Leah Borromeo on her thoughts as she filmed the memorial event to Juliano Mer-Khamis in London
Friday, 13 May, 2011 - 13:50
Juliano Mer Khamis’ life was celebrated at London’s Amnesty International this past April with a memorial and screening of his award-winning film Arna’s Children. It was a standing-room-only affair - a testament to the power of his art and the energy of his creative spirit.
Four friends spoke ahead of the film. Its producer Osnat Trabelsi, his friend and colleague Udi Aloni, Palestinian poet and playwright Ala Hlehel and Stephan Wolf-Schoenburg, a German actor. Stephan was a teacher at the Freedom Theatre – the theatre Juliano ran in Jenin, where, on the fourth of April 2011, Juliano Mer Khamis was shot by an anonymous gunman.
As adults fought to keep tears at bay while Stephan described the moment his friend was killed, the world was learning of the deaths of photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Libya. Like Juliano, those men dedicated their lives and work to showing humanity in times of conflict - when people are least human.
Flitting from crowd to speaker behind my camera, I dealt with the room’s cocktail of reflective sadness the only way I know how – stare down the eyepiece, shield behind the lens. Here were his friends and his fans – a pebble on the beach of those lives Juliano Mer Khamis touched.
The audience responded to the emotional testimonies of the speakers with deep awe and respect. For once, at an Amnesty event on Palestine, the trolls stayed away.
Perhaps because spitting counter-progressive bile at a memorial service would be seen as tasteless – or perhaps because Juliano was one of those men a Zionist couldn’t really argue against. Half Jew and half Palestinian, Juliano joined his Israeli mother Arna in Jenin as she set up a youth centre for Palestinian kids. He ran the theatre side of things.
As Arna’s Children showed, the very same kids whose theatrical ambitions he nurtured grew into young adults sucked into the vacuum that was the Second Intifada. A film that started out as a story about his mother and her work in Jenin became a damning and emotional critique of war. Like the Shakespearean tragedies Juliano introduced his classes to, everyone ends up dead in the end. Those that survive walk as vessels carrying their friends’ souls until their own deaths.
Many at the memorial had personal relationships with Palestine – be it through birth, activism, journalism or art. So many coloured the words of Juliano’s friends with their own experiences. When friend and poet Ala Hlehel said “here we are now burying another friend, another fighter, another artist,” he was speaking about one man who used theatre as a weapon against the trauma of war.
The courage Juliano showed was not only about choosing to live and work in Jenin. It was not only about bridging the prejudices now reinforced with a concrete barrier between Israel and the West Bank. Rather, it was about using culture and art to help seal the scars seared onto the skin of Palestine by generations of apartheid. It was about offering a window to the world when there was only war.
There’s a theory that artists create so that when they die, a part of them still walks the earth. Stephan Wolf-Schoenburg put it best when he quoted a parting piece written by Juliano’s students: “Juliano, your mother’s children have passed away. Your mother Arna has passed away and so did you. But your children are going to stay…. Juliano’s Children.”
Leah Borromeo is a journalist and filmmaker who has worked as deputy foreign editor at Sky News, Channel 4 News and APTN; among the publications she contributes to are the Index on Censorship, the British Journal of Photography and Juxtapoz. She films for NGOs, social movements and factual programmes across the developing world from Haiti to Gaza to Pakistan and Iran.
Watch the short film of the evening produced by JNews.
This article may by reproduced on condition that JNews is cited as its source.
Photo by James Wild
Leah Borromeo on her thoughts as she filmed the memorial event to Juliano Mer-Khamis in London
Four friends spoke ahead of the film. Its producer Osnat Trabelsi, his friend and colleague Udi Aloni, Palestinian poet and playwright Ala Hlehel and Stephan Wolf-Schoenburg, a German actor. Stephan was a teacher at the Freedom Theatre – the theatre Juliano ran in Jenin, where, on the fourth of April 2011, Juliano Mer Khamis was shot by an anonymous gunman.
As adults fought to keep tears at bay while Stephan described the moment his friend was killed, the world was learning of the deaths of photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Libya. Like Juliano, those men dedicated their lives and work to showing humanity in times of conflict - when people are least human.
Flitting from crowd to speaker behind my camera, I dealt with the room’s cocktail of reflective sadness the only way I know how – stare down the eyepiece, shield behind the lens. Here were his friends and his fans – a pebble on the beach of those lives Juliano Mer Khamis touched.
The audience responded to the emotional testimonies of the speakers with deep awe and respect. For once, at an Amnesty event on Palestine, the trolls stayed away.
Perhaps because spitting counter-progressive bile at a memorial service would be seen as tasteless – or perhaps because Juliano was one of those men a Zionist couldn’t really argue against. Half Jew and half Palestinian, Juliano joined his Israeli mother Arna in Jenin as she set up a youth centre for Palestinian kids. He ran the theatre side of things.
As Arna’s Children showed, the very same kids whose theatrical ambitions he nurtured grew into young adults sucked into the vacuum that was the Second Intifada. A film that started out as a story about his mother and her work in Jenin became a damning and emotional critique of war. Like the Shakespearean tragedies Juliano introduced his classes to, everyone ends up dead in the end. Those that survive walk as vessels carrying their friends’ souls until their own deaths.
Many at the memorial had personal relationships with Palestine – be it through birth, activism, journalism or art. So many coloured the words of Juliano’s friends with their own experiences. When friend and poet Ala Hlehel said “here we are now burying another friend, another fighter, another artist,” he was speaking about one man who used theatre as a weapon against the trauma of war.
The courage Juliano showed was not only about choosing to live and work in Jenin. It was not only about bridging the prejudices now reinforced with a concrete barrier between Israel and the West Bank. Rather, it was about using culture and art to help seal the scars seared onto the skin of Palestine by generations of apartheid. It was about offering a window to the world when there was only war.
There’s a theory that artists create so that when they die, a part of them still walks the earth. Stephan Wolf-Schoenburg put it best when he quoted a parting piece written by Juliano’s students: “Juliano, your mother’s children have passed away. Your mother Arna has passed away and so did you. But your children are going to stay…. Juliano’s Children.”
Leah Borromeo is a journalist and filmmaker who has worked as deputy foreign editor at Sky News, Channel 4 News and APTN; among the publications she contributes to are the Index on Censorship, the British Journal of Photography and Juxtapoz. She films for NGOs, social movements and factual programmes across the developing world from Haiti to Gaza to Pakistan and Iran.
Watch the short film of the evening produced by JNews.
This article may by reproduced on condition that JNews is cited as its source.
Photo by James Wild