This November, Spectacle is replacing our regular 3pm Sunday programming with a series of films connected to the history of Palestine and its people’s struggle for liberation. These films center the history of this nearly century-long conflict around issues of colonialism and resistance and provide context through a variety of archival sources as well as critical analysis from preeminent Palestinian scholar Edward Said. Notably, each of the films screening in November are all at least a decade old, yet their content is as relevant as ever.

This program will be followed by a continuation of the topic in December, when Spectacle will present a selection of more contemporary documentaries that demonstrate the continued severity of the situation in Palestine, along with some of the oldest-accessible feature length narrative fiction films from Arab and Palestinian filmmakers.

Due to the sudden need for this fundraising series, we are still in the process of finalizing the November titles and will announce them in the weeks leading up to each screening.

All proceeds will benefit relief organizations.

Palestine: Story of A Land
Dir. Simone Bitton, 1996
France, 120 min.
In French, Arabic, Hebrew and English w/ English subtitles.

A Mizrahi Jew born in Morocco, Simone Bitton’s career as a documentarian has invariably fixated on the the relationship between Muslims and Jews in the Holy Land. Her work has explored the policies that enable Palestine’s occlusion, and the poets and activists who live and die for its freedom. Palestine: Story of a Land is composed entirely of archival footage and newsreels, a narrated history of the nation from the 19th century to present day.

“If there are hostages in a school, does that mean you have the right to kill the whole school? That’s exactly the point: the lives of the Palestinian civilians are worth nothing, and the lives of the people who protect the Palestinian civilians are worth nothing. It’s very sad.”
-Simone Bitton

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26 – 2:30PM
$5 minimum donation.
TICKETS HERE
Proceeds to benefit Palestinian American Community Center and Islamic Relief USA.

past screenings:

THEY DO NOT EXIST
(ليس لهم وجود)
dir. Mustafa Abu Ali, 1974
Palestinian Territories. 25 min.
In Arabic with English Subtitles.

“There was no such thing as Palestinians.” – Golda Meir
“There is no more Palestine. Finished.” – Moshe Dayan

A young girl in a refugee camp writes a letter to her brother, a guerrilla fighter in training. Bombs are dropped, the wounded are cared for and the dead are buried. A mother mourns the death of her son. Survivors recount their experiences. The founding film of the PLO’s revolutionary film unit, Mustafa Abu Ali’s They Do Not Exist powerfully asserts the irrefutable facts of Palestinian existence.

screening with

THE DREAM
(المنام)
dir. Mohammad Malas, 1987
Syria, 45 min.
In Arabic with English subtitles.

Mohammad Malas is a Syrian filmmaker who, after teaching philosophy at Damascus University in the 1960s, turned towards filmmaking. One of his first projects was the experimental documentary, The Dream. Shot between 1980-1981 in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, the film features children, women, old people, and militants recollecting their dreams and nightmares in a beautiful and haunting portrait of an uprooted population communicating their interior worlds. In 1982, hundreds of people in the camps of Sabra and Shatila were massacred by Lebanese forces with the support of the Israeli military. Because of this, Malas did not finish the project until 1987. The Dream is as much about Palestinian statelessness as it is about the fragmented nature of Arab nationalism.

“I think I managed to formulate a view that differs totally from other Arab and foreign contemplations. The difference is mainly that I adopted the position of a neighbor, thus an Arab, and not that of a Palestinian. This led to me focusing rather on our mutual relations than on the conflict with Israel. The viewer might realize how I emphasized those nightmares which the Arabs caused in the lives of the Palestinians. My concern is to show how the Arab world is addressing the Palestinian cause: first, one wanted to use the Palestinian issue and when this was not possible anymore, one tried to harm it… The fight between Israelis and Palestinians is as licit as public, yet the Arab-Palestinian conflict remains an internal affair, it happens in secret.”
-Mohammad Malas, speaking at the 11th International Documentary Film Festival Munich 1996

screening with
JENIN, JENIN
(جنين, جنين)
dir. Mohammed Bakri, 2002
Israel, Palestinian Territories. 54 min.
In Arabic with English subtitles.

The Battle of Jenin was a ten day long skirmish that took place in the West Bank-located refugee camp of Jenin in April, 2002 during the Second Intifada. Throughout the course of the battle, IDF bulldozers demolished large portions of the densely populated camp, with journalists and human rights advocacy groups alleging a civilian massacre. Official Israeli estimates initially reported approximately 50 Palestinian casualties, while Palestinian authorities and Amnesty International estimate the death toll to have been in excess of 500. Following the battle, the Israeli government denied a UN fact-finding team access to the camp. 

Made in response to the suppression of Palestinian media during and after the events, Mohammed Bakri’s harrowing and controversial documentary is composed only of Palestinian’s testimonies to their experiences. Upon its release, the film was temporarily banned in Israel on accusations of libel. Per Bakri’s lawyer, “Bakri doesn’t say anything in this film. The people who talk are those he filmed. So the residents of the refugee camp say things which sometimes are true and sometimes not. It’s a movie. It reflects the subjective understanding of the speakers.”

program trt: 124 min.

OUT OF PLACE: MEMORIES OF EDWARD SAID
dir. Makoto Satō, 2006
Japan. 138 min.
In English.

“I saw that people make their own history. That history is not like nature. It’s a human product. And I saw that we can make our own beginnings. That they are not given, they are acts of will.”
-Edward Said

This documentary traces Said’s childhood influences and celebrates his intellectual legacy, imaginatively blending his writings, home movies, and interviews with friends, family, and colleagues (among them Ilan Pappe, Elias Khoury, Azmi Bishara, Daniel Barenboim, Rashid Khalidi, Michel Warschawski, Noam Chomsky and Dan Rabinowitz).

Visiting the sites of his birthplace in Jerusalem, his boyhood homes in Lebanon and Cairo, and his New York City apartment, the film emphasizes Said’s sense of always feeling “out of place”—personally, geographically and linguistically—a theme he developed in his memoir, explaining how everyone, in a sense, is comprised of “multiple identities.”

The themes of reconciliation and coexistence that Said fought for throughout his life are further illuminated by a visit with a Palestinian family in a refugee camp in Syria and a family of Mizrahim (Arabic Jews) in Israel, a memorial conference held at Bir Zeit University on the West Bank, and scenes at other sites in Israel and the West Bank. 

OUT OF PLACE is thus both a fascinating biographical film on one of the most acclaimed cultural critics of the postwar world as well as an engaging examination of many of the cultural and political issues to which he devoted his life.
-Icarus Films

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 2:30PM
$5 minimum donation.
TICKETS HERE
Proceeds to benefit Palestinian American Community Center and Islamic Relief USA.

INTRODUCTION TO THE END OF AN ARGUMENT
dir. Elia Suleiman, 1990
United States. 41 min.
In English and Arabic

Elia Suleiman’s radically-assembled collage documentary critiques orientalist representations of Arabic culture, focusing on the production of biased and harmful narratives surrounding the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

screening with

AL-NAKBA: THE PALESTINIAN CATASTROPHE 1948
dir. Benny Brunner & Alexandra Jansse, 1996
The Netherlands. 58 min.
In Arabic, English, and Hebrew.

Former IDF soldier and self-described “reformed Zionist” Benny Brunner adapts Israeli historian Benny Morris’ The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 into a documentary detailing the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes during the creation of the state of Israel. Brunner’s documentary features interviews from refugees and veterans of Israeli paramilitary forces alike.