The Arab American University in Ramallah hosted the German director Robert Craig in a training workshop on "Documentary Filmmaking," which was attended by a group of young filmmakers, and the students and faculty members from the Department of Arabic Language and Media and the Department of Technology and Multi-Media at the university.
Part of the workshop
The Responsible of Archive in Palestine Television Rula Shahwan introduced the German director to the attendants, saying: "The director is one of the most supportive to the Palestinian Cause, and he has a wide range of technical contributions in this area, and he has a work experience exceeding thirty years in the field of filmmaking, and he came to our home country to participate in the Palestinian TV program named "Glare of Memory".
During the workshop which lasted for five hours, filmmaker Craig displayed his documentary "Children of the Stones .. Children of the Wall", a long documentary and its duration is 87 minutes, produced in 2010, which tells the story of six children during the first intifada in Beit Sahour and the change that occurred to them after 20 years of their lives.
The film begins with the director carrying an old photo he had photographed in 1989 which he brought with him when returning to Bethlehem in 2010 in search of the six children whom he took their photo during the events of the Palestinian uprising. He displays the moment he found the children whom he had previously photographed twenty years ago, and whom have become today, without a doubt, men .. exhibiting his discovery of how these children became, and what they ended up to, and to where the walks of life, which they were trying to establish at the time of the uprising, had ended up with them. In addition to the impact of settlements, the annexation wall and the racial expansion on the Palestinians who became unable to move from one governorate to another without authorization from the Israeli army.
The film screening was followed a long debate with the director about the film's media value, and the technical and substantial issues of the story, also a discussion on the issue of film screenings in Germany and the European countries, and the difficulties that face the filmmakers there, in case the films speak about the Palestinian cause.
The filmmaker focused in the workshop on how to build a documentary film, and how the young director, should work on finding good pictures on the subject posed by the film.
It is worth mentioning that the film director introduced the movie "Uprising the way to Freedom" twenty years ago, and the movie "I came to Palestine," which were displayed in some Arab festivals.