The film “Slingshot Hip Hop,” an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival in 2008 will be screened at 4 p.m. today in the Doudna Fine Arts Center Lecture Hall.

The director of the film, Jackie Salloum, a native of Michigan, will be at the event to present the film

An open discussion will be held with the audience at the conclusion.

“We expect and certainly hope, we will have an interesting and insightful discussion after the film screening,” said Mehdi Semati, an associate professor of communication studies. “We hope the filmmaker addresses questions about the lives of young people in that part of the world.

“We hope this discussion will provide a context for the audience to appreciate not only Palestinian popular culture, but also a framework in which such a culture emerges.”

“Slingshot Hip Hop” braids together the stories of young Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza and inside Israel as they discover hip hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. From internal checkpoints and Separation Walls to gender norms and generational differences, this is the story of young people crossing the borders that separate them.

In his international communication classes and global communication seminars, Semati teaches aspects of popular culture in the Middle East, with an emphasis on Iranian culture and society.

His students are always pleasantly surprised young people from other parts of the world who might listen to the same music, see the same popular film and television, and read the same graphic novels, he said.

They are even more surprised and thrilled to learn about how the same media and cultural forms undergo a process of indigenization in other cultures and countries.

The department of communication studies, women’s studies, the film studies minor, the Illinois Network on Islam and Muslim Societies are sponsoring the screening.

Jacqueline Nathalie Loma can be reached 581-7942 or at DENnewsdesk@gmail.com.