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| Women in the Sun (Nisa Fi al-Shams) This documentary articulates some events in the lives of four Palestinian women who share their innermost fears and frustrations, combining personal narratives with larger debates and presents women who face, and women who work to eliminate, violence against women in society. The idea for this film started more than a year and half ago. Almost every day in the newspapers, I was reading reports of suicides, and I began thinking that I wanted to do a film on suicide. When I was in Gaza, I found myself filming events and things related to suicide. In June 1997, the Ministry of Information hosted a conference on the problem, and I found it interesting how the issue of suicide became so multi-layered and controversial when it came to women. The discussion was mostly geared towards women, as if suicide was a “women's problem” and not a societal problem. Women were discussed at this conference almost as scapegoats. Then I did interviews with three women from Gaza, each one of them had attempted suicide. I think their personal stories, their voices and the dark places they speak from made me really just want to focus on women in this film. And maybe I was set up for such a thing from long before. I always liked my mother and my sisters more than my father. In New York, in my studies, whether it was being Palestinian, being a refugee, I don't know, but I found myself attracted to areas of readings and writings of feminist studies, gay and lesbian groups, black consciousness, these groups that still have some subversive elements to them.
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