Screening of Nine Star Hotel announced
Skidmore will host a screening of Nine Star Hotel followed by a question and answer session with Israeli filmmaker Ido Haar at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 21, in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.
Just as Mexicans cross U.S. borders illegally to find work as day laborers, thousands of Palestinians do likewise into neighboring Israel, seeking jobs in construction. For Nine Star Hotel, Israeli filmmaker Ido Haar gained the trust of a group of nomadic young men whom he observed fleeing from police, risking their lives to cross highways at night, sleeping in makeshift hovels - a dramatic contrast to the luxury housing they build by day. "We think backwards - we never think forward. We are like scavengers, like those who harvest olives after the locust," one of his subjects confesses with lyrical simplicity.
The film is a portrait of young men caught in an economic and political maelstrom not of their own making - their dreams subsumed by the hard reality of day-to-day survival. Reviewer Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times wrote, "Draws us into the precarious world of young Palestinian construction workers scrabbling to survive. A documentary filled with immediacy. Fascinating." Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post said Nine Star Hotel "Presents--without rancor and with deep pathos--the irony of dispossessed young men who would normally be lauded for eschewing violence and striving to make a living, but find themselves building someone else's future."
Ido Haaris an Israeli filmmakerwho has worked extensively for Israeli TV, focusing on directing, shooting, and editing documentaries on social, political and cultural subjects. Nine Star Hotelwon the Best Documentary prize at the 2006 Jerusalem International Film Festival. Another film by Haar, Melting Siberia, also enjoyed worldwide success.
The performance and discussion are sponsored by Skidmore Hillel, the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, and college's Government Department.
