Thursday| 30 October | 6:30 - 8:00 p.m .

The Jerusalem Fund Gallery and The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, Georgetown University present

Fady Joudah
reading from his new collection of poetry
The Earth in the Attic
and from his translation of Mahmoud Darwish's recent poetry
The Butterfly's Burden

Fady Joudah was the 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for The Earth in the Attic.  In his poems Joudah explores big themes--identity, war, religion, what we hold in common--while never losing sight of the quotidian, the specific. Contest judge Louise Gluck describes the poet in her Foreword as "that strange animal, the lyric poet in whom circumstance and profession...have compelled obsession with large social contexts and grave national dilemmas." She finds in his poetry an incantatory quality and concludes, "These are small poems, many of them, but the grandeur of conception is inescapable. The Earth in the Attic is varied, coherent, fierce, tender; impossible to put down, impossible to forget."  Published by Yale University Press, April 2008.

Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American doctor and has been a member of Doctors Without Borders since 2001.  His translation of Mahmoud Darwish's recent poetry, The Butterfly's Burden, received the 2008 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.  He currently resides in Houston, Texas.

Saturday|13 September | 8:00 p.m.|Georgetown University 

The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development and The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University proudly present

Selections from the ReOrient Festival:
An Evening of Palestinian Plays

Featuring plays by Fateh Azzam, Yussef El Guindi, Edward Mast, Hanna Eady & Betty Shamieh, produced by Torange Yeghiazarian

Each year the ReOrient Festival brings innovative and thought-provoking theatre from and about the Middle East to San Francisco.  Now, for the first time, selections from the Festival will be presented to a D.C. audience. 

The featured selections are:
     -Baggage by Fateh Azzam
       A traveler is unable to let go of his baggage in the surreal airport of life.
     -The Monologist Suffers Her Monologue by Yussef El Guindi
       A Palestinian-American explores her identity in this comedic monologue. In the dialogue of  
       nations, do you ever get the feeling that Palestine is just a whiny monologue?
     -Sahmata by Edward Mast & Hanna Eady
       A grandfather and grandson travel back to the time of the destruction of their family village.
     -Tamam by Betty Shamieh
       Her name is Tamam.  It means 'enough'.

For more information, visit http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/reorientfestival.html .

Voices of Palestine: Summer 2008 Film Series





This annual summer film series highlights recent documentary and feature films from and about Palestine that explore the social, cultural and political complexities of Palestinian life and identity.

For a complete listing of the films and their descriptions, please go to http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/filmseries.php .

"Songs from the Gulf"
with Souhail Kaspar and Rachid Halihal

Grammy nominee Souhail Kaspar and internationally acclaimed musician Rachid Halihal team up to present a performance of popular songs from the Gulf.  Kaspar is a master percussionist trained at the Conservatory of Traditional Arabic Music in Aleppo and Halihal is a multi-talented oud/violin player and vocalist trained at the Conservatory of Music in Fez.  Kaspar has performed with Sabah, Fairuz, Cheb Mami and Kathem al-Saher, among others.  In 2002 he partnered with Naser Musa to record Khaliji, a collection of popular songs from the Gulf which garnered critical acclaim.  Halihal has performed with the Andalus Orchestra of Fez as well as with the beloved Gulf singers Mohamed Abdu, Abdel Mageed Abdallah, and Rachid el Maajid.

Saturday| 1 March 2008 | 7:30 p.m. | Gaston Hall, Georgetown University

The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development and
The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University proudly present

The Arabesque Music Ensemble


    

Performing in Washington, DC as part of their national tour to promote the new release, the eight-piece ensemble has garnered critical acclaim, with praise for its "precise rhythms and perfect intonation" (Washington Post) as well as its "rich textures and musical versatility" (Los Angeles Times). The ensemble's 2006 release, The Songs of Sheikh Sayyed Darweesh: Soul of a People, was named one of the top-ten world music recordings by The Boston Globe.

"Marcel Khalife and the Mayadine Ensemble"

with the support of the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC)
and the Washington, DC Chapter of the Network of Arab-American Professionals (NAAP-DC)

November 1 and 2, 2007
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Terrace Theater

Named UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2005, Lebanese composer, oud master and singer Marcel Khalife is one of the world's leading Arab musicians. Performing his critically acclaimed new work "Taqasim" (Improvisations) as well as works from his old and new lyrical repertoire, Khalife is accompanied by Rami Khalife on piano, Peter Herbert on bass and Bachar Khalife on percussion.

In his association with great contemporary Arab poets, particularly Palestinian poet par excellence Mahmoud Darwish, Khalife seeks to renew the character of the Arabic song, to break its stereotypes and to advance the culture of the society that surrounds it. On his journey, Marcel Khalife invents and creates original music, a novel world of sounds, freed of all established rules. This language elevates him to the level of an ambassador of his own culture and to the vanguard of Near Eastern music innovators.

Thursday | 30 November 2006 | 7:00-8:30 p.m.

Karim Kadiri and Najeeb
Performing
M'Oud Swing Original Compositions

Karim Kadiri and Najeeb of M'Oud Swing will be performing some of their band's original pieces composed by Karim. Karim blends traditional Arabic, Egyptian, Moroccan and Berber modes with jazz. Najeeb is a world class drummer who has performed all over the globe with giants such as Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock, Gary Burton and others. He will be performing on his new instrument, the dumbek.

Wednesday, 14 June 2006
Betty Shamieh
Palestinian playwright, author, screenwriter and actor

Shamieh, the first Palestinian-American playwright to have a play premiere off-Broadway, will be presenting excerpts of her critically acclaimed play Chocolate in Heat and her forthcoming novel.  Her play Roar had its off-Broadway premiere at The New Group under the direction of Tony-nominated Marion McClinton and starred Annabella Sciorra and Sarita Choudhury.  Roar was selected as a New York Times Critic's Pick for its entire extended run.  Her play The Black Eyed premiered at the Magic Theatre in 2005.  Trinity Repertory Theatre commissioned and optioned her play Territories.  Shamieh performed in her play of monologues Chocolate in Heat - Growing Up Arab in America, which had three sold out and critically acclaimed off-off-Broadway runs and subsequently toured over twenty venues across the United States.  She has been awarded an NEA grant, Sundance Theatre residency, New Dramatists Van Lier Fellowship, a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study & Conference Center, an Arts International grant, a Yaddo residency, and a New York Foundation for the Arts playwriting award. She was selected as a 2004-2005 Harvard University Clifton Visiting Artist and is currently serving on the New York Foundation for the Arts playwriting advisory board.  Her life and work have been profiled in American Theatre Magazine, Time Out, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, and The New York Times.  A graduate of Harvard University and the Yale School of Drama, she was selected as a 2005-2006 Playwriting Fellow at Harvard/Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies.  Shamieh is currently working on a Time Warner commission from Second Stage Theatre.