In the context of Eye on Palestine, Art Cinema OFFoff proposes a film program and discussion inspired by Reem Shilleh and Gawan Fagard’s recent article, Searching for the Palestinian Militant Image in Times of Existential Emergency: How can the moving image be in solidarity with political resistance? This text was commissioned by the Belgian film magazine Fantômas (NL), and published jointly with MUBI Notebook (EN).
Followed by a discussion between Basma Alsharif, Reem Shilleh and Gawan Fagard.
The Palestinians
Johan van der Keuken, 1975, 45′
In dutch, with English subtitles
In 1975, on the eve of the Lebanese civil war, Johan van der Keuken travelled to southern Lebanon on behalf of the Netherlands Palestine Committee. He filmed the rural population between two fires: the Israeli artillery and the local feudal rulers. Van der Keuken shows the Palestinians’ struggle as a class struggle. He sees parallels between the class divisions in Europe that gave Nazism and anti-Semitism a chance and those in the Arab world that make Palestinians, as newly dispossessed, an explosive situation. The Palestinian struggle, aimed at returning to their land, was seen by Van der Keuken in 1975 in the perspective of a democratic Palestine, where Jews and Palestinians could live and work together. The movie is at once personal and scientific: interviewing Palestinian refugees in Southern Lebanon who recount in their own words their experiences as refugees and resistance fighters, while also explaining the historical development of zionism and the Palestinian resistance through an analysis capitalism and imperialism.
Johan van der Keuken (1938–2001) was a Dutch filmmaker and photographer. In a career that spanned 42 years, van der Keuken made 55 films, born from a unique and influential vision of filmmaking. He viewed the camera as an integral part of himself, rejecting the notion that filmmakers are detached from the world they depict. The filmmaker stands radically in the world, looking through their lens, framing reality. His notable films include Herman Slobbe | Blind kind 2 (1966), Vakantie van de filmer [The Filmmaker’s Holiday] (1974), the North-South trilogy, Het oog boven de put [The Eye Above the Well] (1988), and his acclaimed Amsterdam Global Village (1996). Van der Keuken’s oeuvre earned him accolades such as the Dutch Culture Award in 1988 and the Bert Haanstra Oeuvre Prize in 2000.
O, Persecuted
Basma Al-Sharif, 2014, 12′
Arabi with English subtitles
O, Persecuted turns the act of restoring Kassem Hawal’s 1974 Palestinian militant film, Our Small Houses, into a performance possible only through film. One that involves speed, bodies, and the movement of the past into a future that collides ideology with escapism.
Basma al-Sharif is a Palestinian artist working in cinema and installation. She developed her practice nomadically between the Middle East, Europe, and North America and is currently based in Berlin. Her practice looks at cyclical political conflicts and confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works.
Deep Sleep
Basma Al-Sharif, 2014, 13′
Temporarily restricted from travel to the Gaza Strip because of border conflict, I undertook the study and practice of autohypnosis with the purpose of bi-locating into multiple places at once. Paired with field recordings rendered into a binaural beat soundtrack, Deep Sleep is made up of a year’s worth of bi-location sessions recorded onto Super8mm film. The result is a movement through the ruins of ancient civilizations as embedded in modern civilization-in-ruins. Deep Sleep draws from the historical avant-garde cinema to produce an invitation to move through landscapes and transcend geographical borders in a collective act that discards memory in exchange for a visceral present.
Basma al-Sharif is a Palestinian artist working in cinema and installation. She developed her practice nomadically between the Middle East, Europe, and North America and is currently based in Berlin. Her practice looks at cyclical political conflicts and confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works.
More infos: https://offoff.be/en/program/eye-on-palestine