Diary of an occupation: films and images shot in Palestine (1920-2024)
For this latest edition of the experimental film symposium, we offer a retrospective of a major American filmmaker (Henry Hills, in attendance), provide updates on current female production, accompany director Christian Lapointe in his first experience with radical cinema, host musician Sam Shalabi, and present two forgotten classics, one of which is a newly restored version that we have just completed.
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Live musical performance by Sam Shalabi featuring archive footage from the 'Katsakh' collection shot in Palestine, South Lebanon and Jordan (1920-2011).
A work created from a French news report about the Gaza Strip that Abu Ali re-edited, adding additional footage and a new commentary. This is the only film produced by the Palestinian Cinema Group, a large collective of filmmakers and artists that came together in 1973 and eventually evolved into the Palestinian Cinema Institute.
The Gaza Diary video was made in 2001, a few weeks after the start of the second Intifada. Tired of seeing the bullet-riddled bodies of Palestinians broadcast over and over again on Al-Jazeera, the director began filming snapshots - still images lasting several seconds that preserve the audio sound of his city and the lives of those close to him as he wanders around each day: life going on, whatever the cost, despite fragmentation.
What narratives escape the framework of war, and how do those who bear witness to them in turn consume the media? Offing focuses on the tender and the banal as acts of life, and repositions relationality as a path to the untranslatable essence of sound and subjectivity. Using the online voice of artist Salman Nawati, over footage shot by Toukan outside Gaza, the film turns away from the summer 2021 war on Gaza.
In this film, Jirmanus Saba created a montage of Palestinian journalists reporting from the current genocide with past and present images of Gaza, along with the words of Lebanese philosopher and militant Mehdi Amel.
Presented in collaboration with
