We have just completed ‘Shatila Theatre’ - 45 minute documentary (a 'part self funded' film project). See trailer (right)
Camp Shatila is a Palestinian refugee camp in outer Beirut. It does not appear on maps, and many Beirut residents do not even know it exists, let alone go there. Yet it is home to 17,000 people - most of them Palestinians whose families have lived there for several generations, some of them Lebanese drawn by the low cost of living - crammed into an area the size of a cricket field. In 1982 Shatila, and the neighbouring Sabra camp, were the scene of a massacre, when up to 3,000 people were killed.
In early 2011 North East playwrite, Peter Mortimer, took a team of 6 professional artists/theatre practitioners from the North East to Shatila to work with young people on the camp to learn, rehearse and perform a play. On behalf of Primate, Vicky Riley traveled with them, staying in the only hostel on the camp, to document the project. The film follows the young people who live on the camp, their rehearsing and performing of the play and their later tour of the UK.
