In 1935, Ibrahim Hassan Sirhan filmed the visit of Saudi King Ibn Saud to the city of Jaffa. That film marked the origin of Palestinian cinema. A decade later, the embryonic film industry will take a small step forward when Hassan Sirhan himself decides to partner with Ahmad Hilmi al-Kilani, a young man who had studied film in Cairo, to promote the first Palestinian production company. But that journey will be short. The Nakba of 1948 cut it short. Hassan Sirhan, like so many thousands of Palestinians, will abandon his land fleeing Israeli bombs. All his movies disappeared. The same fate befell the production of other film pioneers such as Mohammad Kayali and Abde-er-Razak Alja’uni.
If the Nakba implied the denial of the existence of the Palestinian people, annulling its cinematographic representation will become Israel’s strategic objective. And the will to create a Palestinian cinema will become an act of resistance unacceptable to the occupier. Since the late 1960s, a handful of young people such as Sulafa Mirsal, Mustafa Abu-Ali, Hani Johariya and Salah Abu Hannoud will devote themselves to it. With them, Palestinian cinema will be reborn linked to the Palestine Liberation Organization, through documentaries, made with very precarious means, that recorded the struggle of its people. Your challenge will not only be to create, but also protect Palestinian visual heritage. This is how the Palestinian Cinema Archive will emerge, promoted by Abu-Ali, which until the 1980s will manage to gather a hundred films, including some films from before 1948. Quite a provocation for Israel.
The Palestinian Film Archive disappeared completely in 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut.
After multiple vicissitudes, the archive completely disappeared in 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut. Although some say that its funds could have been transferred to Iran after falling into the hands of Hezbollah, most hypotheses suggest that the archive was destroyed or stolen by the Israeli army. The Palestinian people, as in 1948, once again saw their cinema disappear. And with it the memory of several generations, the story with its own voice of its history. It is not surprising that in 1984, the intellectual Edward Said claimed the urgent need for this story in an article with the significant title “Permission to narrate.”
Since then, Palestinian cinema continues to demand that “permission to narrate.” These days, screenwriter Rami Alayan is in Spain to present the film A House in Jerusalem, co-written with his brother and director of the film Muayad, which is competing for the Golden Palm in the Official Section of Mostra de València-Cinema del Mediterrani.
For him, as for the rest of the Palestinian filmmakers, making films is a way to break the silence imposed on his people, their identity and their memory. “This forced silence has been there since day one and its best example is the disappearance and theft of film archives. I don’t know if those files can ever be recovered. But what we can do is fight for our story. It is in that framework where memory makes sense. Memory is intangible, oral. It is documented through cinema, poetry, literature, so that the memory is regenerating, it can never be erased,” he comments.
Although the documentary continues to play an important role, Palestinian cinema in recent years has found in fiction a powerful resource to keep its story alive.
Although the documentary continues to play an important role, Palestinian cinema in recent years has found in fiction a powerful resource to keep its story alive. Michel Khleifi is possibly the great protagonist of that transition. If he will soon include fictional elements in his documentaries, in 1987 he will become the first Palestinian director present at the Cannes festival where he will win the international critics’ prize with his film Wedding in Galilee. The film will also win the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián festival that year. After him would come other directors such as Elia Suleiman, Rashid Masharawi, Nizar Hassan or Arab Nasser and Tarzan Nasser. With them, Palestinian cinema will delve into new genres such as drama, black comedy or thriller.
The Alayan brothers’ film also uses genre cinema. It does so in a pioneering way because A House in Jerusalem is the first Palestinian film that delves into fantasy cinema. The film tells the story of a Jewish girl born in England who, after the death of her mother in an accident, moves to Jerusalem with her father to live in an old house bought by her grandparents. There the little girl will come into contact with the ghost of a Palestinian girl trapped in a well abandoned since the Nakba tragedy. The film, largely inspired by family experiences, seeks to overcome the gothic premises of old houses and ghosts. As Rami Alayan points out, the film “talks about ghosts that arise organically from the reality of our homeland. It is the concept of the ghost of the living. With millions of Palestinian refugees, their descendants still in exile and others still displaced from their homes to this day, as well as what is happening now in Gaza. The concept of the traumatized ghosts of the living is pertinent and speaks to our sad reality.”
Alayan highlights the difficulty that exists in promoting independent Palestinian cinema. Starting with financing. A House in Jerusalem is a good example of this. Although it was one of his first scripts, the ambition of the project prevented it from becoming a reality until they found international co-producers. Before, they had to make two films with modest budgets and means, turning to friends for financing and raising funds through platforms. But just as or more complicated than this financing is getting these productions to the public. “You always have the feeling that your story is taboo. “If you are Palestinian, if you grow up as a Palestinian, it doesn’t take long to realize that there is a discourse that alienates you from reality, you realize the systematic silence to which your own story is subjected,” he comments.
‘Farha’ was the first Palestinian film included on Netflix. The Israeli reaction was relentless and the film has been left out of Netflix’s offering in numerous countries, including Spain.
That slab continues to weigh even when apparent successes occur. Farha, director Darin J. Sallam’s debut feature that presents the tragedy of the Nakba through the eyes of a teenager, is a good example of this. In 2022, the film became the first Palestinian film included on the Netflix platform. The Israeli reaction was relentless, with pressure from the government, boycott campaigns or withdrawal of aid to the only room that programmed it in Israel. The film has been left out of Netflix’s offering in numerous countries, including Spain. Meanwhile, the platform displays other Israeli products without problems and with maximum diffusion, such as the Fauda series, which presents the official view that transforms the Palestinian into a synonym for “terrorist.”
Therefore, for Rami Ayalan, the visibility offered to Palestinian cinema by festivals such as the Mostra de València-Cinema del Mediterrani is crucial, which also includes the film Alam, by Firas Khoury, in the programming of its informative section. “There is a systematic and deliberate attempt to silence the conflict, to silence the truth,” the scriptwriter emphasizes; That is why our presence here is very significant.” A cinema that reflects on memory and keeps it alive, while the present continues to bloody mark the Palestinian reality. “When we write a story we are not journalists, as scriptwriters the perspective is different although, at the same time, we are surrounded by dramatic news that happens around us and, of course, influences us,” says Ayalan.
Sometimes, that weight of the present becomes unbearable. It is happening in recent weeks with the Israeli bombings on Gaza: more than a million people displaced and more than 5,000 dead, a third of them children. In moments like this, the urgent cry of denunciation takes center stage from the cinema. “Thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes, there are thousands of dead; what is happening with humanitarian aid, the impossibility of basic things arriving so that people can survive such as water, food or medicine. The perfect scenario is being created for a catastrophe and none of this is coincidental,” says Ayalan. That is why he calls for international mobilization: “Now is the time to act, even if we are normal and ordinary people; We all have to contribute to stopping what is happening. “We cannot remain silent.”
2023-10-25 05:46:20
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