,,THE REVOLUTIONARY PRAXIS OF PALESTINIAN CINEMA’’
A RETROSPECT ON PALESTINIAN CINEMA AND HISTORY (Jay A. Lopez)
The evolution of Palestinian Cinema inherently has responded to the political and social transformations that have taken place during the Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, engendering a timeline described by its historical discontinuity. These transformations have affected Palestinian communities, that have historically sought refuge in the West Bank, and many indigenous Palestinian Bedouin refugees in securing farming lands and developing a strong national resistance. The difficulty in reconstructing the history of Palestinian cinema lies in piecing together remnants of memory that only exist today through oral storytelling. The people of Palestine’s literature, cultural iconography, and art have been decimated and/or lost due to the conflict with Israeli occupation. A shift in narrative takes place as the continuity of Palestinian histories is broken apart, thus, the agency of their narrative becomes misconstrued through news media conglomerates and Israeli national forces. It’s imperative to understand the roles of displaced refugees in attempting to regain cultural agency, despite the barriers of distinctive generational class, religion, and gender. In the text “Before Birth, After Death”, translated by Michel Khleifi, Muhammad Hamza Ghanayem, describes the sanctioning of the idea of “temporality” within refuge ideology in that “the state of the refugee incessantly remains transient and unfixed, hence the refugee’s idealization of moving forward indicates retrieving the past and their tangible homeland.” (Ghanayem, 2000: 17) The process of trauma continues to debilitate and hinder the collective consciousness of displaced Palestinians, existing as only violent repressed memories. The socio-political implications of Palestinian cinema, in its attempt to aid the displaced Palestinians in reconstructing the past from memory, historically produces a multitude of timelines that oscillates the present with the future and so forth. As of late, Palestinian cinema can be divided into subsequent generations, or periods of deconstructive narratives and documentaries that responds to the ramifications of war and homogenizing a racial and national image of Palestinian identity that began as early as 1948 (Abu El Foul, 2022). These periods of Palestinian cinema have each translated and documented the increasingly threatening shift in Palestinian borders that have over time become occupied by concrete barricades, main road blockades, and multitudes of checkpoints with armed Israeli soldiers.
Palestinian cinema is divided into four crucial periods that correlate to the shifting struggles of national disintegration (Gertz and Khleiifi, 2008). Filmmaker and early pioneer, Ibrahim Hassan Sirhan debuted the beginning of this first period in 1935 when he filmed a short silent project that captures the arrival of King Saud of Saudi Arabia in Palestine. Sirhan provided an accompanying live musical score over the twenty-minute long footage, gaining praise from festival audiences and juries. In 1940, Sirhan produced his first collabo- rative project with filmmaker Jamal al-Asphar on their film “Realized Dreams” which centers on the lives of Palestinian orphan children. Five years later, Sirhan went on to collaborate with a fellow Palestinian film- maker and student, Ahmad al-Kilani, and founded the first significant Palestinian production studio called “Studio Palestine” — funding and producing several feature-length films directed and shot by a small net- work of Palestinian filmmakers. These films, unfortunately, are all now lost and/or damaged due to conflict with Israeli occupation that was met much later.
In 1948, a British mandate was implemented, in the form of a letter that was written almost thirty years prior, by British secretary Arthur Balfour, presented to, Lord Walter Rothschild, a member of a capitalist British dynasty who developed a draft to declare the new homeland for a Jewish population to be settled within Palestine, home to an already existing and intricate society. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families were forced out of their homes and exiled into camps, transmuting into refugees virtually overnight (Charbit, 2013: 320). Though this was just the earliest event that led to a decades-long conflict, the violently repressive tragedy of 1948 came to be collectively known as the “Nakba”, which translates to “catastrophe” in Arabic.
Additionally, very few films were produced during this time and the collective mobility of Palestinians began to decelerate, suffering post-traumatic stress and other mental disorders as result. During this time, which spanned between 1948 and 1967, the second period of Palestinian cinema came to be known as the Epoch of Silence, attesting to the impediment of collective Palestinian film making (Gertz and Khleifi, 2008).
In 1967, Egypt declared the closure of the Straits of Tiran, triggering the Six-Day War. After the war, Israel gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. This event was collectively known to Palestinians as the Naksa (Karsh, 2017: 5). This sparked the third period in Palestinian cinema, which was strengthened by exiled and dispersed filmmakers who sought resistance and complete autonomy.
Unlike the first and second periods of Palestinian Cinema, which can be best characterized by independently produced films, the third period sought funding from organized institutions that provided auspices for film- makers producing works, particularly documentary films (Gertz and Khleifi, 2008). Prominent organizations include the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Film Institute and the Division of Palestinian Films, however, only the Palestine Liberation Organization continued to operate during the third period, which already found Israeli ground conflict over settlements in Palestininan land. PLO’s division Film Foundation/ Palestinian Film Unit operated one of the largest Palestinian film archives in the world. The inception of this vital archive held hundreds of original copies and 35mm rolls of Palestinian films dating back to the 1930’s. Most of these films were never distributed properly, thus, only existing within the archive (Baer, 2018: 92). The first film produced within the third period was titled “Say No to the Peaceful Solutions” (1968) by filmmak- ers Abu-Ali, Johariya, and Salah Abu Hannoud. The documentary film delineates the realities of Palestinians protesters who readdressed their ideology tactics, based on complete objection to ‘peace solutions’ that only sought to neglect the material needs and urgent interests of all Palestinian people, reiterating that cinema as a socio-political weapon was transfixed as a tool for promoting revolutionary ideas to the common people, and fundamentally anti-colonial. This directly supported the inception of the largest Palestinian film archive, as this period was met with state-wide campaigns operated by pro-Israeli politicians that aimed at formulating a narrative that Palestinian people do not exist. These erasure tactics were not uncommon during the time as they successfully helped gain international support from Western powers such as the U.S. (Lentin, 2016: 35). This shift into a devised historical recontextualization harmed all Palestinian identities worldwide and heightened pressures for the Palestinian Liberation Organization to maximize protection for the vital archive.
According to filmmaker Khadija Abu-Ali, the archive was monitored and located safely in West Beirut at the Film Institute under the Palestinian Liberation Organization (Baer, 2018: 92). The archive was man- aged by Abu-Ali and her team, carefully storing hundreds of rolls of celluloid in a rented basement unit that belonged to cinematographer, Omar a-Rashidi. In 1982, after Israeli soldiers invaded Lebanon and forced Palestinian Liberation Organization out of the city, the fate of the archive soon came to an unfortunate and abrupt end. The archive was last stored within a Hospital, away from any ground and air combat that might harm or destroy it. Aware that the films within the archive documented footage of warfare, bombings, sieges, and illegal pillages, the Israeli forces were determined to gain control over it and prevent any global distribution. The invasion of Lebanon signaled the nearness of the permanent obliteration for the archive, hundreds of films were essentially lost forever overnight. Access to archive materials is limited as film- maker Nadia Yaqub describes, “Most Palestinians cannot even visit the Israeli institutions that house these archives, and for much of this material, access is highly restricted or prohibited to all scholars” (Baer, 2018: 93). Literature and research materials concerning the whereabouts of the archive are quite limited, though a few documentaries account for the cinematic losses that only exist now as oral and distinct memories. The historical trauma of Palestinians, and Palestinians filmmakers, is directly tied to the tragic events of the invasion of Lebanon — heightening a cultural genocide.
The early horizon of the fourth period in Palestinian Cinema arose in the early 1980s with the production of Michel Khleifi first documentary film titled, “Fertile Memory” released in 1981. Many of the Palestinian film- makers during this time had spent their childhoods enduring and witnessing first-hand the violent repres- sion of their people and homeland caused by Israeli forces, thus their films serve as recollections of a dis- tant memory and are fueled by political resilience. According to Egyptian film critic Samir Farid, this was the was the case with the revolutionary filmmaking career of Khleifi. His career has contributed to globalizing Palestinian discussion, most notably within his later work with Palestinian documenrary filmmaking. “Fertile Memory” made its debut at Carthridge Film Festival, ultimately winning the Golden Prize. The documentary itself describes an intimate portrait of two women whose individual and material struggles are juxtaposed as an analytical observation between the relationship of Palestinians and Israelis. The film generated massive discussions from various film critics and institutions globally. One critic writes of the phenomena and Khleifi’s filmography:
“The Arab critics did not conceal their uneasiness with the movie’s message of unconditional coexistence with the Israelis within the Occupied Territories, in view of militaritc oppression forces. The spectators can easily see the contrast between the film Wedding in Galilee, which calls for coexistence, and the operation dubbed “Peace for Galilee”... How can there be peace in the Arab Galilee when war, destruction and savagery take place in the Galilee of the occupation?”
An important distinction that Farid makes of the film’s reception was that on the other hand, Western critics praised the Khleifi’s defense towards Arab critics rejection of the film’s treatment of these domestic relationships.
The fourth period of Palestinian Cinema also sees the resurgence of women filmmakers, extending the experiences of the diaspora. One of these women filmmakers is May Masri, who was most notable for her contributions to the dialogue surrounding the psychological and legal protections that Palestinian children endured during the period of the Intifada which began in 1987, that sought an uprising in large masses of Palestinians over collective frustrations on the militaristic forces and meer presence within their homeland. Masri’s work is and act of revolutionary action solely for creating a space for dialogue on the voiceless and most vulnerable demographic; Palestinian children. Her first independent production, “Children of the Mountain of Fire” was released in 1990.
Masri demonstrates significant connections between the effects of the economic recession that followed after the events and the neglect that Palestinian children received due to poverty (Van de Peer, 2017: 141). For the production, she returned to her hometown of Nablus in the West Bank, which was under Israeli occupation. She interviewed various Palestinian youth, from ages ranging five to eighteen. The testimonials given by these young children substantiate their conscious efforts in understanding and grappling with the uprisings. Many children explained how the social demonstrations bonded their families closer together. During the film, the uprisings were in its fourth consecutive year, and sought prolonged curfews, housing demolitions, school closures, amongst other social discrepancies. Masri defined a nuanced analysis on collective trauma and memory. Her films held a transparent relationship with capturing the Palestinian consciousness of memory in real-time, through the early adolescent experience (Van de Peer, 2017: 144).
The state of temporality induced by the Palestinian diaspora is an active component and fundamental to Palestinian cinema. It’s historical narrative has been interjected by mere Israeli presence causing a sense of collective “incompleteness”. Palestinian filmmakers understand the significance of reconstructing his- torical narrative by approaching and distinguishing their trauma that continues to transpire across generations. Therefore, the personal identification of “memory” is integral to Palestinian Cinema. (Nassar, 2006: 16). The four early distinguishable periods of Palestinian cinema continues to draw forth new scopes of thought, as contemporary filmmakers still grapple with Israeli occupation today. The continuous conflicts across the West Bank and Gaza, sees a regeneration of trauma as long as state violence advances itself in vulnerable communities. For Palestinians filmmakers, memory is a signifier of this ideology, furthering its visualization of the future as a complete and coveted return to the past.
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