One Family in Gaza from Jen Marlowe on Vimeo.
A note from filmmaker Jen Marlowe: Six months after the three-week Israeli assault that killed 1,390 Palestinians, I visited Gaza.
I had been to Gaza and to many other war zones numerous times in the past, but never had I left any place feeling as shattered as I did leaving Gaza in August 2009.. The feeling, I realized, came from having absorbed the trauma that the people I met in Gaza were still living through.
Though I did not intend to make a film, I brought my video camera with me. After all, so few internationals were getting into Gaza--it seemed important to have a means to document what I would see and hear there.
Friends met me at the crossing and began to show me some of the places most devastated in the assault. They brought me to an area where families whose homes had been destroyed in Beit Lahiya (northern Gaza Strip) were now living in a small tent city, in the shadow of a destroyed clinic that had been shelled from the sea.
I heard many painful stories, but one story--one family--the Awajah family--stood out to me. I spent three days with Kamal, Wafaa and their children, sleeping with them in their tent, talking to the parents, playing with the children and filming them and their story.
What compelled me to tell this family's story? Not only what they endured, but their strength and courage. I was moved by their tragedy but moved equally by the love for their children that came through Wafaa and Kamal's every word and action.
It is now the two-year anniversary of the assault on Gaza, and today, January 4th, is the two-year anniversary of what the Awajah family (and so many other families in Gaza) lived through. The 23-minute film is complete. Their story will now be told.
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