About Us
Hay Betl7em is not an NGO. We’re not a corporation, we’re not a charity, we’re not a municipality program. We’re just a couple of people who LOVE Bethlehem and who want to share in its beauty and vitality with YOU. So, we’re taking up a challenge…to build a beautiful, ever-expanding archive of Bethlehem stories that honor the people, places, projects that make Bethlehem (extra)ordinary.
For many years, the most prevalent images of Palestine have been those of death and destruction. Indeed, the Israeli occupation has wreaked havoc on the lives and communities of the Palestinian people. Depictions of this devastation are difficult to watch, but critical in helping people internationally understand the structural and physical violence that Palestinians face daily. At the same time, when the only images we see of Palestine are of death and destruction, other experiences of Palestinian life get lost, creating a single story. Writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009) says that “[t]he single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” What we lose when death and destruction are the single story of Palestine are the day-to-day joys of living, loving, and existing here—the very reasons for which Palestinians have continued to struggle to remain on their ancestral lands. Hay Betl7em هاي بيت لحم explores the beauty, perseverance, and dignity of Palestinian life by focusing on the minutiae of everyday life, beginning with a single town—Bethlehem. Through our work, we strive to depict Palestine in all its beauty, vitality, and diversity, featuring the people, sights, sounds, and social textures that make Bethlehem home to so many, despite the hardships of living under occupation.
To this end, Hay Betl7em هاي بيت لحم creates "slice of life" short films highlighting a Bethlehem-based figure, group, place, project, moment, or movement. Each film is developed alongside the film participants, who contribute as co-producers, with their approval at every stage of filmmaking. The archive is free and open to the public, films are also disseminated via Hay Betl7em’s instagram and facebook (@haybetl7em).
The goal of the web archive is not to feature “charismatic leaders” or “success stories,” but to focus on everyday people who contribute to Bethlehem through their labor, passion, talent, creativity, and personality. We build from the concept that the “ordinary is extraordinary” and that “personal stories are emancipatory.” We believe that when we collectivize the individual stories of everyday people, projects, and activities that make up Palestinian community life, we reveal a type of sumud (steadfastness) that often flies under the radar of typical news media and documentary films, but that is critical to (re)building life daily in Palestine.
This approach to non-fiction film diverts from the typical structure of the feature documentary film. Instead of "writing" a single self-contained story, we tell a multitude of stories that, taken together, allow the viewer to become immersed in both the individual and collective experience of Palestinian community life.
For those of you who are joining as guests, we hope that you will immerse yourself with us in this beautiful place and become enthralled by its magic. And for those of you for whom Bethlehem or greater Palestine is home, we invite you to relish with us in the wondrous community you and your ancestors have built over centuries.