“For the youngest members of Gazan society, storytelling starts with a drawing. Before children learn to write, they learn to draw.

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It is a medium through which they express their innermost feelings, memories, desires, and dreams, and in the case of children in Gaza, life in an ongoing war.” - Yousra Samir Imran The New Arab

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This program is a mixture of films made by Haneen Koraz, and her workshop participants, as well as by contributors to AC4PAL’s "To Gaza with Love. Global Anijam”. They put out a call for 30-second short films sending a message to Gaza and received 250 submissions from 650 registered participants.

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The workshop and films are made by Haneen Koraz, a stop-motion educator and trainer who, as an internally displaced person, lived at the refugee camp in Deir al-Balah. She is an experienced animator who has collaborated with various arts and culture associations working in Gaza. Her efforts especially focus on the empowerment of women and young girls with hearing impairments. In the camp, Haneen and her team (Nour A-Jawad and Shorook Darwish) led animation workshops for women and children to help them cope with the horrors they have experienced. On August 22, 2024, people in the camp were forced to evacuate. Haneen, Nour, and Shorook, though displaced again, continue their work.

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Want to support Haneen's animation workshops? Go to GoFundMe, donate, and share.

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Direct Support Links

- GoFundMe (One-time donations): https://gofund.me/9d503779

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Info about AC4PAL (Animation Community for Palestine)

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We are artists, animators, educators, festival directors, and curators united in our mission to offer concrete material support to our animation colleagues in Gaza—whose strength, creativity, and courage we are all in awe of.

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Why We Support Haneen’s Work in Gaza

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For children, stop-motion animation is more than just a technique—it is a window into their deepest thoughts and hidden fears. Through character movement, they do more than create scenes; they release their emotions into the world—expressing joy, anger, fear, and love with delicate adjustments to facial expressions and body movements.

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They imagine how a character speaks, how it sounds, how it gets angry or happy, and then they translate those emotions into vibrant, living motion. With each frame, they weave stories drawn from their own experiences, making the inanimate speak and turning ideas into moving images that tell their own tales. Animation here is not just a skill; it is a new language of self-expression, a free space for profound artistic exploration.

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As Haneen says, “I deeply believe that every person has the right to express themselves freely, and that art, making, and learning cartoon films is one of the means of free expression, audio-visually, for all segments of society. I try to change the reality, even if just a little, for the children and women in the tents.”

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4:00PM

~65 min

This screening is FREE TO ATTEND and takes place during our regular shop hours. Donations will be collected in person!

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Whammy! is located in the REAR unit of 2514 Sunset Blvd, entrance access is via Rampart Blvd.