A seventh generation descendent of family who lived in Sefad, Israel, the city where mystical scholars of the Kabbalah found refuge in the 16th Century; Nili Portugali is an architect, filmmaker and author. We discuss her film “And the Alley She Whitewashed in Light Blue”, a stunning, poetic, visual masterpiece of the seasonal rituals in her Grandmother Rivka’s hotel, at the end of an alley in that old city. The film is one of her many works which seek to find a universal answer to the question “What is the basis of all those places in which one feels at home, and wants to return to, again and again?”

Sulaiman Khatib grew up in a small Palestinian village, on the outskirts of Jerusalem.  At the age of 14, he and his friend received long jail sentences for stabbing and injuring two Israeli soldiers. In the jail library he studied the history of the Jewish people, and began to understand that there were equally compelling narratives to both sides. A reconstructed perspective of non-violence, further impacted  by hunger strikes in jail,  seeded his future dedication to peace and reconciliation work. In 2005 he cofounded the Combatants for Peace, an organization created by Palestinian and Israeli former fighters and victims of violence. Combatants for Peace is modeled on humanistic values of empathy, forgiveness and mutual respect for a future of peace on the sacred homeland that both Palestinians and Israelis love, fighting not each other - but the common enemy of hatred and fear. Nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, his transformative journey and visionary optimism is rooted in a deep love of the land, ancient wisdom, and spirituality.

Born in Germany, post World War II, as part of the generation with the ‘grace of late births’, Dagmar Richter describes the impact of that context and time on her work, identity and places she has since lived. She talks about engagement and discourse in her work as an architect and educator, as the necessary antithesis of the wall of silence she experienced when young. Her work deconstructs, exposes and reveals what is often uncomfortable, or what she calls ‘not smooth’.