Inside The Middle East
SHOW #62
HOSTED BY SCHAMS ELWAZER FROM JORDAN
REFUGEE CAMP LIFE SEEN THRU CHILDREN'S EYES
"Lahza" is the Arabic word for glimpse. It is an appropriate title for an innovative photography project which documents moments of life in the 12 official Palestinian refugee camps scattered throughout Lebanon, housing at least 400,000 Palestinians according to the UN. The NGO Zakira, founded by photojournalists, placed disposable cameras in the hands of children living in those camps in the hopes of highlighting conditions of Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon. The glimpses of camp life are seen through the eyes of 500 Palestinian children ages 6 to 12, who were asked to take disposable point-and-shoot cameras out into the field. The pictures reflect all areas of camp life, from family portraits, shots of friends playing, and gun-toting young fighters. Our look at the project is narrated by one of the program's main activists.
YEMEN’S JEWISH COMMUNITY
Yemen's ancient capital of Sana'a is so drenched in its devotion to Islam; but drive some thirty miles north, past villages steeped in Muslim culture, until you reach a cluster of homes, and you start to hear and see it. In the heart of this conservative Islamic country, the Jewish culture is preserved. To hear Hebrew so fluently entrenched in the tiny enclave of Khalef is surprising, and yet so natural for the few hundred Jews still left in Yemen. Paula Newton took a tour of their Jewish home, embedded in a Muslim homeland.
HOLLYWOOD IN BEIRUT
In the midst of Lebanon's ongoing political crises, an independent U.S. film company shoots an action movie in the hills overlooking Beirut. The filmmakers are locked and loaded to shoot a battle sequence - weapons provided by the Lebanese Army - in an old civil war destroyed area that's a natural set for the cameras. The film is called "Blackline" - the plot inspired by controversy surrounding private military security companies like Blackwater. It's the first non-Arab movie at this level to be shot on location in Lebanon in thirty years. At one point an uninformed Lebanese Army unit surrounded their set in an original bombed-out building, suspecting they were a terrorist group in training. Brent Sadler reports from the set.
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