ALFILM SPOTLIGHT

Here is Elsewhere: Palestine in Arab Cinema and Beyond.
(Spotlight Film Program below)

“Palestine does not exist. It has no borders. It has all the chaotic elements that lead you to question space, borders, and crossings, even if none of these elements in itself is valid.” This is what the Palestinian director Elia Suleiman states in a famous interview1. In saying this, Suleiman’s intention was, of course, not to question the existence of Palestinians or their right to national self-determination. Instead, he aspires to provide them, in the face of recurring displacements, decades of political deadlocks, and ongoing occupation, with alternative possibilities of articulation and resistance— at least on the level of aesthetics and techniques of narration. For Suleiman, Palestine can exist even when deprived of territorial sovereignty and in defiance of its lack of space, defined borders, and accessible crossings. It exists in streams of images, in states of minds, in depositories of experiences, in forms and poetics that transcend specific signs and places, travel across times and spaces, and get tangled up with congruent aspirations of liberation and quests for justice. Palestine is not confined to a homeland whose natives are bereft of nationhood. Palestine is a question with rhizomatic histories and ubiquitous ramifications, manifest across the globe; here, there or elsewhere.

Taking a hint from Suleiman’s insights, this film program is dedicated to Palestine elsewhere. It explores how the longings and struggles of its people have manifested in compassionate encounters, solidarity accounts, and journeys of self-exploration, of learning about and from the other, unfolding regionally and globally.

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In his latest film, It Must Be Heaven (2019), Elia Suleiman presents a burlesque chronicle of what he deems as the “Palestinization of the world,”2 juxtaposing his hometown, Nazareth, with the cities of his exile: Paris and New York. Throughout the film’s journey, the filmmaker positions himself as a curious observer, both consumed and alienated by what he sees, immersed in a world that blends fantasy and reality. On the one hand, his quest for a film story is hijacked by established perceptions of what constitutes a “proper” Palestinian story. On the other hand, his Palestinian identity seems to reconfigure everywhere within a global context that institutionalizes violence and normalizes checkpoints and security apparatuses.

Already 50 years before Suleiman’s film, the French-Swiss director and critic Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022), a founding father of the French New Wave and one of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, underlined the significance of the Palestinian question as a cause for the global left and liberation movements worldwide. After he participated in directing Loin du Vietnam (1967) in support of the Vietnamese War of Independence, he embarked on a film project meant to document the struggle of Arab and Palestinian rebels in collaboration with the Palestine Film Unit. Godard’s aim was not to capture sensational images or give lessons to the people in the matter of revolutions; rather, as he put it in his own words, “to learn lessons” from the people, “and if possible to record these lessons, to distribute them here, or elsewhere in the world.”3 He wanted “to make films politically” instead of making political films4, and to understand what radical forms of production, of experimenting with images, and narratives such a process entails.

For Godard, Palestine was a domain for transforming cinema into a medium of resistance, for learning how to combat imperialism, but paradoxically also how to be defeated by it. After the shooting process was halted due to the tragic events of Black September in 1970, the film was released five years later under the title Ici et Ailleurs (1976), in collaboration with Anne-Marie Miéville. The film features footage documenting the struggle of Palestinian rebels and ideologues to achieve liberation, but it also concedes to the gap between representation and reality; between the realms of ideals and the chronicles of defeat, locating France at the center of an imperialist order of power.

Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras (b. 1933) was also one of the icons of arthouse world cinema, who raised concerns about the injustices befalling Palestinians. At the peak of his career and after winning an Oscar for the famous thriller Missing (1982), he began filming Hanna K. (1983), featuring Jill Clayburgh and Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri in his first international leading role. The film depicts the aftermath of an unplanned encounter between an Israeli lawyer (Hanna) and a Palestinian activist (Selim), who tries to reclaim ownership of his family’s house, only to find himself accused of illegal infiltration by an Israeli court. Hanna’s decision to defend Selim’s case not only garnered international attention and alarmed Israeli political elites but also overshadowed her personal existence, prompting her to reconsider her life choices. Encountering the Palestinian plight here serves as an urge for self-reflection, understanding one’s positions and entanglements, and revisiting one’s sense of justice, success, and love.

Solidarity with the Palestinian cause remains manifest in European cinema along the different epochs of the Arab-Israeli conflict, covering diverse themes and places. Gaza and the continued hardships confronted by its population due to the recurrent wars and sieges are featured in Samouni Road (2018) by Stefano Savona from Italy and The Apollo of Gaza (2018) by Nicolas Wadimoff from Switzerland. Savona highlights the destiny of a Palestinian family afflicted by devastating losses in life and property as a result of an Israeli attack. His compassionate insights into the everyday life of the family unfold in a language that emphasizes their dignity and makes room for their pain as far as their unrealized dreams. In Wadimoff’s film, we encounter a different Gaza that usually evades sight under the flood of images of death and destruction. Beyond stories of war, the mystery of a recently discovered Greek statue becomes a major site where Palestinians’ appreciation for beauty takes shape and their urge to identify with a national heritage and proclaim their cultural memory manifests.

In Life is Beautiful (2023) by Mohamed Jabaly, Gaza remains in focus, but the notion of solidarity manifests itself differently. We follow the journey of a Gazan filmmaker (Jabaly himself), who finds himself forcibly exiled to Tromsø, a Norwegian city near the North Pole, due to another war that ravaged his hometown and resulted in the complete blockade of its borders. Confronting the looming threat of deportation to nowhere, the film communities in the city stand in solidarity with his cause, supporting his quest to bring the stories of his besieged people and occupied land to the big screens of the world. The Tower (2018) by Mats Grorud is another account of Norwegian solidarity with the Palestinian people. In beautifully animated images, his film compassionately re-narrates the story of the Nakba and its effects from the perspective of three generations of a Palestinian family living in the refugee camp of Borj el-Barajneh in Lebanon. The film is inspired by personal stories told by the camp’s inhabitants to Grorud during his time living among them. As for Mohanad Yaqubi’s film R21 aka Restoring Solidarity (2022), it provides us with unconventional insights into an unknown account of solidarity with Palestine beyond Europe through explorations of a Japanese film archive.

In Arab cinema, the question of Palestine has been constantly present from the outset of the Arab-Israeli conflict, either straightforwardly as the major theme of the plot or as a political background that gives its unfolding events a contextual depth. Representations of the Palestinian plight and the pertinent narratives on war, peace, displacement, and the political responsibility of Arab regimes have shifted over time. Arab films that dealt with the conflict and its effects have appropriated their foci, their matters of concern, and their political intensities in response to the changing political conditions and priorities. Egyptian cinema remains groundbreaking in this regard. Just a few months after the Nakba and the defeat of the Arab armies, leading Egyptian producer Aziza Amir (1901-1952) ventured to produce the first film ever made on the conflict, Fatah min Falastin or A Girl from Palestine (1948). She assigned its direction to Mahmood Zulfakar, who later became a star of Egyptian popular cinema.

Yet only later, generations of Egyptian filmmakers have managed to deal with this topic with a political depth that goes beyond simplistic parochial framings, experimenting with styles of storytelling that transcend the genre conventions of commercial cinema and state-sponsored narratives. Tewfik Saleh’s (1926-2016) film The Dupes or Al-Makhdu’un (1972), an adaptation of a novella by Ghassan Kanafani stands as an ingenious example of a daring cinematic perspective on Palestine. In depicting the tragedy of Palestinian displacement, Saleh avoided heroic figurations and one-dimensional narratives, emphasizing the complicity of Arab regimes, the omnipresence of defeat, and its socio-economic implications. After Saleh, Yousry Nasrallah (b. 1952) ventured to craft an epic cinematic account of Elias Khoury’s novel Bab El Shams or The Gate of Sun (2004) with refined aesthetics and cinematographic qualities. The film is considered a masterpiece of Arab cinema and an artful testimony that recounts the chronicles of Palestinian resistance and its predicaments over 50 years. The film was released at a time when the second Palestinian Intifada was at its peak. The hardships of this specific period in the lives of Palestinian women in the occupied West Bank are intimately captured in Soraida, a Woman of Palestine (2004) by Egyptian-Canadian documentary filmmaker Tahani Rached (b. 1947), paying tribute to their fortitude and unraveling untold stories about what it means to live daily under occupation.

The question of Palestine and its regional repercussions have repeatedly been featured in the works of leading figures in Syrian cinema, such as Omar Amiralay (1944-2011) and Mohammad Malas (b. 1945), since the outset of their cinematic careers. This year’s Spotlight offers insights into the artistic merit of these two masters, their engagement with the Palestinian cause, and their political understanding of the genesis and effects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, in a double feature showcasing There Are So Many Things Still to Say (1997) by Amiralay and The Dream (1988) by Malas. Amiralay’s film captures the reflections of Syrian intellectual and playwright Saadallah Wannous (1944-1997), just a few weeks before his death, on the past and the future of a conflict, whose defeats and illusions led him to succumb to cancer. Malas’s film on the other hand is a beautifully woven account not merely of the lives of Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon, but primarily of their dreams.

On a different note, the destinies and losses of Palestinians in the aftermath of the subsequent wars of 1948 and 1967, and beyond, have always been an integral part of Lebanese collective memory, not least because of the presence of many Palestinian refugee camps there, and due to Lebanon’s direct involvement in various cycles of the conflict. Lebanese director Christian Ghazi (1934-2013) was one of the first Arab filmmakers to tackle the events of the war of 1967, accentuating the robustness of resistance despite defeat in El-Fedayon (1967). His friend Borhane Alaouié (1941-2021) achieved internationally acclaimed success with his masterpiece Kafr Kasem (1974), documenting the chronicles of a massacre perpetrated by the Israeli army against Palestinians in 1956.

In this program however, we provide insights into the engagement of Jocelyne Saab (1948-2019), another major figure of Lebanese cinema, with Palestine. Saab was the only filmmaker allowed to accompany Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (1929-2004) on The Ship of Exile (1982), documenting his thoughts and reflections on the future of his people, after the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) was compelled to leave Beirut in the aftermath of the civil war. A notable highlight of this program is the live performance Palestine – A Revised Narrative in which two renowned Lebanese artists, sound designer Rana Eid and score composer Cynthia Zaven, artistically engage with footage from the British archives shot on 35mm between 1914 and 1918 in Palestine, in a way that aims at subverting the logic of the colonial image and its claims of representation. Furthermore, the program also hosts a panel discussion on the possibilities of narrating Palestine on screen; the challenges Palestinian filmmakers in the diaspora face in telling their stories; the forms of solidarity; and the modes of learning and unlearning that unfold in the pursuit of Arab and European filmmakers to engage with the Palestinian cause.

In dealing with Palestine, Arab cinema has delved into events of resistance and destinies of displacement. It commemorated losses and revolutions, massacres and insurgencies, moments of despair, and moments of hope. It presented Palestinians as tenacious rebels, nostalgic dreamers, but also as defeated souls and dispersed refugees, whose sufferings could not extinguish their yearnings for self-determination and a life in dignity. But what about the origins and operationality of the violence inflicted upon them? What about the practices of occupation that instilled pain, that instigated waves of displacement, that engendered collective traumas across generations and places? This program hopes to outline the workings of occupation not only in terms of its effects – its visible marks on the bodies and life trajectories of Palestinians – but also in terms of its power politics, its routines, and rationalities that often deflect attention and evade the gaze. Avi Mograbi’s film The First 54 Years: An Abbreviated Manual of Military Occupation (2021) undertakes this task by locating the agents and functionaries of the occupation machinery in focus and analyzing the logic of power that underlies its practices.

Iskandar Abdalla
ALFILM Spotlight Curator

1. A Cinema of Nowhere. An Interview with Elia Suleiman. Journal of Palestinian Studies, Winter 2000. Vol. 29. No.2, pp. 95-101.
2. It Must be Palestine. Elias Suleiman interviewed by Zeina G.Halabi.
3. Jusqu’à la victoire. Interview with Jean-Luc Godard by El-Fatah, July 1970. trans. by Stoffel Debuysere in Diagonal Thoughts November 28, 2012, https://www.diagonalthoughts.com/?p=1728
4. Ici et Ailleurs. The Backstory by Rula Shawan, in Senses of Cinema, January 2022.