Houston Chronicle · Houston, Texas · 26 October 1986

CP-1986-005

Palestinian artist, Dutch Jewish film maker make film about homecoming

The film is a human look at the state of Israel and the Palestinian issue.

Barbara Karkabi, Houston Chronicle

Transcribed from the clipping

“Kamal Boullata emerged from an afternoon at the Rothko Chapel with a gleam in his eye and the hope that one day he might be able to create a similar spot in his hometown, Jerusalem… ‘I want it to have the same feeling of peace and meditation that the Rothko Chapel has, and, of course, it should be non-denominational,’ said the 43-year-old Palestinian artist and writer, who says that he was raised a Christian, but is culturally a Moslem and existentially a Jew… Boullata has lived in the United States for almost 20 years, since the 1967 Israeli-Arab war, but he returned in 1985, accompanied by a Dutch Jewish film maker and his crew, who filmed the story of his homecoming. The resulting full-length, non-fiction film, Stranger At Home, was shown in Houston last week in conjunction with an exhibition of his art work currently on display at the University of Houston… ‘One cannot think about being Palestinian, without being aware of Jews. We’re very much tied together,’ said Boullata… ‘The price of making a film in my own life was hell personally. My wife dropped out after the second day because she couldn’t take it,’ Boullata said. ‘I had not realized it would be so intense.’… Still, he admits, he probably would never have returned to the city of his birth if it hadn’t been for van den Berg’s encouragement. For that he is grateful. He found Jerusalem to be at once different and the same from the city he left 20 years ago. ‘Of course, there are things that have changed. But, one night I took Lilly and walked around the old city of Jerusalem with my eyes closed. I knew it so well, I was able to find my way,’ he recalled. ‘I have always thought that Jerusalem was not so much a place as it was a time.’… ‘I would like to think so. If Jews and Palestinians can’t get together on something as simple as this, then maybe there is no hope, after all,’ he said.”

Context added by this archive

Fourteen years after the Charlottesville interview and eighteen years out of Jerusalem. Money from the sale of his prints went to a scholarship endowment for two Palestinian students a year. Photo credit: Timothy Bullard / Chronicle.

Cite this item

"Palestinian artist, Dutch Jewish film maker make film about homecoming," Houston Chronicle, 26 October 1986. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1986-005. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1986-005

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