FOR A FREE PALESTINE:
FILMS FROM
PALESTINIAN WOMEN

Electrical Gaza (2015, 17’)
dir. Rosalind Nashashibi

Nation Estate (2012, 9’)
dir. Larissa Sansour

The White Elephant (2018, 12’)
dir. Shurua Harb

Strawberry (2017, 17’)
dir. Aida Kaadan

Programme curated by Ahmed Adam

Courtesy of Another Gaze
Donate to their fundraiser campaign here:
gofundme.com/f/another-screen-for-a-free-palestine

This selection of short films by Palestinian women has been curated from an evolving online programme via Another Screen; a new, free streaming project by Another Gaze journal, created to foreground rare film work deemed worthy of feminist interrogation, across geographies and modes of production, featuring guest programmers and collaborators.

All the films in this programme can be found here:
another-screen.com/films-free-palestine-women

Donations go to facilitating medical, legal, and infrastructure aid on the ground. Secondary donations go to as supporting filmmaking in Gaza; restoration projects of older Palestinian films; cultural centres for refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territories & more.

The overriding presence of an absence is at the creative core of Palestinian cinema, what has made it thematically in/coherent and aesthetically im/possible - Hamid Dabashi

Palestinian cinema was established in the hardship of social and political crisis. Palestinian filmmakers who make films under the military occupation of the Israeli settler-colonialism, work within a complex negotiations between politics and aesthetics. On one hand there is pressure from the Palestinian people on the filmmakers to make direct films that response to traumatic experiences of war, displacement, and occupation. Palestinians expect their filmmakers to project what is in their minds. On the other hand filmmakers have their own struggle to search for image that is liberated from projections. Consequently, the filmmakers quite often find themselves in a separated, lonely position.

These films that will be screened at Watch This Space (Walk-In Cinema) by Palestinian women do not try to represent trauma, but to transgress it by realising that the political is everywhere, in contrast to ‘political cinema’ that is based on a strict border between the private and public. The Palestinian women filmmakers are rendering the private affair immediately political: family, gender, inter-generational relations, work, school, and daily life, etc.  

Rosalind Nashashibi’s film Electrical Gaza is a fine example of this approach, in her film violence is not at the centre. The camera appreciates the ordinary life: men cook falafel and sing together, kids play in an alleyway, horses are washed in the Mediterranean.

What link all these films together is the filmmakers concerns with creating their own visual language where aesthetics is centre to their inquiry, and where filmmakers clearly understand beauty is resistance.

Electrical Gaza (2015, 17’)
In ‘Electrical Gaza’ Nashashibi combines her footage of Gaza, and the fixer, drivers and translator who accompanied her there, with animated scenes. She presents Gaza as a place from myth; isolated, suspended in time, difficult to access and highly charged. ​

Nation Estate (2012, 9’)
Nation Estate is a sci-fi short film offering a clinically dystopian, yet humorous approach to the deadlock in the Middle East. The film explores a vertical solution to statehood. One colossal high-rise houses the entire Palestinian population – now finally living the high life.  Each city has its own floor: Jerusalem on the 13th floor, Ramallah on the 14th floor, Sansour’s native Bethlehem on the 21st and so on. Intercity trips previously marred by checkpoints are now made by elevator. Aiming for a sense of belonging, the lobby of each floor re-enacts iconic squares and landmarks.

The story follows the female lead, played by Sansour herself, returning home from a trip abroad and making her way through the lobby of the building – sponsored and sanctioned by the international community. Having passed the security checks, she takes the elevator to the Bethlehem floor and crosses Manger Square and Church of the Nativity on her way to her apartment where she prepares a plate of sci-fi tabouleh.

The White Elephant (2018, 12’)
Based on 1990s videos found on the Internet, Shuruq Harb imagines the stream of consciousness of a Palestinian teenager and her worries about friendship and romance in the political climate of the Oslo Accords. Between the loss of a friend, who was an activist in the First Intifada, and her distrust of a boyfriend who steals Israeli cars claiming it is a political gesture, the teenager observes, doubts and suspends her judgement.

The film’s semi-autobiographical inspiration enters into tension with its Israeli pop culture sources: the Gulf War, the First Intifada and the trance music scene which, in Tel Aviv, offers young Tsahal soldiers a chance at decompression. The filmmaker casts a critical gaze on this culture whose distorting mirror makes it difficult for a developing youngster to self-identify. The only thing that makes it possible to momentarily forget the divide is the rave party – “72 hours of musical madness”, where she can pass herself off as an Israeli. “We all wanted to escape from something, him as a soldier, us to disappear…” A personality is spawned through figures that elude all assigned identities, as for example Dana International, the Israeli singer of Yemeni origin who was the first trans person to win the Eurovision contest – a mix of origins and a physical transformation leave their mark on an editing approach that fragments more than it constructs: “When you take something apart, how do you know what it was like in the beginning?”

Strawberry (2017, 17’)
Samir, 43, is the owner of a shoe shop in Ramallah who has never seen the sea. He decides to sneak past Israeli borders with other Palestinian construction workers to fulfil his dream of seeing the sea. Instead, he ends up at a construction site where Anas, 22, asks him to work for him.

BIO

Rosalind Nashashibi
Rosalind Nashashibi is a London-based artist working in film and painting. Her films use both documentary and speculative languages, where real-life observations are merged with paintings, fictional or sci-fi elements to propose models of collective living. Her paintings likewise operate on another level of subjective experience, they frame arenas or pools of potential where people or animals may appear, often in their own context of signs and apparitions that signal their position for the artist. 

Nashashibi has showed in Documenta 14, Manifesta 7, the Nordic Triennial, and Sharjah  X, She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2017 and won Beck’s Futures prize in 2003. She represented Scotland in the 52nd Venice Biennial. Most recent solo shows include Vienna Secession, CAAC Seville, Chicago Art Institute and Kunstinstuut Melly, Rotterdam. She was artist in residence at the National Gallery 2019-21 and is a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths.

Larissa Sansour
Larissa Sansour was born in 1973 in East Jerusalem, Palestine, and studied fine arts in London, New York and Copenhagen. Central to her work is the dialectics between myth and historical narrative. In her recent works, she uses science fiction to address social and political issues. Working mainly with film, Sansour also produces installations, photos and sculptures.

Sansour’s work is shown in film festivals and museums worldwide. In 2019, she represented Denmark at the 58th Venice Biennial. In 2020, she was the shared recipient of the prestigious Jarman Award. She has shown her work at Tate Modern, MoMA, Centre Pompidou and the Istanbul Biennial. Recent solo exhibitions include Copenhagen Contemporary in Denmark, Bluecoat in Liverpool, Bildmuseet in Umeå and Dar El-Nimer in Beirut.

Sansour currently lives and works in London, UK.

Shuruq Harb
Shuruq Harb is an artist, filmmaker, teacher, writer, editor and publisher based in Ramallah. Her artistic practice focuses on online visual culture and traces subversive routes for the circulation of images and goods. Her film The White Elephant received the award for best short film at Cinema du Reel Festival in Paris, 2018, and was shortlisted for the Hamburg International Short Film Festival, 2019. Her first short story “and this is the object that I found” was published at Mezosfera (2020). She is the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award (2019) which produced her most recent film The Jump, currently on display at Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona.

Aida Kaadan
Born in Germany, Aida Kaadan grew up in Baqa Al Ghabriyya, Occupied Palestinian Territories. Kaadan discovered her passion for photography, filmmaking and storytelling throughout her studies at High School. Kaadan enrolled in university at Tel Aviv University Steve Tisch school for TV and Film Studies. She produced her multiple award-winning short film “Farawla” during her 2nd year of studies, in addition to other short films. In her films, she observes and studies her protagonists as 'the other' who struggles to protect and express his/her own identity, while facing prejudice and social pressures. Where she invites the audience to deal with their own preconceptions and biases.

Currently, Kaadan is in the process of developing her 2nd short film “At Your Mercy”, as well as teaching Film Studies and Film production at Ramallah Friends Schools IB program.

Acknowledgement

Programmed originally by Daniella Shreir.

With invaluable help, support, wisdom, knowledge and guidance from Missouri Williams, Yasmine Seale, Samia Labidi, Emily Jacir, Mona Benyamin, Charlotte Proctor and Frank Beauvais.

Translations into Arabic thanks to Yasmine Zohdi, Yasmine Seale, May Al Otaibi and Carine Chelhot Lemyre ; video editing help from Chrystel Oloukoï.

Image

Still from Electrical Gaza (2015)

FUNDRAISER
SCREENING
Donate here

WEDNESDAY 7 JULY

FOOD SERVED 6:30PM
SCREENING 7:00PM

The Walk-In Cinema
is generously supported
by Screen Territory


BYO (no booze)
The Walk-In is an under-resourced cinema and we rely on a BYO hospitality attitude. We will provide warm food, fire and film, and request that you bring your own deck chair, swag, thermos, soup vessel, blanket and anything else you might need to keep yourself comfortable. 

Please note this is a dry event, there will be no alcohol served or permitted. It is family friendly, dog friendly, it is friendly to all.

Food

Provided in partnership with Pasta Madre

Please remember to BYO cup/bowl/spoon.