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. He started out in photography in his teenage years, with his first photo books, Wij zijn 17 [We Are 17] and Achter glas [Behind Glass], appearing in the 1950s. His focus shifted to filmmaking in Paris, where he studied at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC) from 1956 to 1958. 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. This approach underpinned his work, as he and his wife, Nosh van der Lely, who handled audio equipment, explored the world together. His collagist editing strategy, which he described as cubist, aimed to present multiple perspectives. Van der Keuken was also a gifted writer about cinema, an activity through which he sought to shape and delineate his practice. 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.
In solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese people we will be screening the movie “De Palestijnen” by Johan van der Keuken. Before watching we will introduce the film in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. After the viewing there will be an open discussion about the lessons of the Palestinian movement in Belgium, the encampments, and what role the working class of Belgium should have in this movement.