Wikipedia

Osama Qashoo

Osama Qashoo (born 3 August 1981) is a Palestinian human rights activist, film maker, entrepreneur, and Founder of Palestine House, a London based cultural centre and community space set up in 2024 to provide a home-from-home for those who have faced displacement and oppression. He created Gaza Cola in November 2023 as a revenue stream to support Palestinians in Gaza affected by the Israel–Hamas war and the ongoing Gaza genocide. He is also a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles.

Since 2012 Qashoo has also been actively involved in the hospitality business, and co founded multiple Palestinian restaurants including the flagship Hiba restaurants in London. During the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020 he launched a crowdfunding campaign for the NHS providing thousands of free meals to frontline staff.

Qashoo first arrived in the UK as a refugee in 2003 after being forced to flee Palestine after organising peaceful demonstrations against the separation wall built by Israel inside the West Bank. In 2004 he was offered a place on a Masters in Directing Documentary Film at the National Film and Television school. He established 'Olive Tree Films', a multi-disciplinary production company, based in the UK and Palestine with the primary aim is to expose the un-told stories of minority and marginalised people across the world to a mainstream audience. His trilogy, A Palestinian Journey, won the 2006 Al Jazeera New Horizon Award. Qashoo has also studied film at EICTV, the International Film School in Cuba.

Filmography

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Samir's Room.[1] Fiction 2011 (15 mins). Director: Osama Qashoo. Samir arrives home from College in the West to find his family, Mum, Dad, Sisters and Cousins, have been thrown out of their home by fundamentalist Israeli Settlers. He is appalled and distraught - but what can he do? In this gentle and life-affirming film, Samir takes an unexpected, touching and delightful revenge... Shot in Syria and Jerusalem, and inspired by the issue of illegal occupation of family homes in East Jerusalem.

No Choice Basis.[2] Documentary 2005 (15 mins) Director: Osama Qashoo. “I lived in my former life with my grandma, receiving reports from my exiled family and now, without warning, I found myself in their shoes. Suddenly my life must be lived through the telephone.  Being on the edge of different lives, and then, the unexpected exile from my exiled land…Must life be a ‘no choice basis?”

My Dear Olive Tree.[3] Documentary 2004 (18 mins) Director: Osama Qashoo. Militant ode to the Palestinian struggle shows the explosive atmosphere that arises when the Israeli army flattens an age-old olive orchard that for generations was the sole source of income for twenty Palestinian families. Graduation Film (National Film and Television School)

'Inside Outside.[4] Documentary 2004 (12 mins) Director: Osama Qashoo. How do Palestinians born in the UK understand their identity?' Generations of émigrés explain the sickness of exile to the filmmaker, newly arrived from Palestine after being forced to leave, and now starting to understand at first hand how it feels to be an exile himself.

References

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  1. ^ Qashoo, Osama, Samir's Room (Short, Drama), Sahar Fozy, Antoinette Najeeb, Salim Shreiky, Olive Tree Films, retrieved 2024-11-28
  2. ^ "Osama Qashoo: Triple Bill". Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  3. ^ www.oberon.nl, Oberon Amsterdam. "My Dear Olive Tree (2005) | IDFA Archive". IDFA. Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  4. ^ "Osama Qashoo: Triple Bill". Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved 2024-11-28.

Media

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