Obliterated Families

Gaza. Once the war finishes, the struggle begins. Support our web documentary about families who lost many members in 2014 Israeli attacks.

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07/05/2016

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€15,475

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Chères toutes et tous;Demain (22 Juillet 2017) ne manquez pas sur ARTE à 18h50 (heure de Paris) notre reportage GAZA : LA MER NE VEUT PLUS DE MOI (15mn). Trois ans après l'offensive israélienne de 2014, nous sommes retourné.e.s dans la bande de Gaza, pendant le Ramadan, pour retrouver Ala Balata dont nous avions raconté le récit dans #ObliteratedFamilies. Ala vit dans le souvenir de ces proches disparus et rêve comme tant d'autres à Gaza de partir. Le reportage raconte ses luttes et espoirs, ainsi que le quotidien difficile dans la Bande de Gaza. Le reportage sera en ligne pour 7 jours sur le site d'ARTE sur arte.tv!Ce reportage se veut comme un vidéo épilogue de notre projet.Nous revenons vers vous très vite avec plus de nouvelles.

Dear Friends,   It's really hard to believe that the web documentary was launched already more than half a year ago. A lot had happened since then, and we wanted to send you some updates. We have a lot of good news, so please forgive us the length!   First of all, we want to wish you all the best in 2017. Even if the world news are very depressing and our thoughts are notably with the people of Syria and the refugees who are freezing in Europe in inhumane conditions, we found some comfort in knowing that many people don't give up and stand everywhere for their rights and in solidarity with others.   Here are some updates about the project that is still developing and growing, meaning that our team is still working on it almost full-time:   <ol> <li> We made very important additions to the content of the web documentary: - a photo gallery with all the 53 families that were visited for the project. Each family is presented through photos and a small text. <a href="http://obliteratedfamilies.com/en/library/">http://obliteratedfamilies.com/en/library/</a> - our exhibition kit on-line, ready to be downloaded. We really hope some of you will take it and make it their own, spreading the images and stories, so that the people of Gaza are not forgotten. Its really an easy and effective tool to reach out people. If you do use it, please think of sending photos of the exhition so we can spread in our social media. <a href="http://obliteratedfamilies.com/en/get-involved/">http://obliteratedfamilies.com/en/get-involved</a> - also, all the ten chapters are online, as we have recently uploaded the last story – of al-Majdalawi family   </li> <li> We have produced beautifully designed booklets, both in English and French. They contain the stories of three families with the texts and photos, together with the introduction of Amira Hass. If you are interested in ordering the booklets (minimum order of 10 copies) please contact us. They were published in collaboration with one of our new partners: Belmundo publishing, a women-led independent company based in Poland. The booklets were printed on environmentaly-friendly paper.<img alt="15403027_10211802399079250_213413751_n-1489312378" src="https://d3v4jsc54141g1.cloudfront.net/uploads/project_image/image/401727/15403027_10211802399079250_213413751_n-1489312378.gif" /> </li> <li> We got an important award in France! The project has won AFD award in the multimedia category. <a href="http://www.afd.fr/lang/en/home/presse-afd/evenements/prix-photo-afd">http://www.afd.fr/lang/en/home/presse-afd/evenements/prix-photo-afd</a>. This is our second award after the Swiss Web Public vote Award. Also, Anne Paq has won the first prize from International Photographer of the Year in the category Editorial: Documentary for her photos of the Obliterated Families. We are all so very proud of her and honoured to work together.   </li> <li> Just a day before the AFD award giving ceremony, we were giving a presentation at the Institute du Monde Arabe in Paris. Very special place, real honour to present there. Sylvian Cypel gave an introduction to the talk. We had a few special guest speakers: Ramsis al-Kilani, Mahmoud Abu Rahma from Al-Mezan Human Rights Center and Hélène Legeay from ACAT. ACAT supports the complaint submitted by the Shuheibar family against the French company Exxelia. During the interview with the family, Paq discovered, among the shrapnel from the missile which killed three Shuheibar children, a component produced by the Exxelia Company (formerly Eurofrad). The proceedings in France represent a very concrete result of our work in terms of advocating for justice. We hope that it could lead to the acknowledgement of the wrongdoing, of a fact that war crimes were committed in Gaza It is also a good opportunity to highlight arms trade between Israel and France and other European countries.   </li> <li> Also, we got a bit of media attention (for French speakers): <a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/reportages/obliterated-families-le-web-documentaire-qui-porte-la-voix-des-victimes-gazaouies-de-2014">http://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/reportages/obliterated-families-le-web-documentaire-qui-porte-la-voix-des-victimes-gazaouies-de-2014</a> and a radio interview (also in French): <a href="http://www.rfi.fr/emission/20161224-bande-gaza-2014-familles-decimees-droits-homme-israel-territoires-palestiniens">http://www.rfi.fr/emission/20161224-bande-gaza-2014-familles-decimees-droits-homme-israel-territoires-palestiniens</a> a story on IPOTY awward for Anne in Electronic intifada: <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/gaza-series-wins-international-photography-prize">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/gaza-series-wins-international-photography-prize</a>   </li> <li> We partnered up with two French organisations : ACAT and CCFD. French on-line Orient XXI joined us a media partner. We hope to secure more partnerships very soon.   </li> <li> We have been extremely busy organizing presentations and exhibitions in many different places. So far we had presentations in France, Denmark, Northern Ireland, Poland, Germany, Belgium and Holland. We have also taken the project to London this February to a high-profile event organized by Lush Company who awarded us with a grant. In London we tried out a new exhibition design, please see our facebook page to check it out in 360 degrees (see also update). We are also pleased to had the exhibition shown in Kriterion Cinema in Amsterdal for one month.). In April we will be heading to the US!   </li> <li> Our films start to be picked up by film festival: so far the 13' “Gaza: A Gaping Wound” was accepted in 6 festivals: Barcelona Planet Film Festival; New Haven International Festival, Belfast Respect for Human Rights festival, Karbala Film Festival, Ann Arbor Palestine film festival (US), and Houston Palestine Film Festival (US)     </li> <li> Anne is back in Gaza now getting involved in a new project, but directly related to the work: a documentary about Ramsis Kilani and his quest for justice in Germany (see the kilani chapter in our webdoc). She is co-directing it with Dror Dayan, who also edited many of our short films. This is important in terms of highlighting the lack of legal remedies for Palestinians, and the complicity of the European states in maintaining Israel impunity. If you wish to support this new project, or get involved in other ways, please contact Anne directly at: <a href="mailto:annepaq@gmail.com">annepaq@gmail.com</a>. The team already gathered dozens of hours of interesting, strong footage.<img alt="17274200_1836625309936745_1228101151_n-1489312251" src="https://d3v4jsc54141g1.cloudfront.net/uploads/project_image/image/401726/17274200_1836625309936745_1228101151_n-1489312251.jpg" />   </li> <li> We are now applying for additional funding for few purposes: 1)to develop Arabic version of the web documentary 2) to produce podcasts, 3) returning to the Gaza Strip and producing an epilogue. You can support our efforts by donate via pay pal at info@obliteratedfamilies.com </li> </ol>   Finally, with all these developments, it has been difficult to follow up with the goodies we are supposed to send to you and we apologize again. Anne will be travelling for the next three months; and will only be able to sign the cards and photos when she is back in June. We are sorry for the delay! But we did not forget, and we thank you for your patience and understanding.   Thank you for supporting this project!

Dear friends and supporters!   This has been a long summer for us: we have worked tirelessly on finishing the website “<a href="http://obliteratedfamilies.com/">Obliterated Families</a>” and we have succeeded, thanks to all your support. So thank you!   We wanted to ask you for one minute of your time: Obliterated Families web-documentary is part of the Swiss Web Festival, an annual international event focusing on creative web content. Please vote on line for the web-doc you have already so generously supported. You will find us in the documentary section, or just go to this page: <a href="http://www.swisswebfestival.com/en-competition/tous-les-programmes/obliterated-families.html,9,2,0,0,345" target="_blank">http://www.swisswebfestival.com/en-competition/tous-les-programmes/obliterated-families.html,9,2,0,0,345</a> and enter your email address and click on 5 (we are hoping this is how you will rate our work). Finally, go to your email, you will have a message from the festival, with the link you need to click to validate your vote. Winning the public vote would be a really important endorsement for this project and a great opportunity to bring up the topic of the Gaza Strip. As you know, much work has gone into making the site, and promotion is the crucial and final step in bringing it to as wide a public as possible. The deadline for voting is October 13. We hope you can help us spread the word and encourage your friends to vote for the “Obliterated Families” web doc. Please take the 30 seconds to do it. It will mean a lot to us. Spread the word.   Now, all the other updates!   First of all, we have received a lot of feedback concerning the problems with loading the website. We have involved more IT help and moved the website to CMS, which should solve most of it; the change ensures the website is lighter and runs smoother. So it should be easier to browse it. Still, we encourage everyone to use Chrome and full screen mode to visit obliteratedfamilies.com. The mobile version is now working but we are still working on making it better. Secondly, we had the pleasure of presenting the project in Belfast, Copenhagen, Warsaw and Berlin. We combined the screening of our short film Gaza. A Gaping Wound (13 ') with our photo exhibition, and talk. Next week we will be in Belgium, in five different places, day by day. It's a marathon, but we are really looking forward to meeting some of you there and sharing the story of this work. Here is our schedule. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1136016919845913/">https://www.facebook.com/events/1136016919845913/</a> Anne is travelling to Brazil, and she will present the work there. Ala is staying in Europe for next couple of months and planning to hold a couple more talks about the project. Please get in touch if you would like to host us for a talk; we really think the presentations and meetings with viewers are super important. Thirdly, we have prepared a booklet. The first edition came out beautiful – it contained one of the introductions and two chapters, printed on ecological paper, well-designed – it drew attention of people in all kinds of fields. So we decided to prepare printing of additional 400 copies, this time with three chapters, maps, factsheets. Of course this is plenty of additional work, but since the paper version of the stories turned out to have such a strong promotional attributes, we decided to go for it. If you know any friendly bookshops that would be interested in selling the booklets, please get in touch with us, especially before we start the printing.   Also, we are very pleased to have a new partner CCFD (Comité catholique contre la faim et pour le développement-Terre Solidaire (CCFD-Terre solidaire)), a French developmental organisation. This will help us to spread the project and develop it further.   Finally, we have to apologize to all of you: we are going to be couple of weeks late with sending you the gifts we have promised during the crowdfunding. But, there is a silver lining to that: we have partnered with Belmondo publishing – young women-printers from Warsaw, who make sure all the gifts are printed in high-quality, elegant and environmentally conscious manner. They are also overlooking the printing of the booklets.   It seems we have another year of hard work ahead of us, this time mostly presentations and promotions, but also developping additional features and materials to enrich the webdocumentary so of course we are happy to accept your support for the further development of the website. Contact us at <a href="mailto:info@obliteratedfamilies.com">info@obliteratedfamilies.com</a> if you want to be further involved or/and support.   Please see below a few selected articles and a podcats about our work:   “Gaza, les vivants et les morts de l'été 2014”, by Emmanual Riondé, revue Regards <a href="http://www.regards.fr/monde/article/gaza-les-vivants-et-les-morts-de-l-ete-2014#comments">http://www.regards.fr/monde/article/gaza-les-vivants-et-les-morts-de-l-ete-2014#comments</a> <ul> <li> “Obliterated families: bringing the audience closer to the reality of life in Gaza”, i-doc site web <a href="http://i-docs.org/2016/08/30/obliterated-families-bringing-the-audience-closer-to-the-reality-of-life-in-gaza/">http://i-docs.org/2016/08/30/obliterated-families-bringing-the-audience-closer-to-the-reality-of-life-in-gaza/</a> </li> <li> “Intimate portraits of Gaza’s lost”, by Charlotte Silver, on Electronic Intifada <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/intimate-portraits-gazas-lost/17426">https://electronicintifada.net/content/intimate-portraits-gazas-lost/17426</a> </li> <li> “Web documentary tells stories of Gaza‘s obliterated families”, by Eloïse Bollack, on Palestine Monitor <a href="http://palestinemonitor.org/details.php?id=6di27va13514y048gz8bpv">http://palestinemonitor.org/details.php?id=6di27va13514y048gz8bpv</a> </li> <li> podcast: we were very happy to present our work on Voices programme on kotti.fm, a German community-based radio http://kotti.fm/podcast/obliterated-families/ </li> </ul>

Dear supporters, Today we are finally launching the first part of the multimedia web documentary Obliterated Families! Five chapters, texts by Raja Shehadeh and Amira Hass and a 12-minute film are now accessible at: <a href="https://www.obliteratedfamilies.com" target="_blank">https://www.obliteratedfamilies.com</a>.   <img alt="Screen_shot_2016-07-09_at_20.49.56-1468091203" src="https://d3v4jsc54141g1.cloudfront.net/uploads/project_image/image/337106/Screen_Shot_2016-07-09_at_20.49.56-1468091203.png" /> We hope it will be a reminder about the siege and occupation of the Gaza Strip, that it will reach many people and prevent them from staying indifferent. We also want the documentary to alert people that Gaza has not been yet rebuilt and lives of many are still shattered. We are infinitely grateful for all your support, both financial and different. It played a huge part in making this work possible. The documentary will grow over time. We are still preparing factsheets that will provide important context to the stories we tell. A library section will contain a collection of additional materials. And, of course, the remaining five chapters will be published within a month and a half. Each on the anniversary of the attack on the particular family. Here are the exact dates:   • Siyam family, 21 July • Balata family, 30 July • Maadi family, 1 August • Al-Majdalawi family, 3 August • Al-Louh family, 20 August We will also go on collecting donations in order to make a few other extensions possible. These will include: – podcasts (audible version of each chapter, the foreword and the introduction) – booklet: elegantly designed texts and photos on paper – translation of the whole web documentary into Arabic – another year has passed: updates from Gaza.   If you are interested in helping developing these new ideas, please contact us on: info@obliteratedfamilies.com As promised, the names of all the people who made a financial contribution are mentioned in the 'credits' section of the website. The rewards corresponding to the size of the donation will be shipped in October. One more time we would like to thank you from the bottoms of our hearts. We hope you will be pleased with the final result.

Dear all, We are pleased to announce that we have surpassed 60% of our crowdfunding goal! We are grateful, not just for the financial contributions, but for all the faith in our project many of you have expressed.   The campaign will continue for 17 more days. Please help us spread the word, so that we can reach even more people. We are really hoping to go beyond the initial goal, so that we can add podcasts to the website, have a print version of the families' stories, and finally - an Arabic version of the web documentary.   We also want to share with you a few updates about the work: We are now intensively working on the web design (you can catch a short glimpse in the video), finishing the texts and the videos. Our team is scattered in different countries and cities: Berlin, Athens, Warsaw, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, France, the UK and some other places. And we make it work!   <div class="embed"> <iframe allowfullscreen="" class="embedly-embed" frameborder="0" height="304" scrolling="no" src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FyuxZObb6Kcc%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&wmode=opaque&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DyuxZObb6Kcc&key=ff2702755d9749cda571c6d6c2f3eb46&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube" width="540"></iframe></div>   It's really exciting to see the website coming together! We spend hours making sure that the stories will be told in a proper way, that the photos and texts match each other, that the videos are in a proper place.   Still, there is a lot of work left, not only because the web documentary will be both in English and French, but also because we took up some last minute ideas, that require additional research.   We still have a long way to go, but we feel confident that the web documentary will be a very special documentation.   Within the next two weeks we will share with you a 13-minute film, an introduction and an overview of the stories we tell.   Please, stay tuned for more updates.   Again thank you for all your support. Whenever we feel tired in the face of this immense work, there is nothing more encouraging for us to continue, than knowing that so many people believe that this project matters.

Obliterated Families

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