https://vimeo.com/99365257
My film about one of Jordan's jewels - finished, polished and ready to view!
It's probably best if you download it, then watch, as it's HD.
Watch it on full screen if you can. It will take 40 minutes of your time, so completely understood if that's too long. But this place is a beautiful and inspiring gem; an oasis and escape from a dusty city, and we hope far enough from the tentacles of the caliphate in the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham.
There is still much going on in this region to be celebrated.
My film about one of Jordan's jewels - finished, polished and ready to view!
It's probably best if you download it, then watch, as it's HD.
Watch it on full screen if you can. It will take 40 minutes of your time, so completely understood if that's too long. But this place is a beautiful and inspiring gem; an oasis and escape from a dusty city, and we hope far enough from the tentacles of the caliphate in the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham.
There is still much going on in this region to be celebrated.
The video takes ages to download. One has to have a REALLY fast connection to be able to see it in a continuous way.
ReplyDeleteOf course the importance of this establishment - Darat al Funun is that it located in an Arab country. Numerous such establishments have been existing for ages out of the Arab world (including of course in hated Israel).
The Arab world must be really in a dire state if the many millions of Arabs that exist in the world managed to produce such an establishment only 25 years ago.
From the small section of the movie I saw (takes too long to upload) seems like the Arabs (in this case Jordanians) didn't really care, take interest or preserve the ancient remains of other civilizations who left their marks in these areas (like the Romans) and interest and preservation also started late.
The hated Israelis by the way did take a lot of interest since long ago in these things and did a state of the art job in studying, preserving and exhibiting the ancient history and remains of the holy land. But probably won't be credited for that by people like you.
Also today in Jordan it is westerners who advise and control projects that have to do with preservation, history, archeology. I've heard that there's a new museum in Amman - the Jordan museum. I wonder who was behind te planning of it, the academic knowledge, construction of the exhibitions etc. I wouldn't be surprised westerners asvised on these issues.
The architect that was interviewed did a nice job but I wonder where he got his education from? was it in Jordan? I doubt. Was it in another Arab country? I doubt. Where did the top Jordanian architects, doctors, scientists got their education from? Probably from a western country.
I't not that Darat al Funun is not a nice and important establishment. But with this admiration to everyting Arab and the loathing of everything Israeli one I think should put it in perspective. It seems to me like this place is the exception that proves the rule regarding what's happeing in the Arab world, so while it is a ray of light one should also remember that there's a whole lot of darkness around it.
Also, as the founder of this place rightly mentioned, the Arabs who lived in the middle east didn't have a national identity that was attached to a specific area. They moved from area to area. They married people from other areas, they bought lands in different areas. They shared history, culture, way of life, language.
Going back to politics, it is obvious then that the Palestinian refugee problem is not that of people who were uprooted from their country and now have to build new lives for themselves in countries and among peoples they have nothing in common with (by the way like millions of Europeans did in the 20th century - had to rebuild lives for themselves in countries with a different language, culture, history etc), but an artificial problem that was created by the Arab countries who deliberately refused to give citizenship or let the Arabs from Palestine fully intergrate in their countries in order to fuel the Arab Israeli conflict and keep it alive by enhancing their misery and landless status.
After all, if these people who lived in the middle east before the Sykes–Picot agreement and the establishment of Israel were so used to moving from one area to another and mingling with one another - why was it so difficult for Arabs from Palestine to feel at home in what is now Lebanon or Jordan or Syria?