A Stone’s Throw (2024)

Experimental, 31m

Amine, a Palestinian elder, is exiled twice, from land and labor, from Haifa to Beirut to a Gulf offshore oil platform. "A Stone’s Throw" trespasses borders to reveal an emotional and material proximity between the extraction of oil and labour in the region and the Zionist colonization of Palestine. The film rehearses a history of the Palestinian resistance when, in 1936, the oil labourers of Haifa blow up a BP pipeline.

Director: Razan AlSalah

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This month, the films of the Palestine Film Platform have been guest curated by Batool Batool Elhennawy of the Contemporary Image Collective in Cairo. Between Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, this film program thinks through the zionist/imperialist threat of a “regional war” and the ways the zionist occupation of Palestine led to an intersectional history of resistance in the region. The films work with themes of inaccessibility, in location of filming, or visual language, due to regimes in the three countries, and by extension their relationship to the occupation. In two overlapping types of oppression, the program attempts to think of the complexity of liberation, and the images of resistance. Ones that document, maneuver, or navigate a political catastrophe (both the distinctive and the ongoing: the nakba, the genocide, or ongoing crimes of the occupation). While the history and news from the region intersect, each geo-political site is different. As we delve into the filmmakers’ stories, perhaps we see how far the distinction is essential to a unified cause. The sentiments are shared, and the goal of liberation is one, but the complexities speak volumes.

The films engage in one on one relationships and conversations, from seemingly private, or at least specific, encounters. These conversations lead us to think of the tools of cinema as a form of observation, and a mediator of experience, one that can redefine or interplay with the experience itself. In a time where we pay tribute on a daily basis to the images of resistance from inside Gaza, the West Bank, and South Lebanon, as well as think of the power an image can hold to divert an oppressive narrative, to speak truth, to break the definition of zionist time. We additionally think, can these moments of agency and clarity in a political story come to us quietly, often unnoticed? The Syrian post-revolutionary context adds a distinct timeline and spatiality of resistance. While we listen to the filmmakers and their subjects on site, as they share a camera, we hope to engage in the potential that telling a historical story has to accumulate within the discourse of liberation.

Batool Elhennawy is an artist and cultural programmer. She studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan University. She worked with the Cairo Institute for Arts and Sciences in Cairo and Alexandria, as well as doing research for art and culture institutions and projects. She participated in Spring Sessions residency (2017), The Lab Residency (2019) at Darat al Funun, Amman, Jordan, and Arriving Elsewhere (2019) in Wadi Rum, Jordan, PS: Communitism (2023) in Athens, where she developed and exhibited work, and co-curated After Hours residency (2020) at Darat al Funun. She is currently working as a programmer at Contemporary Image Collective (CIC). Her practice revolves around working with theory to find starting points for projects that might take on other forms, with a focus on text, and (moving) image.

Shorts 6

The Seven Villages (2020)

Dir. Farah Abou Kharroub / 2020 / Documentary / 17 mins

Young filmmaker’s Farah Abou Kharroub’s insight into a dramatic family history which is not entirely over. Over the course of one video call, family members share their experiences as Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Their statements are accompanied by dynamic animation.

The Cup Reader (2013)

Dir. Suha Araj / 2013 / Drama / 12 mins

Warde, shamed as a young girl yet renowned in Palestine for her mystical seeing and matchmaking lives with her sister Jaleleh and reads the fortunes of her clients. Each woman has made or will make a choice between love and marriage, not having had the luxury of both.

Your Father Was Born 100 Years Old, and So Was the Nakba (2017)

Dir. Razan AlSalah / 2017 / Experimental / 7 mins

Oum Ameen, a Palestinian grandmother, returns to her hometown Haifa through Google Maps Streetview, today, the only way she can see Palestine.

Falafala (2019)

Dir. Mohammed Almughanni / 2019 / Documentary / 30 mins

In 1972, Abdul Alnajjar is flown in secret to Denmark to be the first child to receive a heart valve operation. But when the only link between Abdul and his family in Jordan is severed, his life takes a different direction.

The Bomb (2018)

Dir. Dima Hamdan / 2018 / Drama / 21 mins

Wasim and his mother haven't been getting along for a while. When the police ask them to evacuate their home in Berlin for one night to excavate a World War II bomb that's been discovered in the area, more feelings of anger and hurt come to the surface.

Strange Cities are Familiar (2019)

Dir. Saeed Taji Farouky / 2019 / Drama / 21 mins

Ashraf has been a political refugee in London for some 30 years, content with spending his days in his study or at his local social club. One day he receives a phone call from his friend in Palestine, telling him that his son Moataz has been fatally wounded in a protest. His friend pleads with Ashraf to return home.