Palestinian Film: Cultural Resistance at Work

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Palestinian Film Cultural Resistance at Work
Haim Bresheeth at Sheffield cinemaPalestino May
7th, 2009
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Different fronts, same struggle

• The armed struggle to end the occupation and its
  difficulties
• Fighting the strongest, most modern army in the
  Middle East with rifles and rusty rockets
• The need to fight the occupation on all fronts,
  simultaneously
• The different fronts as complementary rather than
  contradictory

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Israel and its cultural war on Palestine

• The hegemony of the Zionist narrative worldwide
• The erasure and denial of the Nakba and the
  Palestinian narrative as part of the Zionist
  struggle for supremacy and control
• Huge Israeli and Zionist investment in the
  cultural war against Palestine
• Israeli literature, art, theatre, dance and films
• Israeli science and academic research
• Israeli investment in foreign governments and
  markets
• Israeli lobbies in the centres of power

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The two competing narratives - Israel

• Israel and the Exodus/Empty Land myth, used to
  justify occupation, illegal settlements and
  continued oppression
• Abuse of the Holocaust for political ends
• Physical removal of the signs and sights of
  Palestine
• Destruction of towns and villages since 1948
• Removal of names from the maps and from the
  school readers
• Covering of large areas of Palestine with
  European evergreen forests, covering up the
  middle Eastern heath and hills
• De-recognising Palestinian villages and towns
  (non-recognised habitations) as a form of
  gradual removal and denial
• Removing the population by not allowing return of
  the refugees, and by continuously making the
  rests life impossible
• Removal of the Arabic language from the public
  sphere

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The two competing narratives - Palestine

• The struggle to remember, retain and examine the
  Nakba memory and its painful lessons
• The struggle to hold on to the land, memory and
  culture
• The daily fight against injustices of the
  occupation
• The struggle against the hegemony of the Zionist
  narrative
• The struggle to establish a Palestinian culture,
  rich and vibrant, in impossibly difficult
  conditions
• The struggle to bring Palestinian narratives to
  an international audience, on whose good will
  depend the long-term, just solution to the
  conflict

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Functions of storytelling in Palestinian cinema

• The cinematic talking cure therapeutic
• The cinematic oral history Social memory
• Cinematically imagined community Identity
• Making a (cinematic) mark Resisting erasure
• Fighting for your narrative Cultural resistance
• Passing the national baton Speaking the nation
• Cinematic corporeality Realising the virtual

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Two types of commemoration

• Independence Day Nakba Day
• Victory Defeat
• Dominant Repressed
• Official Personal/familial
• Public Secret
• A country won A country lost
• Festivity Melancholia

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The two countries

• The occupier Vs the Occupied
• Two communities superimposed on each other
• Two narratives in conflict
• Two languages/Cultures/religions
• The battle of the names renaming Palestine
• Landscapes of denial signposting, maps,
  unrecognised villages, destroyed houses, roads,
  uprooted olive trees, divided villages/houses/fami
  lies
• The two opposing systems of rights
• The mighty mass of the occupying army Vs the body
  politic(s) of the individual martyr

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Borders and Liminality in Palestinian cinema

• Israel as the country without borders/boundaries/l
  imits/limitations
• Palestine as a patchwork of border-crossings,
  checkpoints, blocked roads and isolated ghettoes,
  the Appartheid Wall and the many fences
• Atomised Palestine The Said formula
• 1948 Palestinians (remained in what became
  Israel)
• Palestinians in the rest of Palestine
• The refugees inside Palestine
• The refugees in the Arab world and beyond
• Naficys Exilic Cinema, and its Palestinian
  derivatives Suleiman (A Chronicle of
  Disapperance, Divine Intervention), Hassan
  (Ostura, Cut), Bakri (1948, Jenin, Jennin), Hani
  Al Assad (Ford Transit)

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Palestinian cinema as struggle

• Using history and memory against Zionism and its
  lies and denial
• Supplying Palestinians with a cultural identity
• Promoting Palestines case abroad
• Assisting the solidarity movements outside the
  region
• Fighting violence with words, images, music and
  humour