A film by Yun Suh

USA 2009/ Color/ 66 minutes

World Premiere at the 2009 Berlin International Film FestivalWinner of Special Teddy (Audience) Award at Berlin International Film Festival

Official SelectionHot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival

Seattle International Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Nantucket Film Festival, Era New Horizons Film Festival (Poland), Tokyo International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, Frameline Film Festival (San

Francisco), Outfest Film Festival (Los Angeles), Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Boston LGBT Film Festival, NewFest Film Festival (New York), Out at the Movies (New York), Outview Film Festival (Athens, Greece) – Opening

Night, Portland Queer Doc Film Festival – Opening Night, Queer Movie Nights (Halle, Germany)

Press and Distribution Contact:

Yun Suh001 (510) 295-7588

playbigger@gmail.com www.cityofborders.com (check for media coverage)

“When I read in the bible that I could be killed for being gay, I understood what it was like to be Palestinian.”

– Israeli bar patron.

SYNOPSIS

In the heart of Jerusalem stands an unusual symbol of unity that defies generations of segregation, violence and prejudice: a gay bar called Shushan. City of Borders goes inside this vibrant underground sanctuary on the East/West border of the Holy City, where people of opposing nationalities, religions and sexual orientations create a community among people typically viewed as each other’s “enemy.”

City of Borders follows the daily lives of the Israeli bar owner and four Israeli and Palestinian patrons as they navigate the minefield of politics, religion and discrimination to live and love openly. Set against the construction of the separation wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories and the struggle for a gay pride parade in Jerusalem, these four inter-woven stories reveal the contradictions and complexity of the struggle for acceptance.

STORY

“Everyone comes from their own ghetto and meets at Shushan,” says the bar owner Sa’ar Netanel, a secular Israeli and Jerusalem’s first openly gay city council member. Shushan, Jerusalem’s only gay bar, was born out of his struggle for gay visibility and ethnic diversity. His outspokenness has earned Sa’ar the respect and gratitude of the gay community as well as numerous death threats.

For devout Muslim Palestinian, Boody, going to Shushan means endangering his life in an illegal nighttime border crossing from the West Bank to Jerusalem. He creeps under razor wire; scales cement walls and dodges Israeli soldiers in order to reach the only place where he feels free to fully express himself. At home in Ramallah, he has become the target of many death threats as the first drag queen of Palestine.

Former Israeli soldier, Adam Russo, dances shirtless on stage, displaying visible scars on his chest and arms. In 2005, he was stabbed by an Orthodox Jew while marching at the head of Jerusalem’s gay pride parade. Being a victim of a hate crime has ignited his political purpose to fight for human rights. His activism for equal rights gets questioned when he and his partner build a home on a contested settlement land.

On the dance floor, a Palestinian Israeli, Samira Saraya, kisses her Jewish Israeli lesbian lover, Ravit Geva. They met at a hospital where Samira works as a nurse and Ravit as a doctor. Their union breaks two of Middle Eastern society’s biggest taboos: same-sex relations and intimacy between Jews and Arabs. Ironically, these barriers have drawn them closer together, but isolated them from their

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families. Their relationship complicates over the issue of starting a family of their own, which ignites their differences in their religious, cultural and personal values.

Outside of the bar, Jewish, Muslim and Christian fundamentalists, in a rare show of solidarity, strive to eliminate all demonstrations of gay identity through riots and death threats.

City of Borders concludes by showing what each participant has gained from being a member of the Shushan community and the effects of this singular bar upon their lives, inspiring each to move beyond its walls to create a different place of belonging for him or herself. In observing the patrons’ daily fight for dignity and their very existence, this extremely relevant and inspiring documentary highlights the bond forged when people from warring worlds embrace what they share in common rather than be divided by their differences.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

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The concept for “City of Borders” began in 2002 while I was producing a series of radio reports in Jerusalem and the West Bank on the clashes during the second Palestinian Intifada or uprising. I’m drawn to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because I intimately understand both sides of the war. Like the Israelis, I grew up in constant fear of my neighboring country, North Korea, coming to attack my small village and family in South Korea. I did not see North Koreans as humans but as demons determined to kill me if they had the chance. My childhood playtime often involved devising escape routes and places to hide in my home if North Koreans ever invaded. Like the Palestinians, I understand the horror and hardships of living under occupation through my parents who survived the Japanese colonization of Korea. Being on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza, I witnessed the daily devastating impact of the Israeli occupation.

Finding a bar where Israelis and Palestinians take great risks to meet and connect as human beings amid all the distrust, death and violence renewed my faith in our shared humanity. Sa’ar Netanel’s vision for his bar where people from different worlds can find common ground and be accepted, mirrors my purpose for making films. Therefore, I chose this story as the topic of my first feature-length film despite daunting barriers of budget, bombs, language and culture,.

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/WRITER/CINEMATOGRAPHER’S BIO

Yun Suh’s love of visual storytelling sparked at age 8 when she immigrated to Connecticut from South Korea without knowing a word of English. Television and movies became her most important classroom where she learned the language and the American culture. But without role models, she didn’t think being a filmmaker was a career possibility. She studied to become a doctor to fulfill her mother’s dream and kept her passion for film hidden. Her life took a big turn when her mother died during her last year of college. Believing that her mother’s death was caused by her inability to fully express herself, Suh devoted her life to true communication and self-expression.

After earning a biology degree from University of California, Berkeley, Suh landed jobs in radio and broadcast television news, where she worked the past eight years, and produced documentary shorts in her spare time. She has extensively covered news on the Middle East and has reported from Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip. Her nominations include Best Radio Documentary from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters for her one-hour long radio report, Sabra & Shatilla (2003), on the survivors of the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Lebanese refugee camps. She has also received a local Emmy nomination for producing a news feature, Comfort Women (2001), a story of an illiterate Korean woman who uses her paintings to break her 50-year silence about being forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. In 2002, she earned the Support, Training and Access for New Directors (STAND) grant from the Film Arts Foundation to pursue her lifelong dream of being a filmmaker.

FILMMAKING TEAM

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Editor: Jean Kawahara won a 2002 National Emmy for editing the feature-length documentary, Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story, which was also short-listed for the 2001 Academy Awards. Other credits include the award-winning documentary, Yank Tanks; the independent feature film, Nail Polish; and the Sundance selection shorts, Rappin’ Gap and Undertaker, which earned a National CableACE award. Jean has also received numerous awards for her commercial work, including a Golden Lion at the Cannes Film Festival and a Clio.

Primary Cinematographer/Co-Producer: Karin Thayer is an award-winning filmmaker and video journalist who has been producing, shooting and editing stories for 15 years worldwide, in locations from Brussels to Dubai. Her short films such as Seed (1997) have screened internationally, including at the Sundance Film Festival. Thayer’s recent clients include: Oxygen Media, the Discovery Channels, the History Channel, the Travel Channel and the BBC. She earned the 2005 Concentra European Video Journalism award for producing the BBC TV series, Addiction.

Cinematographer: Robin McKenna has worked as a video journalist for CBC programs, including the feature-length documentary Minority Report and directed observational series for Life Network, Oxygen, and Living UK. She served as a cinematographer for numerous documentaries including The Take (American Film Institute Award for Best Documentary 2004) and The Great War Experience, which aired on CBC.

Cinematographer: Amir Terkel is an Israeli filmmaker and news videographer with over 10 years of experience shooting in domestic and international news stations in Israel and the United States, including CNN and ABC in Jerusalem. He has explored the Israeli-Palestinian relations as a cinematographer through several in-depth current affairs programs and feature documentaries, such as Holy Land Common Ground, Occupied Minds, and Other Voices from Israel and Palestine.

Co-Producer: Simone Nelson has worked with international, award winning artists and companies to develop and produce film, theater, music and digital media productions, projects and events for over 17 years. She has worked with or for, among others: the former head of Walt Disney Studios—Peter Schneider; filmmaker Rebecca Miller; Forensic Films; Film Arts Foundation; Mill Valley Film Festival; San Francisco Opera; and London’s Shakespeare Globe and Royal Court Theatres. She is currently the President of Bay Area Women in Film and Television and is Consulting Producer on Saltwater, a narrative feature in pre-production.

CAST

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35-year-old secular Israeli bar owner SA’AR NETANEL is the first openly gay man to be elected into public office in Jerusalem. He was elected to serve on the Jerusalem city council in 2003, the same year that he opened the Holy City’s only gay bar, Shushan. His vision to create a place that “belongs to everyone in the community and where everyone is welcome” has provided a home for many who have nowhere else to go. After 16 years of struggling for gay rights against a conservative religious local government, he questions whether he can continue to fight in the face of mounting violence and death threats.

19-year-old devout Muslim Palestinian BOODY risks his life to go to Shushan because there is no public place for gay men to gather in his West Bank hometown of Ramallah. He performed his first drag queen show on Arab night at Shushan and has earned fans among people who would typically be viewed as his “enemy” outside of the bar. Despite being harassed all his life for being too flamboyant and

feminine, Boody has developed deep pride in himself, particularly through his faith in Allah. He is the first drag queen of Palestine, thereby unwittingly making himself a target. Forced to leave his beloved country to flee persecution, Boody starts a new life in a small town in Ohio, United States.

19-year-old secular Israeli ADAM RUSSO never wants to leave Givat Ze’ev, a small settlement north of Jerusalem, where everyone knows him as a fun-loving young man and also as a victim of a hate crime. While marching at the head of Jerusalem’s gay pride parade in 2005, he was stabbed three times by a Haredi Jewish man. He is a media spokesperson for gay pride and refuses to hide his

identity. Despite his fears of being attacked again, he continues to march in the city that he loves. He and his partner AMIT recently built a home together in the settlement where Adam was raised and plan to perform a civil union in Israel in 2009.

31-year-old Palestinian Israeli SAMIRA SARAYA has lived with her 33-year-old Jewish Israeli lesbian lover, RAVIT GEVA for more than four years. Their relationship breaks two of Middle Eastern society’s biggest taboos: same-sex relations and intimacy between Jews and Arabs. The unlikely lovers met at an Israeli hospital where Samira works as a nurse and Ravit as a doctor. Despite their

clashing backgrounds and personalities, they have risked everything to stay together, including their relationships with their families. Samira and Ravit test their union as Ravit plans to have a child and seeks a sperm donor. Raised in a violent household with 13 other siblings, Samira never wanted to have kids. Relying on faith, Ravit moves forward with her plans to get pregnant and hopes Samira will join her.

CREDITS

Producer, Director, Writer: Yun Suh

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Editor: Jean Kawahara

Additional Editing: Eric Ladenburg, Yun Suh, Ryan Shake

Co-Producers: Karin Thayer, Simone Nelson

Primary Cinematographer: Karin Thayer

Cinematographer: Robin McKenna

Additional Cinematography: Amir Terkel, Yun Suh

Sound: Yun Suh

Original Music: Shranny, Musa Hanhan, Jonathan Zalben, Ronen Landa

Associate Producers: Amir Terkel, Adam Rosenberg

Post Production Sound: Berkeley Sound Artists—James LeBrecht, Patti Tauscher, Dan Olmsted, Alex Wilmer

Color Correction & Mastering Services: Max Salomon

Graphics: Courtney Booker

Advisors: Justine Shapiro, Deborah Hoffmann, Vicente Franco, Janis Plotkin

Translators: Shimrit Berman, Omar Fekeiki, Amir Sappir, Merav Rozenblum, Amir Terkel

Funders: ITVS, Center for Asian American Media, Pacific Pioneer Fund, Film Arts Foundation Development Fund, Fleishhacker Foundation

“City of Borders” is a co-production of Yun Suh and the Independent Television Service (ITVS), in association with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)

TELEVISION BROADCAST

CITY OF BORDERS is expected to broadcast on PBS in the United States nationwide. Air dates are TBA.

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