Why?
reż|dir Monica Maurer | DE | 1982 | 25 min

Monica Maurer (1942) After concluding studies of Sociology and Communication Sciences at the universities in Munich and Berlin, she worked as a journalist for several newspapers in Germany and for the U.S. radical magazine “Ramparts,” having got involved in the Civil Rights Movement during a research trip to the American South. In 1967 she started to write features for television (film portraits of Bernardo Bertolucci, the Taviani brothers, Cesare Zavattini a.o.). From 1970-72 she was an assistant director to the avant-garde theatre and film director Carmelo Bene (“Salomè”), then she became an independent filmmaker and producer.

In the context of growing anti-Arab tensions around the year 1974, she left filmmaking aside for a while and gave the priority to political and cultural engagement against racism, setting up a multinational bookshop for immigrant workers in Cologne (Germany), distributing literature and progressive newspapers (unavailable otherwise) in Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, Spanish and Italian. From 1977 on she worked as a director and author with the Palestinian Cinema Institution and the Information Department of the PRCS (Palestine Red Crescent Society) in Beirut, producing a number of films on the issue of Palestine (see: filmography).

All films won several awards and participated in a number of international festivals, including ones in Bilbao, Cairo, Carthage, Cannes, Montreal (FIFA), Cracow, Karlovy Vary, Leipzig, Lille, Moscow, Oberhausen, San Francisco, Tampere, Tashkent and Toronto. Most films were distributed internationally. She lives in Rome, where she continues lecturing and working as co-initiator and consultant for several film shows of the Middle East cinema.

1988-1989 Palestine in Flames
1985 War Lab
1982 Why?
1981 Born Out of Death
1980 The Fifth War (z | with: Samir Nimer)
1979 Children of Palestine
1978 Palestine Red Crescent