Film addresses Palestinian-Israeli conflict

A free screening of "Local Angel: Theological Political Fragments," a film by Israeli artist Udi Aloni, will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18, in 112 Chambers Building on the University Park campus. The screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Aloni. Moved by the destruction of the World Trade Center, Aloni, who lives in New York City, returned to Israel to grapple with the concepts of sacrifice and the sacred embedded in the history of the Temple Mount, a Jewish touchstone on which now sits the Moslem Dome of the Rock. The result was "Local Angel," which is a documentary about the root causes and present contradictions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that combines poetry, music and images. The film features exchanges with Jewish and Palestinian poets and scholars, interspersed with Aloni's own thoughts, performances by Palestinian rap artists, footage of peace rallies in Israel and a visit to Yasser Arafat's besieged headquarters in Ramallah.