The 10th London Palestine Film Festival @ the Barbican (24th – 30th April 2009)

 

Courtesy of Kaushik.net

 

 

Back for a tenth time is the London Palestine Film Festival, offering a rich selection of vital documentary, fiction, art, and animation work related to the question of Palestine.

Shadow of Absence, 2007, by Nasri Hajjaj: An absorbing documentary exploring the anxiety of Palestinian exile through an interrogation of relationships between place, home, and death.

Introduction to the End of An Argument, 1990, by Jayce Salloum & Elia Suleiman: Assembling a combination of Hollywood, European and Israeli film, documentary, news coverage together with excerpts of ‘live’ footage shot in the West Bank and Gaza strip, Introduction to the End of an Argument… critiques Western representations of the Middle East, Arab culture, and the Palestinian people.

Click here to see the full line-up of films at the festival.

One Little Piggy – PIG BUSINESS (2009) by Tracy-Louise Ward

We all know the nursery rhyme, one little piggy went to market, but I bet this time he’s wishing he had stayed at home. It is no great surprise that pig business is big business, given that it is one of the most popular meats on the shelves. The popularity of it, however, is not the problem. Ward’s beef (excuse the pun) is with the lengths gone to in order to feed the world’s insatiable appetite for pig-meat.

As part of its monthly DocSpot event, the Barbican will next month be hosting a special screening of Pig Business followed by a Q&A with Zac Goldsmith, director of The Ecologist magazine…

…A shocking exposé of how gruesome methods of factory farming are increasingly inflicting hidden long-term damage on public health and the environment.

I’ve yet to see the whole film, but from what I’ve read this isn’t one to be taken lightly. Nor is it about converting the entire planet to vegetarianism. It is plainly and simply about the reality of what it takes to get a sausage on your plate for 7p. And as such, this is by no means a film exclusively for vegetarians. Isn’t it about time we ALL know the true cost of cheap meat, not just the people who don’t eat it?

Click here to find out more about the screening (8pm, 27th May 2009 at the Barbican).