Jen Marlowe’s “This is Gaza-Part I”

The first in a two-part series featuring films created in Gaza by Seattle filmmaker Jen Marlowe

Jen Marlowe Biography:
Jen Marlowe is a Seattle-based award-winning author/documentary filmmaker/playwright and human rights activist.

In 2004, with colleagues Adam Shapiro and Aisha Bain, Jen traveled to Northern Darfur and Eastern Chad to make the award-winning documentary film Darfur Diaries: Message from Home and wrote the accompanying book Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival (Nation Books, 2006). Darfur Diaries was included in the 2007 edition of the Best American Non-Required Reading, edited by Dave Eggers. Jen’s second feature-length award-winning documentary is called Rebuilding Hope: Sudan’s Lost Boys Return Home. Rebuilding Hope follows three Sudanese-American young men on their first homecoming trip back to Sudan, to discover whether their homes and families survived the civil war and to build a school, drill wells and bring medical supplies to their villages in Sudan. Jen’s second book, called The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian’s Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker (Nation Books, 2011), is co-authored with and tells the story of Sami Al Jundi, a Palestinian man who spent ten years in Israeli prison for being involved in militant anti-occupation activities as a youth and who has spent the last two decades of his life working towards nonviolence and peaceful reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.The Hour of Sunlight was the winner of the London-based Middle East Monitor’s Palestine Book Award in 2012. Jen is also the playwright of There is a Field. The play, which addresses issues faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel, launched globally in October 2010, marking the ten-year anniversary of Black October. Jen’s third award-winning documentary film, One Family in Gaza profiles one family’s experience during and after the 2009 assault on the Gaza Strip. Jen’s most recent book is I Am Troy Davis (Haymarket Books, 2013), written with Martina Davis-Correia, the sister of innocent death row prisoner Troy Davis whose execution in 2011 stirred world-wide protest and condemnation due to his strong case of innocence.

Jen’s articles about Palestine/Israel, Sudan, Bahrain and the death penalty can be found at The Nation, Progressive, Worldfocus.org, Tomdispatch.com, Yes!, Colorlines and Massachusetts Review. Jen has been the recipient of grants, residencies and fellowships from the Pultizer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Nation Institute Investigative Fund, the Dorot Foundation, Seattle’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, Hedgebrook, and the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice.

You can support her work by donating: http://www.donkeysaddle.org/index.php/donate-page