Where

olive

trees

weep

-

Dove

Piangono

gli

Ulivi

NOTE DI REGIA

After The Wisdom of Trauma, we began working on a new project, The Eternal Song, covering intergenerational trauma and the impact of colonization on indigenous people worldwide. Our first episode happened to be in Palestine, where we were invited to a workshop by Dr. Gabor Maté for Palestinian women tending to their trauma after Israeli jail.  The events around Oct 7 unfolded so dramatically that we felt compelled to release this film as a separate feature, as soon as it was completed.

The film was produced over three weeks in May-June 2022, in Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, and the occupied territory of the West Bank: Jericho, the Jordan Valley, Hebron, Bethlehem, and the outskirts of Ramalah.

The stories we share in the film are, to some extent, universally human; they speak of intergenerational pain, trauma and resilience.

We strive to honor the trauma legacy that led many Jews to immigrate to the new state of Israel while unpacking the deeply dangerous and disingenuous notion that this was a “land without a people for a people without a land.”

We deliberately chose to listen to and center the voices of the underrepresented, the oppressed, the colonized, the dehumanized, the underdogs that many Western audiences rarely get a chance to hear or connect with on a human level.

We are well aware of the complexity of historical details, the intricacies of opposing narratives and the convolutions of psychological projections. We expected to find the same complexity on the ground: a multifaceted scenario of shared responsibility and denial. Within a day or two, like anyone who has traveled to those parts, we found out that the big picture is surprisingly clear: a brutal settler colonial project imposing a very harsh form of apartheid and bent on ethnically cleansing an indigenous population by all available means.

We are aware that the underpinning of the whole conflict is the age-old trauma of the Jewish people. It isn’t the subject of this film. We focus more on the relatively recent trauma of the Palestinian people over the last 3  generations.

There can’t be Peace without Justice — We believe that the minimum requirements are equal rights for all, acknowledgment of the trauma of the Palestinian people over the last 75 years, and letting go of partisan narratives of victimization and blame.

Jews, Christians and Muslims were living in harmony before the creation of the state of Israel. Blaming religion for the conflict is an attempt at obfuscating the real causes: land grabs, oppression and dehumanization.

We are all involved. The US official policy is to support Israel, militarily, politically and financially. The billions of dollars of our tax money are fueling the violence and spreading dehumanizing narratives. We are the ones who can change that.

(the title Where olive trees weep) It is a reference to the quote by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears.

Your contribution supports planting olive trees in Palestine, humanitarian aid in Gaza and trauma healing in Palestinian communities. It will also help us bring the movie to larger audiences and broaden the understanding of the situation in Palestine, along with the cycles of trauma that perpetuate it.