From and of Struggles, films from Rojava and Palestine
A programme of films by the Rojava Film Commune, the Kezi Collective and the Palestine Cinema Institute.
This programme hosts films that come out of ongoing liberation struggles. It brings into conversation cinema that is produced from and about the immediate present of Rojava and Palestine. The films in the programme were all produced as part of collectives that have been formed within the scope of revolutionary movements.
In collaboration with Cinema Galeries, Beursschouwburg and United Screens for Palestine
Palestine in the Eye
Mustafa Abu Ali, 1977, 27′
In Arabic with English subtitles
Palestine in the Eye was made as a eulogy to Hani Joharieh, a Palestinian cinematographer shot and killed while filming during a gun battle in the snowy hills of Ein Toura (Lebanon) in 1976. A co-founder of the Palestine Film Unit (PFU), he was immortalized as a martyr of Palestinian militant cinema. Made by his close friend and comrade, Mustafa Abu Ali, the film shows family, friends, and comrades recounting the filmmaker’s contributions to the revolution and its cinema thus paying tribute to the fellow filmmaker’s craft, and yet in many ways it operates as a self-portrait of the PFU, its ethos and cadre.
Mustafa Abu Ali ( مصطفى أبو علي) was a Palestinian filmmaker. Abu Ali studied at the University of California-Berkeley in the 1960s before studying cinema in London, graduating in 1967. He is considered one of the founders of Palestinian cinema, and the Palestinian Cinema Association in Beirut in 1973, (re-established in Ramallah in 2004). Along with Sulafa Jadallah and Hani Jowharieh, he established the Palestine Film Unit (PFU)–which saw its primary task as “documenting the revolution and creating an archive of images of historical documents”. After the PLO’s move to Lebanon after the events of Black September, the PFU was renamed the Palestine Cinema Institute and became one of the seven departments of the PLO’s Unified Media. Abu Ali headed the department from 1973 to 1975. Abu Ali wrote four screenplays and directed more than 30 films, for which he won more than 14 awards, the most recent from the 2003 Ismailia Film Festival.
Berbû
Sevinaz Evdike, 2023, 70′
In Kurdish with English subtitles
Gule is preparing a long-way dream wedding day in Serekaniye, a city in Syrian Kurdistan. But the city is bombed by the Turkish army, and the invasion starts. She has to flee from the city. On the way, she meets Barin, who could not finish her wedding that day, and Naze, with whom she ends up sharing life and broken dreams in the school conditioned as a shelter for refugees.
Sevinaz Evdike was born in Serekaniye/Rojava in 1992. She studied elementary education in Deir-A-Zor and film directing at the Cigerxwin Academy in Diyarbakir/Turkey. She was the co-director of Komina Film a Rojava/ Rojava Film commune, an organization which functions as a film academy, production and distribution house in Northern Syria. Sevinaz lectures on filmmaking, screenwriting and production and organizes screenings for Kurdish cinema in Syria and the rest of the world. She co-founded the Rojava Film Festival.
Kezî is a collective of women filmmakers from both Kurdish and international backgrounds, based in Rojava, in northeastern Syria. Over the years, their work has encompassed film production, movie screenings, and the training of women interested in cinema in Rojava.
Gule Welat is a Kurdish musician and filmmaker from Rojava. She worked as a Director Assistant in many productions of Rojava Film Commune like The End will Be Spectacular, Kobane and The Lonely Trees. Now she is a member of Kezî Women Film Collective.
Zilan Hemo is a young writer and director from Kobanê. She studied filmmaking at the Academy of Arts Martyr Yekta Herekol. After graduated she was one of the first members of the Rojava Film Commune in Kobane where she directed many short films and worked in all the production of the Commune since 2018.
The screening will be followed by a conversation between the director Sevinaz Evdike and Reem Shilleh, about the experiences of making and circulating films collectively as part of revolutionary and liberatory work.
More infos: https://galeries.be/en/berbu/#title-wrapper