MOVIES - July 7, 1987

Some 200 Palestinian refugees living in Aqabat Jaber in the occupied West Bank watched a prize-winning film named after their camp--and loved it. Paris-based Israeli director Eyal Sivan, 23, said that it was the first time any film about Palestinian refugees had been screened for the refugees themselves. The all-male audience, some of whom starred in the 90-minute film, gathered in an empty classroom in the camp, near the biblical city of Jericho, to laugh and cheer as they pointed at themselves and their neighbors on the screen. The film, called “Aqabat Jaber,” won first prize last spring at a documentary film festival, the Festival du Reel, at the Pompidou Center in Paris.