Scandar Copti | |
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 Copti at the 81st Venice International Film Festival in 2024 | |
| Born | 1975 (age 48–49) |
| Occupations |
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Scandar Copti (born 1975) is an Palestinian director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is known for examining social problems of Palestinian society in Israel through his film works.
Copti was born and raised in Jaffa. His mother, Mary, is an educator and his father, Ilya, is a carpenter.
Copti received his B.Sc from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He studied acting and directing at the Technion theater, played (in Arabic) in End - End directed by Ouriel Zohar in 2001 at the Technion and the festival in Jerusalem. Formerly a mechanical engineer, he has also written, directed, and edited several fiction, documentary and experimental short films.
Copti lives with his family in Abu Dhabi, teaches film at a local extension of New York University, and makes films and art. [1]
Copti filmed a video piece, called The Truth, with Rabih Boukhari in 2003. Two Palestinians from Jaffa visit non-touristy sites in the city, recounting the "history" of the place as if they were tour guides [2] presents a series of contradictory dialogues between two men about fictitious stories surrounding several sites, in which they become sacred sites. Copti used the tension in the plot to speak and create a historical narrative as the focal point of this video piece. [3] Copti and Boukhari raised questions about the here and now, the past, and the rewriting of the words so as to enable us to live with the sixty years, expropriated time, and one. [4] According to Tal Ben Zvi, this video work brings up the issue of memory, remembrance and forgetting, in Palestinian culture in general, and in the city of Jaffa in particular but ironically this does not generate a meaningful, representative Palestinian national narrative. [2]
The difficulties for Palestinians who are Israeli Arabs and make films with Israeli funding were clearly revealed when Copti directed His first full-length feature film Ajami (2009) with Israeli filmmaker Yaron Shani, which nominated for an Oscar win the Ophir Award in Israel, the Caméra d'Or Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival. His film was also nominated for the 82nd Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category and has won more than 15 awards worldwide. Ajami is a story of an Arab ghetto in the city of Jaffa where violence and hatred are a daily reality. The basis of the film was to capture the reaction to state oppression and the sense of the impossibility of justice by looking at how the criminal element becomes a role model for the young men of Jaffa. [5]
In an interview with Channel 2, Copti said, "The film does not represent Israel because ‘I cannot represent the State of Israel, I can not represent a country that does not represent me." Copti said he was more concerned with how the film brought more than 200,000 people to cinemas being the real achievement rather than winning an Oscar, as he wanted to open people’s eyes about the reality of Arabs in Israel territory through the film. Also, he added, "Not only because of this, I have a problem representing Israel, the problem is that not only is there no willingness to deal with the issues, but people very quickly prefer simply to negate the other side.” [6] However, the Israeli co-director Shani said, “It’s an Israeli film, it represents, it speaks ‘Israeli’ and deals with Israeli-related problems.”
Also, Limor Livnat, Minister of Sports and Culture stated,
In the name of artistic license and pluralism, the movie was given a budget of more than NIS 12 million. It is sad that a director supported by the state ignores those who helped him create and express himself.
According to David Sarange, Ajami is a representation of the artistic freedom of Israel which is key to all Israeli cultural creativity. Moreover, unlike what Copti proclaimed to Channel 2's cameras, he may not represent Israel, but his film did indeed. [7]
In May 2018, Copti ran a patent company, CoptiCo in Beit Hagefen Gallery, Haifa, Israel for three months. The company manufactures, and markets smart products designed to solve global social and cultural problems, especially Palestinian society. According to the website, “The mission of CoptiCo is to cope with the major issues that are on the agenda of Arab societies and to foster research and development in the fields of peace, coexistence, gender inequality, and social solidarity.” [8]
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