Tell Your Tale Little Bird
Arab Loutfi, 2007, 90′
Arabic with English subtitles
Seven militant women (fedaiyat) of the revolutionary generation tell the story of the Palestinian resistance through accounts of their own lives. Cut from 35 hours of interviews with leaders of the armed struggle, the film presents an image of confident, unapologetic and proud feminine identity. Together, the memories of these women narrate the dream of a generation, yet unrealized. Tell Your Tale, Little Bird is a testament to the power of remembrance, positioning memory as an essential element of feminist struggle. The film reminds us that this oral tradition may carry recollection of past resistance, but it is in the very practice of retelling women’s stories that the political act has persisted.
Arab Loutfi is a filmmaker, writer, and journalist. After working for many years on feature films with Mohammad Khan and Atef Altayeb, she moved into the field of documentary filmmaking. Her first documentary, The Upper Gate, was an intensely personal account about Sidon, her hometown, in which she wove a history of the city through the stories of its people. Her second film, Jamila’s Mirror, dealt with the memories of Palestinian female guerrilla fighters, currently in their forties, who were involved in military operations during their teen years. Loufti’s subsequent works in filmmaking were Seven Nights and a Dawn, Rango, and The Egyptian Wedding. She later created the films Short Visit; Stories from Gaza; Bird of Prudence; Playing with Democracy; Dark Room, Radiant Life; Tell Your Tale, Little Bird; and Over Their Dead Bodies.
The screening is followed by a conversation with poet Yousra Benfquih
Yousra Benfquih, is a writer, poet and spoken word artist. Since she won the txt-on-stage competition Naft voor Woord in 2017, she has been a permanent fixture on the Flemish stages. You can read her work in Kluger Hans, DW B, the Poëziekrant and De Revisor, among others. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Joost Zwagerman Essay Prize. In 2021 she was selected for the Slow Writing Lab and in 2022 for Vers van het Knife and Lonely Adventures. Yousra is part of the pool of authors at Rekto:verso and teaches Spoken Word at the Writing for Performance course at LUCA School of Arts.
Registration + Info: https://forms.gle/oftw2uZTpK4tH54o8