(From left) Lina Alabed, Claus Pilehave and Gitte Hansen getting ready for the big leap forward in their project. Photo. Rasmus Sten/IMS

IMS is financially supporting documentary about Palestinian women to be produced in twinning between Syrian and Danish filmmakers

Last week three people met in Copenhagen to discuss in details the plan to produce a documentary film about Palestinian women. With financial support from IMS, Lina Alabed had come from her home in Damascus to meet Gitte Hansen and Claus Pilehave both living in Copenhagen to plan the production phase of the film.

Under the working title "A child is born in Bethlehem, Beirut and Bagsværd" the team is planning to portray three Palestinian women living in different places. Recognizing, that few other population groups are as scattered all over the face of the earth as the Palestinian people, the documentary sets out to capture the similarities as well as the difference in the lives and thinking of these three women.

Patience yields results

The film project has undergone what one might call a slow birth. About three years ago, the first seeds to the idea were sown, when Claus and Gitte visited Damascus and met Lina. They connected well and came up with the idea about the Palestinian women. They managed to research the story and identify three women and did some initial shooting.

Lack of funds to proceed, forced the team to put the project on ice - until one day, more than a year later, Claus and Gitte met with the IMS twinning team, Torben Brandt and Rasmus Sten in one of the open meetings held by IMS regularly to introduce the twinning project to media people in Denmark.

- They saw our material and supported the idea, explains Claus Pilehave.

But the time was not ripe - following the Images of the Middle East Festival in Denmark, DR and other TV media were saturated with programs on the Middle East, so no media bought into the idea at that time.

Today, IMS is supporting the project with enough funds to enable the team to prepare to shoot all material for the documentary on location during spring and summer 2009.

- Now we only need to find funds for editing - and our own salary, Gitte Hansen says with a grin.

Portrayal of three women

In the time passed, the three Palestinian women who were initially cast for the film, have all given birth to their first born. This has inspired the team to try to explore not only the lives of the three women but also to dig into the aspirations, these women may have for their children - and perhaps, in time, to follow on the children in a follow-up to this documentary film.

But first things first - Lina, Gitte and Claus spent their time in Copenhagen planning for visas, tickets and camera men to be hired locally - all practical issues that need to fall into place for the team to embark on the next chapter of their collaboration.

For more information, please contact Rasmus Sten: rs[snabela]i-m-s.dk