Houston Palestine Film Festival Starts Tonight

Dangit, how does it always do that to me? I’ve meant to check out the Houston Palestinian Film Festival literally for years now — this its fifth year of existence, I’m told — but every time, it sneaks up on me and I nearly forget the damn thing’s happening. sigh. This time it’s even more painful, since festival organizer Brigitte Zabak actually did remind me about it when I ran into her recently. (Sorry! I suck…)

Anyway, it’s not too late; the festival starts tonight (Friday, May 13th) at 7PM, with the documentary Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork by filmmaker Eyal Sivan. The film looks pretty intriguing, tracing the history and meaning of the “Jaffa Orange,” a fruit that was apparently originally cultivated by the Arabic inhabitants of Palestine but morphed over time into a global brand and corporate entity far distanced from the Palestinians themselves.

The fest continues over this weekend (5/13-5/15) and the next (5/20-5/21), and all the showings look similarly interesting, especially tomorrow night’s A Night of Shorts collection. The first weekend of films will be at the Rice Media Center, with the second over at the Museum of Fine Arts — I dunno what the ticket price is, I’m afraid, but I can’t imagine it’ll be too expensive, being relatively low-key as film festivals go.

Well worth checking out, I think; I’m hoping to maybe drag the wife out to see one of the screenings this year…