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.

Abou Farid’s War (2021)

Experimental, 31m

Archaeology inspector and conservator Abou Farid shares part of his image library documenting the condition of mosaic works in the aftermath of several raids on Ma’arrat Al-Numan Museum in Idlib, Syria as well as the independent preservation efforts that ensued. The images give way to an aleatory conversation interweaving questions of cultural heritage and territory, preservation techniques and destruction, traceability and looting, and the production and circulation of images in times of war. 

Director: Omar Mismar

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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.

Pasolini Pa* Palestine (2005)

Experimental, 51m

In 1963 Pier Paolo Pasolini, poet and filmmaker, ex-catholic and communist, went looking for signs of the divine in the villages, churches, and deserts of Palestine. He was at the same time searching the faces of its inhabitants for traces of the rustic piety that produced the Christian revolution, all the while recording his travels in a documentary of locations and scenarios for his planned film on the life of Jesus. Having found too few places untouched by the violence of modernity, Pasolini instead shot his Gospel According to Matthew in southern Italy.
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In a stuttering embrace of the holy fatherland and father Pasolini himself, Pasolini Pa* Palestine remakes Pasolini’s documentary, translating his script into Arabic and taking his film survey as a map for exploring contemporary Palestine. Reactivating Pasolini’s pursuit of the ‘archaic’ and the ‘sub-proletarian’ in a landscape cluttered with the markers of modern/colonial war and occupation, the video weaves together myth and document, the theological and the political, the messianic and the everyday.
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At once an exploration of artistic repetition and reenactment, and the scenario of production that lies at the margins of epic narrative, Pasolini Pa* Palestine is also a discerning investigation of the past as a motivating political force, revolutionary and otherwise, in the wreckage of the modern.

Director: Ayreen Anastas

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From: Ayreen Anastas
Sent: Dec 2, 2003 4:22 PM
To: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Subject: Sopraluoghi in Palestina per il film “Vangelo Secondo Matteo”
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Dear Pier Paolo,
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I am writing to ask your permission to repeat your seeking in Palestine film 40 years ago in the film: Sopraluoghi in Palestina per il film ‘Vangelo Secondo Matteo’.*
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In this repetition, I would like to find in that landscape what you have not found in your film. Your refusal of the Palestinian landscape makes me sad: a refusal that is a negation and affirmation at the same time: it is a negation because you did not execute ‘The Gospel According to Matthew’ in Palestine, and an affirmation in the sense of the necessity of a repetition of this venture, trip, seeking etc… only in that gap of not finding the location in Palestine in your film 40 years ago, I can start seeking them in the new film today.
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So it is not a real sadness if I say: I am sad that you did not decide for this landscape and for locations there. It is rather a symbolic sadness, that will help me find an unnamable (an unknown that actually motivates the project) in that landscape I grew up in. It is a sadness of love, a double love, for you as a filmmaker and for this landscape.
(…)
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* Seeking Locations in Palestine for ‘The Gospel According to Matthew'”

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.

Ouroboros (2017)

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In Memory of Yaser Murtaja

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Experimental, 1h 17m

An homage to the Gaza Strip based on the eternal return. A journey following one man through five different landscapes marks the end as the beginning, forgetting as the way forward, and the failure of civilization.

Writer & Director: Basma Alsharif

Cinematographer: Ben Russel

Drone & Steadycam (Gaza): Yaser Murtaja

Sound: Federico Chiari

Original Music: Yann Gourdon, Bunny People

Voiceover: Sky Hopinka

Starring: Diego Marcon, Claire De Pimodan, Lauren Strom Berg, Joseph Valdez, Yann Gourdon

“Ouroboros is an essay on displacement, the psychological mindscape of physical removal from one’s home...It speaks a cinematic language unlike any other.”

— Daniel Schindel, The Film Stage

Shorts 5

Cyber Palestine (1999)

Dir. Elia Suleiman / 1999 / Experimental / 16 mins

Cyber Palestine is a parable about a modern-day Mary and Joseph, two Palestinian returnees living in Gaza, and their tribulations with the Israeli occupation. The film was commissioned by the Palestinian National Authority’s Bethlehem 2000 Project as part of the millennium commemorations in Bethlehem.

Make a Wish (2005)

Cherien Dabis / 2005 / Drama / 13 mins

A young Palestinian girl will do whatever it takes to buy a birthday cake. Eleven year-old MARIAM begs her mother for the extra money she needs to buy a cake at the local bakery. Her mother begrudgingly relents, but when Mariam arrives at the bakery, she realizes that she still doesn't have enough. Determined to get the cake, she sets out to brave the obstacles and land some cash. What begins as a simple trip to the bakery turns into a journey that depicts not only the subtle tensions of a politically charged environment, but also illustrates the grief that can result from growing up under occupation.

A Boy, a Wall, and a Donkey (2008)

Hany Abu-Assad / 2008 / Experimental / 5 mins

Three young boys want to make a film in a village without cameras. They ride their donkey to the separation wall and are in luck as the place is flooded with surveillance cameras. When an army jeep approaches they wonder if they will finally get their hands on their footage.

Diary of a Male Whore (2001)

Tawfik Abu Wael / 2001 / Drama / 14 mins

Esam, a young Arab war refugee who lives in Tel Aviv, makes his living as a male prostitute. His physical pleasure, which makes him forget his hunger, reminds him constantly of his childhood in his home village. Inspired by the novel For Bread Alone by Mohammad Shukry.

Shorts 4

Ismail (2013)

Dir. Nora al-Sharif // 2013 // Drama // 28 Mins

Inspired by a day in the life of the famous and prolific Palestinian painter Ismail Shammout (1930-2006), Ismail depicts the evocative story of a young Palestinian artist struggling to survive and support his parents and young brother after their expulsion to a refugee camp in 1948 by the Israeli forces.

Area C (2018)

Dir. Salah Abu Nimah // 2018 // Drama // 10 mins

In the nearly two-thirds of the West Bank classified as ‘Area C’ under the Oslo Accords, which contains many of the Israeli settlements, Israel exclusively administers the area and severely limits Palestinian development. By contrast, Jewish settlements are allowed to flourish unchecked, and settlers run rampant over their Palestinian neighbors. Young Hussain tries to defend his house so he can stay there with his parents.

A Sketch of Manners (2013)

Dir. Jumana Manna // 2013 // Experimental // 12 mins

Alfred Roch, member of the Palestinian National League, is a politician with a bohemian panache. In 1942, at the height of WWII, he throws what will turn out to be the last masquerade in Palestine.

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.

Maradonna’s Legs (2019)

Firas Khoury // 2019 // Drama // 23 mins

During the 1990 World Cup, two young Palestinian boys are looking for “Maradona’s legs”; the last missing sticker that they need in order to complete their world cup album and win a free Atari.

Shorts 3

Naim and Wadee'a (2000)

Dir. Najwa Najjar // 2000 // Documentary // 20 Mins

This documentary by Najwa Najjar explores social life in Yaffa through a miniature portrait of a Palestinian couple, Wadee’a Aghabi and Naim Azar, the filmmaker’s grandparents who lived there before the expulsion in 1948. The story is built on the oral accounts of Naim and Wadee’a’s three daughters, offering a glimpse into the memories of a couple forced to leave their home, and the effect displacement had on their family.

Solomon’s Stone (2015)

Dir. Ramzi Maqdisi // 2015 // Comedy // 26 mins

Hussein, a young Palestinian man, receives a letter from the Israeli post office to appear in person to receive a package. He has to pay the sum of 20,000 $ US dollars in order to collect that package. Hussein’s curiosity to find out what the package contains drives him to sell everything he owns, despite the outright rejection of his mother, changing their lives forever.
Adapted from the novel Blue Light by Hussein Barghouty.

Strawberry (2017)

Dir. Aida Kaadan // 2017 // Drame // 17 mins

Samir, 43, is the owner of a shoe shop in Ramallah who has never seen the sea. He decides to sneak past the Israeli border with other Palestinian construction workers to fulfill his dream of seeing the sea. Instead, he ends up at a construction site where Anas, 22, asks him to work for him.

Ambience (2017)

Dir. Wissam Aljafari // 2017 // Experimental // 15 mins

Two young Palestinians try to record a demo for a Music Competition inside a noisy crowded refugee camp. While failing to record because of the chaos surrounding them, they discover a creative method for meeting the deadline.

Roof Knocking (2017)

Dir. Sina Salimi // 2017 // Drama // 13 mins

In Gaza, a woman prepares a meal for her family to break the fast in the month of Ramadan. A phone call by an Israeli soldier alerts her of the bombing of her building in 10 minutes. Coming to accept her family’s fate is the only way she has to make a stand for her life, with grim consequences.