New Jersey Solidarity-Rutgers Chapter members Charlotte Kates and Noel Winkler alternately fiddled with the laptop/projector unit and paced the room anxiously on a cell-phone with tech support.
But after 45 minutes, the film still wouldn't play.
Palestinian film director, producer and camerawoman Buthina Canaan Khoury joked that technical difficulties like these are just another reason that her documentary is titled "Women In Struggle."
Although the film wasn't shown that night, Khoury did discuss her work. Kates, a student at Newark's School of Law, said New Jersey Solidarity will screen the film at a later date.
Khoury's film focuses on the lives of four Palestinian women, who were involved in their country's political resistance against the state of Israel. As a result, she said all four women were detained and tortured in Israeli prisons.
Khoury worked on the film for four years since late 2000. The film was first released on Aug. 17, 2004 - the first day of a Palestinian hunger strike. It was simultaneously released in Palestine, Lebanon, Spain, France, Germany, Slovenia and Belgium. The screening at the University is part of Khoury's U.S. tour, which began last week in Boston. Khoury expressed a desire to show her film in Israel, "if Israeli society is ready."
The four women portrayed in the film are named Aysha, Rawda, Rasmieh Odeh and Terry Bulata. In lieu of the film, Khoury summarized the stories of these women. Khoury said she chose to focus on these particular women because of "the uniqueness of their stories, really horrible stories."
Aysha, a 53-year-old artist, is currently divorced and living in a Palestinian village near Ramallah. She was arrested and detained in the late 1970s for her participation in military operations, including a bomb that exploded in Israel.
Aysha was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released after 10 years as part of a prisoner exchange. Although she was forced to live in exile for years, she returned to Palestine after the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993.
Rawda is a woman in her late 40s who was also involved with political and militant resistance. She was arrested and detained by Israel, when the bomb her group was planning to plant prematurely exploded.
After she was released, Rawda - as a Christian woman - controversially decided to marry a Muslim man, which caused both her and her husband to be alienated from their communities.
Odeh's story parallels that of Aysha, since they were part of the same group that planned and planted a bomb in Israel, an explosion that killed a few Israelis and injured many. They were both sentenced to life imprisonment and released as part of a prisoner exchange program.
Bulata was imprisoned and released a few times for political demonstrations. Similar to her friend Rawda, the Christian Bulata married a Muslim man. Although she currently lives in Jerusalem, her husband lives in Abu Dees.
In her film's literature, Khoury details the different types of torture suffered by female detainees, such as the psychological tortures of being in prison, the physical torture of "being forbidden to see family, to eat, to sleep, to socialize and even to sit" and the physical/psychological threats and attempts of rape "to break these women and humiliate them into confessing," she said.
When audience members wondered aloud about the absence of this information in the media, Khoury said her film is supposed to "shed the light...on facts people are not really aware of."
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