Karama is a non-profit organization made up of Arab and non-Arab members. This Friday the organization kicks off its 11th annual San Diego Arab Film Festival.
Karama focuses on issues of the Arab and Islamic world with a special emphasis on Palestine. In 2012, it launched a film festival.
"Heliopolis," screening March 26, looks to Algerian resistance to French colonialism in 1945 while"Trapped," screening March 19, focuses on women from diverse social backgrounds who find themselves caught up in the turmoil of the early days of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Both films show a side of history that people do not often see.
The festival opens Friday night with the Palestinian film"The Stranger" set in the occupied Golan Heights. "I had an interest in the issues of how the colonized world was responding to the growing national liberation movement and independence of so many countries in that period," he recalled."I concluded then that the history of my lifetime was really going to revolve around how that happened, and the goals and success of the colonized people in achieving their aspirations."L.A.