François Abou Salem
François Abou Salem (born October 2, 1951 in East Jerusalem , † October 1, 2011 in Ramallah , Palestinian Territories ) was a French- Palestinian comedian , writer and director in theater and film.
Life
Abou Salem's father was the Hungarian surgeon and writer Lorand Gaspar (1925–2019), his mother a French sculptor . Between 1964 and 1968 he attended a school in Beirut , Lebanon , which was run by Jesuits . Then he was a comedian at the Théâtre du Soleil in Paris . In the early 1970s he went back to East Jerusalem to show his skills in the theater. He created his theater group called El-Hakawati (The Storyteller), which from 1978 toured regularly in Europe, the Arab countries and the USA . In the same year he made his first film Pain et Sel (bread and salt).
From 1983 Abou Salem converted the then burnt-out Al-Nuzha cinema into a theater and became artistic director there. There his own works were performed, as well as adaptations such as Misterio buffo of Dario Fo or the lesson of Bertolt Brecht The Exception and the Rule of 1930, which on May 1, 1938 at Moshav Givath Chaim in the former Mandate of Palestine was first performed .
Between 1989 and 2002 Abou Salem worked mainly in Europe as a director, including at the Théâtre royal flamand in Brussels, at the Salzburg Festival , at the Salzburg Opera and the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg . After his return to Palestine, his work included the drama by the Palestinian author Hussein Barghouti , and later a Mesopotamian opera Gilgamesh with compositions by Kudsi Erguner in Nanterre near Paris .
Abu Salem died by suicide .
The El-Hakawati Theater in East Jerusalem now bears the honorary title of "Palestinian National Theater".
Awards
In 1998, Abou Salem received the Prix Palestine from Jassir Arafat .
Web links
- Abu Salem recites the poem Dhâkira lin-nisyân by Mahmud Darwisch in French and Arabic (German: "A memory for forgetting." Beirut, August 2008)
- Jackie Lubeck: "On François" , This Week in Palestine (English)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Abou Salem, François |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Abu Salem, François; Gaspar, François (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Franco-Palestinian playwright and director |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 2, 1951 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | East Jerusalem |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 1, 2011 |
| Place of death | Ramallah , Palestinian Territories |