Abandoned Cinema ReOpens

By Mark Tutton for CNN

July 29, 2010 --
Updated 1257 GMT

(CNN) -- A cinema in the West Bank city of Jenin will next week open for business for the first time in 23 years, following a remarkable chain of events that began with the death of a Palestinian boy. In 2005, 11-year-old Ahmed Khatib was shot and killed in Jenin by Israeli soldiers who mistook his toy gun for a real one. The Israeli government apologized for the incident, and in an extraordinary gesture, Ahmed's father, Ismael Khatib, decided to donate Ahmed's organs to six Israelis, both Arabs and Jews.Ismael and Ahmed's story is told in the 2008 documentary "Heart of Jenin," made by Israeli director Leon Geller and German filmmaker Marcus Vetter.

The film follows Ismael as he visits the families of children who received Ahmed's organs, including an Orthodox Jewish family. "Heart of Jenin" has won numerous awards, including the German Film Award for Best Documentary, but Vetter realized there was nowhere to show the film in Jenin itself, because the city's only cinema was closed in 1987 during the first intifada. Vetter and Khatib were inspired to set about renovating Jenin's long-abandoned cinema. "A city with 70,000 people without cinema is sad -- there's nothing you can do and nowhere to go," Vetter told CNN. We wanted to get the Jenin youth involved and give them a vision to believe in.

"I decided to stop making documentaries for a year and try to establish the cinema. We wanted to get the Jenin youth involved and give them a vision to believe in, something to aim for." Khatib said he hoped the cinema would help keep Jenin's youngsters off the streets and out of danger. "The people who go into Cinema Jenin will be Ahmed's friends, who are now 17 years old," he told CNN. "Because Ahmed fell in the street it's a good place to bring together Ahmed's friends -- a safer place for them to get together, rather than being on the street. "Jenin lacks these kinds of places and it needs them. It will give them a normal place to get together and lessen the amount of trouble during times like that."

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