This day, a sandstorm from the desert came over to Jenin. Nevertheless, preparations for the first Open-Day went ahead as planned: we cleaned the cinema, sorted out the front stairs that were heavily stained from the construction work, and swept the cinema garden to make it nice and comfortable for the expected visitors.

At five pm, on the dot, all was finished and the doors were opened: in came people of all ages and gender- families, elderly people, groups of children and young women and men. Women, who so far haven’t had any public space to meet in Jenin, besides the mosque, came in great numbers, many of them all made-up for this special event.

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Three and a half months before the opening festival will take place in Jenin, two workshops offered by Cinema Jenin have been started. Volunteer Mike Gentile is very glad to lead a film and editing workshop with about 30 Palestinian locals: “It’s a new experience to offer a workshop and I really enjoy the time with the participants because all of them are very interested in learning how to create a film.” Both workshops are kindly sponsored by HERZENSSACHE e.V. from SWR Baden Baden.

That enthusiasm was a crucial factor for Mike to defer his intended studies, which would begin next month. According to that, he will stay in Jenin for an undetermined amount of time to build up a professional film team, which will be able to create advertising movies for the new LED-Screen. That huge screen (4×6m) to be placed on the cinema’s roof probably arrives in May. The participants are trained in technical skills like shooting, cutting and editing. “The workshop is a great experience for us, some kind of adventure”, Mona Staiti, a participant, said. One of the main characteristics of the workshop, which she especially points out, is the teamwork. “All of us are involved in discussions and processes so that everybody for example gets the chance to be a director or cameraman. We take all decisions together.”

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Early in the morning, Walid, our great guide, picked us up at the guesthouse. It was really cold in February. We have been a small group of braves, ready to share the beauty of the first sun-rays over Jenin’s mountains.

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Dear friends of Project Cinema Jenin,
some month ago the habitants of Jenin did not really know what these strange foreigners from Europe are doing in their city. Slowly the people realized and understood from personal talks with the team, the volunteers and the local helping hands that we plan to renovate and re-open the cinema next year. So we decided to start a campain in the city to make sure that everybody gets to know about it. In the first step we now have our flyer in Arabic language. Furthermore we announced the re-opening of the cinema, as you can see, on a big banner in Arabic language on the roof of the cinema. Later there will be a LED-screen for commercials produced by the youngsters of the Cinema Jenin Filmschool and Cinema Jenin Production, featuring the movies wich will be show next in the cinema. There are many more ideas regarding this screen.

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We had a wonderful barbeque on the last evening of Ramadan with a few craftsmen and a German medical student (Lisa), an intern at a hospital in Jerusalem who stayed at the guesthouse over the holidays. Afterwards we went out for a night on the town. The town was more crowded than ever – unbelievable. Everybody seemed relieved; the crowd’s mood was decidedly different and better than during the previous days.

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In June 2008, Marcus was the surprise guest at „Social Entrepreneurship Forum“ in Potsdam. He showed the trailer of Heart of Jenin and the audience, mainly tough business men, have been deeply moved. So was I. At the following speakers’ dinner, I sat next to him. „This project’s energy is simply incredible. I would love to take part.“ „Welcome“ was his answer.
For the second time, I am here in Jenin now. Sitting in the basement of this old, beautifully renovated guesthouse. I’m enjoying the fresh air and the peace in the middle of this amazing, boiling hot, vivid, dusty city.

And here, in Jenin, I can feel this high energy again. This house is an open system, attracting people from all over the world. They come, they observe, they listen and then they get hooked – everybody ready to participate, contributing with whatever they can. With a brush in their hand to paint a window frame, or a camera to advise the kids how to shoot scenes of their daily life, with a knife to cut the kilos of freshly bought vegetables from the market around the corner to prepare dinner for numerous hungry stomachs, or sitting at one of the laptops, sending mails or working on the layout of an “Cinema Jenin coming soon” advertisement – or just sitting on the terrace till late, a glass of peppermint in one hand and a cigarette in the other, thinking out of the box to find solutions and new ideas or just talking about the daily impressions….

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Dear friends,
Here comes a short stroy from our daily life in Jenin. Our architect Johannes and myself, we both came to Jenin end of July and we had hard and eventful days. After one week, Johannes had to prepare his departure for Germany and left a pair of dirty and worn-out trousers. As a sign of his tireless commitment, I had the idea to make a cast statue out of these trousers as a timeless and permanent memory of his work. With the support of Caren, who at the first moment really met me with disbelief, and with a lot of plaster we both made this idea come true.
For our friends from Palestine, the besmearing of an old throuser was something incomprehensible, yet at the very end, when the commemorative plaque has been added to the artwork, it brought a big smile to their faces.

Best regards and a big hug to my friend Johannes.

On my last day I took it quite easy. After a brief discussion about the next steps with Annette, Achim and Fakhri, it was Achim’s and my first lazy day. We went for a strawl in town. The past days have been so full of impressions, waiting, coffee, hard work and fun and last night, the first evening in the guesthouse with real guests, has been excellent. Tonight I will leave through the Jalameh-checkpoint. It’s much faster from there to Tel Aviv and we heard that the Israelis are not so strict anymore. And in case there would ne any trouble, I still have enough time to go back through Ramallah and Jerusalem.

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This day has been kind of ambivalent. We got up very late, because we had been up till 3.30 am. Due to this fact, in the late afternoon, we had got the impression to have not accomplished anything today. Same for the guesthouse. Close to the planned completion, we met just one emaciated but wonderful paver and the site looked more than messy. Half of the population of Palestine is jobless and our site looked abandoned. Fakhri will give a call to all companies and motivate them to go for a final effort.
In Jenin, we are spending a lot of time with waiting, talking on the phone, and drinking coffee. At some point, Achim and myself, we got fed up with massing around and decided sorting the old tiles of the guesthouse and looking for the appropriate places to incorporate them. Everybody got excited about this idea, especially our nice, old paver.

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Today has been declared as shopping day. Kitchen equipment has been bought for the guesthouse, like gas stove, refrigerator, washing machine. We had a brief meeting with the air condition guy. Tomorrow we will meet him in Ramallah in order to coordinate the work sections and include it into the execution planning. Then we spent the hole afternoon finding a “Dasch-discha”. This is the traditional robe of Arabic men. Funnily enough, this kind of cloth has been difficult to find, despite Ayman’s well done guiding tour through the market place. Now Achim and myself, we are dressed like our Arabic friends, while they walk around in jeans and t-shirts. When they look at us, they seem like a bit irritated and then they start laughing – we still do not know exactly why….