German film-maker Marcus Vetter is completing a three-year project to restore a cinema in Jenin, a Palestinian town in the West Bank. The cinema had been shut down by Palestinian militants more than two decades ago.

by Irris Makler

German film-maker Marcus Vetter shot a documentary in Jenin in 2007 – and stayed on to build a cinema to show it in. His documentary film The Heart of Jenin was about Ahmed Khatib, a Palestinian boy killed by Israeli troops while playing with a toy gun in the town’s refugee camp. His parents made the difficult decision to donate their son’s organs to save the lives of other children – Arab and Israeli.

“What Cinema Jenin is all about is trust, because trust is like love, and if you don’t trust you will get something else back, and not love, you will get all those other feelings,” said German film-maker Marcus Vetter.

Shutdown
The documentary won many awards, but it couldn’t be shown in Jenin, where it all happened. The town’s only movie theatre had been shut down by Palestinian militants more than two decades ago. Ahmed’s parents asked Vetter to help renovate and re-open it, because they wanted to create more opportunities for local children. He agreed, although he’d never managed a building project before.

“You can’t open such a place just by helping. It’s impossible as I realised very quickly. This is real work. What I could have helped with was fundraising, but raising money is nothing – raising money just means corruption,” says Vetter.

Vetter has run things in an unorthodox way. He didn’t apply for funding before starting. He just began. There were no high salaries, in fact, no salaries at all for the German architects and engineers. They were all volunteers.
 
“Just take a step, that’s what we did here, just renovate, don’t talk all the time, and do it with all your passion,” says Vetter, explaining his philosophy. The project is ambitious. They’re renovating the old indoor cinema, and building an outdoor one, and a café and guest house, as well as setting up a film production and distribution company.

Costs
So far, it’s cost more than half a million euros. Most of the funding came from the German government, the rest from corporate donors and ordinary people.

But money is always tight. Earlier this year Vetter simply ran out of cash. He wrote to six donors saying he needed 90,000 euro to finish the job. Only one of them replied.

It was legendary British musician Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd.

“Having met all the people involved I felt connected to them and I felt it was the least I could do to give them the money to finish the project,” said Waters, talking by phone from the US.

Waters says he was inspired to help by the generosity of Ahmed Khatib’s father.

“This project fundamentally and always attached to that story, that incredibly moving story. He gives the rest of us hope that we may some point find a partial solution to the plight the Palestinian people find themselves in,” said Waters.

Opposition
But there has been some Palestinian opposition to the project. Earlier this year, Palestinian intellectuals criticised Cinema Jenin. They said the project relied on co-operation with Israel and that they opposed building a cinema while Israel’s occupation army remained in the West Bank. Vetter admits that he was discouraged.

“I did think then that the project might fail. I thought that I can’t keep giving my time to a project which has a fundamentalist approach. It was very depressing,” says Vetter.

But the faith of ordinary Palestinians restored Vetter’s commitment to the project, as did the unswerving determination of Ahmed Khatib’s parents. For them, Cinema Jenin is the fulfilment of a dream. They want the town’s young people to have more of everything than their son had - more opportunities, more of a future and of course more security. When he died, Ahmed saved the lives of five children, who received his organs. With this movie theatre, established in his memory, they hope he will touch the lives of countless more.

Opening
Cinema Jenin is now almost complete. They plan open the outdoor cinema in time to show the final match of the Football World Cup. The official opening of the restored indoor cinema is scheduled for August 2010.