memory/canvas

Observational Desire on a Memory that Remains (2014)
Experimental | 15 min.

The work traces a group photograph taken in 1987 at Al-Hakawati Theater in Jerusalem during the annual Spring Exhibition. In the image, fourteen male artists appears. The photograph raises questions about the notion of the archive in a context like Palestine — where archives are fragmented or absent. It asks: How do we look at history when there is no archive? How do we remember? And how is it possible that one person can be missing from personal archives and from the memory of their colleagues?

The Magic of the Photo that Remembers how to Forget (2018)
Experimental | 7 min.

The work centers on a single photograph from which a female artist has disappeared, attempting to understand and shed light on this withdrawal from the visual canon. The photograph was taken in Jerusalem in 1985 during the group exhibition Spring Exhibition.

The work is dedicated to the artist Vera Tamari.

Director: Noor Abuarafeh

Experimental | 11 min.

This film focuses on an old Palestinian man who is the subject of artist Ismail Shammout’s painting Memories and Fire. The film unravels his memories using archival photographs and Shammout’s own paintings to tell the story of Palestinian experience and resistance. By simply using a montage of visuals and sounds and avoiding narration, Shammout adopts a style that was used by early Soviet filmmakers who wished to communicate across language boundaries, creating a film that offered an non-verbal narrative of the Palestinian cause. The film was screened at a variety of festivals in the former Soviet Union and won a prize at the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week for Cinema and Television in 1973. Recently restored and digitized.

Director: Ismail Shammout