 'steal' the images; that is why the camera in that scene is running.

We found the main actor, Yusef, by chance. We auditioned hundreds of boys. By accident, my assistant had a flat tire and stopped in a garage to fix it. Yusef was working there. During the Intifada, an Israeli soldier broke the boy's arm. Several months later a Palestinian teacher beat him very severely. He then became almost autistic to the point where he lost the capacity to read and write. We worked with him to memorize his lines orally.

Under all these conditions, we realized how important it was to start and FINISH a project in Gaza. We were fully supported by the people of Gaza. It was difficult and at the same time magic. The film screened in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Nazareth in semi-private screenings. I also screened the film twice in Gaza, each of these two times while under a complete closure by Israel; once before the elections and once after them.