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1 | Palestine Film Index statement | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
2 | contact: palestinefilmindex@gmail.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
3 | title | year | length | filmmaker | link type | link | password (if needed) | distributor | description | language | subtitles | notes | ||||||||||||||||||||
4 | Al Quds | 1968 | 16:36 | Vladimir Tamari | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn-nTCLTdCI | A short film made by Vladimir Tamari following the first anniversary of the occupation of Arab Jerusalem by the Israeli army at the start of the Arab Israeli War on June 5, 1967. Using footage from UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) cinema archives where he worked as a technician, Tamari edited this film and organized its narration and addition of music by his friends, all volunteers and amateurs as he was, in order to express the feelings of the Palestinians at the loss of their capital city and center of their spiritual, commercial and intellectual life. | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
5 | Exodus | 1968 | 12:35 | Ali Siam | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXKWHZQhT4A | The exodus of Palestinian refugees in Jordan after the Six Day War and King Hussein's intervention at the United Nations assembly. | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
6 | Jerusalem The Flower of All Cities | 1969 | 7:55 | Ali Siam | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQNpa2xS0GQ | Set to the famous song by Fairouz, Flower of All Cities, a harmonious picture of Palestinian civil life in Jerusalem is disturbed by the Israeli army’s occupation of the city following the 1967 war. A rare example of the work of Hani Jawharieh, one of founding fathers of Palestinian cinema. | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
7 | Far Away From Home | 1969 | 11:06 | Qais/Kais Al-Zubaidi/AlZubaydi | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dyGusDWSYP6d-istYncAPlbCN3BcccSQ/ | A film documenting Al-Sabineh camp for Palestinian refugees in Syria, with an unprecedented experience at the time, as he took the children after filming to show them the footage he filmed of them, the camp and its people, and recorded their reactions, laughter and speech, and added them to the film. | Arabic | n/a | |||||||||||||||||||||||
8 | Biladi: A Revolution | 1970 | 50:47 | Francis Reusser and Jean-Pierre Garnier | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGhz8axe-sU | Zürich was snowed under on February 18, 1969. In the afternoon, a white VW stops at a parking space on the edge of Kloten Airport. Three men and one woman, activists of the PFLP-People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine, are inside. Around 5.30 pm, a Boeing 720 B of the Israeli company El Al is in front of the vehicle, waiting to take off for Tel Aviv. Two activists then get out of the VW and fire automatic weapons towards the cockpit: six passengers are wounded, the pilot will die 5 weeks later in a hospital in Zurich. The Israeli security guard on board manages to get out of the plane and cross the fence that separates it from the Palestinians. He shoots and kills one of the PFLP militants.The Israeli officer and the Palestinian commando are arrested. The Swiss authorities "strongly condemn" the actions of the assassins. December 1969, end of the trial: the three Palestinian militants are sentenced to 12 years in prison, the Mossad officer is acquitted. Demonstrations follow in Switzerland. A rift is formed between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian activists. Switzerland is accused of siding with Israel. Shocked by this situation, Francis Reusser, a filmmaker, and Jean-Pierre Garnier, a young director at TSR, contact the head of Fatah in Geneva. He is willing to support an information project - a report and a film - carried out with Fatah activists in the refugee camps in Jordan. Francis Reusser on camera, Jean-Pierre Garnier on sound and Armand Deriaz as photographer fly to Jordan at the beginning of April 1970. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
9 | Wabadate | 1970 | 7:32 | unknown | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBuSiHlXQtc | Material filmed during and after the battle of Amman, in September 1970. The images document the rubble after the bombings, showing displaced people in the hall of a building, among the ruins, inside schools, while they are being treated . Some moments of a Yasser Arafat rally are also filmed. | n/a | n/a | . | ||||||||||||||||||||||
10 | The Long March Back | 1970 | 32:19 | Ugo Adilardi - Carlo Schellino - Paolo Sornaga | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHq4l-__YJE | The documentary addresses the problem of the Palestinian people from its historical origins, to the social situation that characterizes it, to the forms of struggle to achieve their liberation. In particular, the film - through footage taken in the Jordan Valley, in refugee camps, in the cities and countryside of Jordan - describes the organization and function of one of the components of the Palestinian Resistance, the Popular Democratic Front. The phases of military training that the Front imparts to its militants, the guerrilla actions it conducts, its relations with the Arab masses, the characteristics of its political intervention are shown. | Italian | variable (check notes) | to enable english subtitles go to cc (closed captions) in the settings of the youtube player and select autotranslate to english | . | |||||||||||||||||||||
11 | Ghassan Kanafani interview | 1970 | 6:56 | unknown | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F4VpuK5PxffK1Pggvr5Z_2Kr3YESPvVb | Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine spokesman Ghassan Kanafani interviewed by Richard Carleton, Beirut 1970. | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
12 | Al Fatah | 1970 | 1:19:14 | Luigi Perelli | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93rpCT2uMu0 | A film that sheds light on the Fatah movement and attempts to present a comprehensive picture of it and its leader, Yasser Arafat - Abu Ammar. It presents a daily experience of the refugee activities in the camps, the military training of the guerrillas, and deals with the battle of dignity. | Italian | no english subtitles currently available. please get in touch with us if you would like to provide some for the original italian | . | ||||||||||||||||||||||
13 | Red Army/PFLP Declaration of World War | 1971 | 1:09:28 | Masao Adachi | full film | https://youtu.be/CIx81VAPMiY | Adachi Masao Screening Committee | On their way back from Cannes Film Festival in 1971, filmmakers Wakamatsu Koji and Adachi Masao visited Lebanon to meet the Japan's Red Army faction and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to shoot a propaganda newsreel film promoting the Palestinian resistance. Conceived as a ‘declaration of world war’ that implicates us all, the co-directors capture the everyday banality of military training and preparation exercises for imminent battle. The juxtaposition of the slow-paced ‘landscape theory’-infused style with the militant language of the declaration expresses the charged tension that revolutionary struggle brings about. Before leaving Japan to participate full-time in the Palestinian resistance, Adachi and his collaborators independently distributed the film across Japan on a Red Bus, bringing together cinema and revolution. | Japanes, Arabic, English | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
14 | Blown by the Wind | 1971 | 18:07 | Jacques Madvo | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG-I-xOWa24 | The wind whistles through Jacques Madvo’s 1971 short film, a montage of vibrant drawings by Palestinian children, offering a window into their daily lives, memories, and imagination following their displacement to Lebanon after the Six-Day War in 1967. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
15 | RESISTANCE-WHY | 1971 | 53:00 | Christian Ghazi | full film | contact distributor for link & password | Nadi Lekol Nas, nadilekolnas@gmail.com | This gem of militant guerilla third cinema was considered to be lost to the ages. In 1988, militias raided the director’s home and burned all of his celluloid to stay warm during Lebanon’s Civil War. But recently, a copy of Resistance, Why? was found and restored by the Beirut group Nadi Lekol Nas in 2021. Nadi Lekol Nas is a 20-year-old non-profit cultural organization whose mission is to safeguard and transmit a range of cinematographic, musical, and literary productions documenting Levantine artistic and cultural expressions from the 1930s onwards. Today, Resistance, Why? is a fascinating time capsule of an era of Palestinian resistance and global armed struggle against imperialism that echoes through history. Figures include Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm, Ghassan Kanafani, and Nabil Shaath, as they describe the strikes and protests that took place in Palestine starting during the Ottoman occupation, followed by British colonization and the settlement of the Zionist state in 1948. Resistance, Why? is a documentary produced in English –and thus destined for an international public– calling for justice, the right to self-determination, and for the Palestinian people to fight against occupation, Zionism, and imperialism. | Arabic w/English dialogue | |||||||||||||||||||||||
16 | Palestine another Vietnam | 1972 | 22:00 | Jorge Denti - Jorge Gianoni | full film | https://vimeo.com/1021501914?share=copy | A short documentary film shot in Beirut by two Argentinian directors | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
17 | Palestine - Denmark, Same Struggle | 1972 | 39:15 | Nils Vest | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FtXIRnXEgP8A3bpu5YzFvfxq7Z1fdlrM/ | https://www.dfi.dk/en/viden-om-film/filmdatabasen/film/palaestina-danmark-samme-kamp | About the history of Palestine, about the Jews in Europe, Zionism and anti-Semitism, and about the colonization that brought about the foundation of Israel. About the economic interests behind the colonization and how many Jews support the Palestinian resistance movement. Examples are given of Danish news coverage in the Middle East. A forerunner to AN OPPRESSED PEOPLE IS ALWAYS RIGHT. | Danish, Arabic, English | English (check notes) | to enable English subtitles, download file and play in vlc with subtitle track set to 1 (English) | . | ||||||||||||||||||||
18 | The Knife | 1972 | 87:00 | Khaled Hamada | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jzNvw6flhgLuHUvwS1H0Zdu62uq8xBdp/view?usp=sharing | “Ghassan Kanafani’s novella ‘All That’s Left to You’ (1966) is perhaps one of the most significant Palestinian texts, navigating an abstract symbology of collaboration, violation, and resistance in Gaza. Its adaptation, THE KNIFE, is a largely-unseen and necessarily contingent film. Produced under the auspices of the Syrian General Cinema Organization (GCO), just as Tewfiq Saleh’s THE DUPES (1973), it too changes the end of its originating Kanafani text, in this case flattening it. What results then is a morass of Arab reaction, at once ghostly beach pastoral and nightmarish bedroom narrative, unfinished and elliptical.” –Kaleem Hawa | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
19 | The Visit | 1972 | 9:25 | Qais/Kais Al-Zubaidi/AlZubaydi | full film | https://youtu.be/0AWyDXpU8BA | Nadi Lekol Nas, nadilekolnas@gmail.com | Qais/Kais Al-Zubaidi/AlZubaydi | Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
20 | The Dupes | 1972 | 1:46:24 | Tewfik Saleh | full film | https://vk.com/video642792594_456239998 | info@arabfilm.com | The Dupes is a stark, beautifully photographed black and white film tracing the destinies of three Palestinian refugees brought together by dispossession, despair and hope for a better future. The setting is Iraq in the 1950s and the protagonists, concealed in the steel tank of a truck, are trying to make their way across the border into Kuwait, the "promised land." A masterful adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani's acclaimed novella, Men Under the Sun, The Dupes is also one of the first Arab films to address the Palestinian predicament. | Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
21 | Hundred Faces for a Single Day | 1972 | 1:07:08 | Christian Ghazi | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b7wmY0zmC7Kqzqb-epu8IaF6NJBW0nWM/ | Nadi Lekol Nas, nadilekolnas@gmail.com | Rejecting all propagandistic or narrative convention, Ghazi combined documentary and abstract sequences with a series of discontinuous plot linesto organize an attack on the bourgeois decadence of Beirut’s political milieu. | Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
22 | Cowboy | 1973 | 15:00 | Sami Al-Salamoni | “Cowboy” begins from American cinema, as an exposure of the country’s settler colonial structure and its ability to depict genocidal acts through camera framing. The film, directed by the renowned Egyptian film critic Sami Al-Salamoni, reflects his theoretical critique of Hollywood through heavily edited scenes and shots from mainstream motion pictures. Al-Salamoni manages to take the audience through the history of commercialised image production towards a transnational solidarity image production as a response. | none | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
23 | Revolution Until Victory a.k.a. We Are the Palestinian People (Newsreel #65) | 1973 | 51:15 | Newsreel Collective | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-06NJZ3-rZ6xZvRMCGfdZQaIlugPJjvE/view?usp=sharing | https://www.twn.org/catalog/pages/responsive/cpage.aspx?rec=1471&card=price | Filmed in Palestine by Newsreel, REVOLUTION UNTIL VICTORY shows the refugee camps of the Middle East, the rise of the Palestinian Liberation Movement and Israel's relation ship to the Western imperialism. There is footage of the guerrillas in training, and interviews with Palestinian leaders and militants who work in many programs of the liberation struggle of the time. | English, Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
24 | Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza | 1973 | 13:44 | Mustafa Abu Ali | full film | https://youtu.be/1JlIwmnYnlE | info@idiomsfilm.com | A rare film by the legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the founders of the Palestine Film Unit, the first filmic arm of the Palestinian revolution. Shot by a French news team, the footage was edited by Mustafa in Lebanon to produce one of the earliest films on the occupied territory in Gaza. Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza employs experimental editing tech- niques to produce a cinematically and politically subversive film. The film won the prize as best film at the Damascus Film Festival in 1973 and was screened at multiple festivals. It was the only film produced by the Palestine Cinema Group, which in 1974 became the Palestine Cinema Institute. | Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
25 | The Urgent Call of Palestine | 1973 | 3:55 | Ismail Shammout | full film | https://youtu.be/KJXhXrCg5Ys | In this short film, Shammout records a solidarity song by the Palestinian Egyptian singer Zeinab Shaath announcing the urgent call of Palestine. The song is punctuated by the words of poet Kamal Nasser, which continue to hold striking relevance today. | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
26 | Zionist Aggression | 1973 | 21:44 | Mustafa Abu Ali | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PuT91WjcOc&rco=1 | Following the operation against the Israeli sports delegation participating in the Munich Olympics in Germany in 1972, the Zionist entity launched retaliatory raids against the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon (specifically the village of Da'al in Syria and the Nabatieh camp in Lebanon) on September 8th, 1972. In reflecting the sheer barbarism of the Zionist aggression, legendary Palestinian filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali is compelled to reach for new filmic grammar to reflect on the brutality. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
27 | The Rifles will not be Silent | 1973 | 25:45 | Kassem Hawal | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-WwZ97tGYw | An important documentary based on a speech by Comrade George Habash, the Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on the first anniversary of the Martyrdom of Comrade Ghassan Kanafani. Through this speech the film shows the political position of the Front and the position of the masses towards the question of proposed settlement, as well as the role of the masses in pursuing the armed struggle against the imperialist-Zionist-reactionary enemy. | Arabic | n/a | needs subtitling asap | ||||||||||||||||||||||
28 | Aftermath | 1974 | 28:56 | Samir Hissen | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo12XC9xuWg | Established in 1949 to support Palestinian refugees, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has produced numerous films over the years. Aftermath documents UNRWA’s response to the Six Day War in 1967, where Palestinian people were displaced and dispossessed yet again nearly 20 years after the Nakba in 1948. Aftermath reflects on the exodus as seen from Jordan, where refugees fled to. Though directed by Palestinian filmmaker Samir Hissen, it is notable that the film was written and produced by Myrtle Winter, a UN diplomat who worked in the Department of Public Information at UNRWA. Aftermath documents an emergency camp set up by the government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which, with the scale of displaced people, was continually short of tents. A recurring feature of relief agency films is that we do not hear Palestinian voices. While the film holds much telling information of the Naksa (the 1967 displacement of Palestinians following the Six Day War) – in which over 325000 people were expelled from their homes – it must also be understood in its framing of displaced Palestinians merely as the recipients of humanitarian support. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
29 | Quneitra 74 | 1974 | 19:55 | Mohammad Malas | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa5LYgBcOr0 | A ceremonial gathering of the villagers of Quneitra on the Syrian Golan Heights after the Israeli army withdrew, rendering the town inhabitable. The press takes photographs of the rubble. One woman starts running in the streets between the ruins, always making sure the audience does not leave her alone, contacting us through the camera. She strolls through the streets and alleys of her home town, enters a house, cleans the shards of a window. A little girl appears, and an old woman with her hens. Three females of three generations connected in solitude. Produced for Syrian tv. | none | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
30 | Our Small Houses | 1974 | 23:04 | Kassem Hawal | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnYRnpANvPg | Iraqi writer and director Kassem Hawal’s 24 minute film Our Small Houses is one of the few surviving works made by the cinema group Hawal founded and led under the Central Information Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Badly damaged and often overlooked in histories of revolutionary film, it combines lucid Marxist-Leninist analyses with striking montage techniques. | Arabic | English | subtitles are unfortunately partially obscured by the timecode in the botton of the video | . | |||||||||||||||||||||
31 | They Do Not Exist | 1974 | 25:59 | Mustafa Abu Ali | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z8FTr8UzqKujhcQKfvaHvz_OP4iYRR3I/ | Salvaged from the ruins of Beirut after 1982, Abu Ali's early film has only recently been made available. Shooting under extraordinary conditions, the director, who worked with Godard on his Ici et Ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere), and founded the PLO's film division, covers conditions in Lebanon's refugee camps, the effects of Israeli bombardments, and the lives of guerrillas in training camps. They Do Not Exist is a stylistically unique work which demonstrates the intersection between the political and the aesthetic. Now recognised as a cornerstone in the development of Palestinian cinema, the film only received its Palestine premiere in 2003, when a group of Palestinian artists "smuggled" the director to a makeshift cinema in his hometown of Jerusalem (into which Israel bars his entry). Abu Ali, who saw his film for the first time in 20 years at this clandestine event noted: "We used to say 'Art for the Struggle', now it's 'Struggle for the Art'" | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
32 | The Palestinians | 1974 | 42:58 | Johan van der Keuken | full film | https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_-FFRNRmaIZIKMERK2vKR7Q6PJG12WyJ | Starting from the economically opportunistic backing of the Zionist project, the director delivers a nuanced account of the complexities surrounding the ‘Palestinian issue’, touching most vitally on the global interests and fluxes of oil, in whose name one people is displaced and persecuted while another is hypocritically ‘defended’.” Celluloid Liberation Front | Dutch, Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
33 | An Oppressed People Is Always Right | 1974 | 44:17 | Nils Vest | full film | https://vimeo.com/207848909 | https://www.dfi.dk/en/viden-om-film/filmdatabasen/film/et-undertrykt-folk-har-altid-ret | The Palestine-Israel conflict as it appeared to the Palestinians in Lebanon - described by film director Nils Vest in 1974. | English, Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
34 | Palestinians Keep Fighting | 1974 | 21:53 | Jocelyne Saab | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAWH92j0DTU | https://jocelynesaab.org/ | "In 1974, with journalist Arnaud Hamelin, she (Jocelyne Saab) shot Les Palestiniens continuent, (Palestinians Keep Fighting) about the resistance of armed Palestinian groups on the Syrian border in southern Lebanon." - Mathilde Rouxel | French, Arabic | to enable english subtitles go to cc (closed captions) in the settings of the youtube player and select autotranslate to english | ||||||||||||||||||||||
35 | Palestinian Women | 1974 | 10:09 | Jocelyne Saab | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/14XvNmO8Mfj6YLKcWtQ3ilgEccdTUJlN6 | https://jocelynesaab.org/ | Palestinian women, the often-forgotten victims of the Israeli-Palestinian war, are here given a voice by Jocelyne Saab. The film was commissioned by Antenne 2 (France), but it was censured while still in the editing stage and never shown. | Arabic, French | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
36 | Arab-Israeli Dialogue | 1974 | 40:00 | Lionel Rogosin | full film | https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/14310315 | Arab Israeli Dialogue is the passionate final documentary from Lionel Rogosin (On the Bowery, Come Back Africa), in which Palestinian poet Rashed Hussein and Israeli writer Amos Kenan seek dialogue toward a possible solution to the never-ending conflict. Never before have both sides discussed a mutual problem so frankly, and so willingly. Rogosin provides an open forum for two formidable intellects to discuss the fates of their nations, and the ever-receding possibility of peace. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
37 | Kufr Shuba | 1975 | 35:03 | Samir Nimr | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLovIi4VfMQ | An iconic work produced by the Palestine Cinema Institute in Beirut, Kufr Shuba was directed by the Iraqi filmmaker Samir Nimr, and named after the village of Kufr Shuba in South Lebanon, which was the site of solidarity between the Lebanese people and the Palestinian resistance following a fierce battle that devastated the village. | Arabic | English | subtitles accesbile through youtube settings | ||||||||||||||||||||||
38 | Rejection Front | 1975 | 13:16 | Jocelyne Saab | full film | https://vimeo.com/877674364 | https://jocelynesaab.org/ | "(Saab) was the first journalist to enter a suicide commando training camp. Le Front du Refus (The Rejection Front), made in 1975, documents the practices of this radical group. The film earned Jocelyne Saab criticism from the PLO, which felt that exposing radical groups did not help the cause. Saab herself regretted the impact of its images on a European audience: the message it wanted to get across had not been understood. In 2013, she told me: “The Rejection Front was, at the time, labelled as scoop. It was the first documentary that made me conscious of the power of images and the meaning of their content, the diverse readings that we can draw out of them, affected by everything from the image ratio to the composition. It wasn’t about militantism. You could defend a cause, but you needed to have an underlying understanding of the language of images and what it could lead to… and to know how an image could be turned against you.” Today, however, it is an illuminating testimony and an important historical document, which already reveals what has made Jocelyne Saab’s work so distinctive: an image in the service of humanity. Critical of these extreme methods, Saab films these very young bodies (these recruits, she says, were barely sixteen) ready to die for a land they could never have known, in their deepest vitality." - Mathilde Rouxel | French, Arabic | Spanish | ||||||||||||||||||||||
39 | Glows of Memories | 1975 | 10:57 | Ismail Shammout | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GB54SrJ-asywTuhzfX8O9IeRDizWHi2f/ | Ismail Shammout, a Palestinian painter, also served as director of the Cultural Arts Section of the PLO and worked with the organization’s Film Unit in the 1970s. In this one of his few film works he unravels the memories within his painting Memories and Fire. | Silent | Silent | |||||||||||||||||||||||
40 | Kafr Qasim | 1975 | 1:48:38 | Borhane Alaouié | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_NK1iY2bL8 | https://www.borhanealaouie.com/contact/ | On an October afternoon in 1956, with the Sinai campaign about to be launched, Israeli border police imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Arab villages near the Jordanian border. Arriving at their homes after work, many villages of Kafr Kassem were unaware of their violation of the newly announced curfew. Forty-seven of these Israeli Arabs were killed when Israeli troops opened fire on the village. The film reconstructs this much-remembered event in Arab and Israeli history, especially with an eye to detailing the life of the community before it suffered the massacre. | Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
41 | The Memory | 1975 | 12:59 | Mohammad Malas | full film | https://youtu.be/Vg_v1Ol9nh0 | duniafilm@gmail.com, MEC Films Berlin | The precise portrait of a woman who is present and fey at the same time, who is as tired as she is courageous and who seems to have surrendered and empancipated at once. | Arabic | no English subtitles currently available. please get in touch with us if you would like to provide some for the original Arabic | . | |||||||||||||||||||||
42 | The Key | 1976 | 24:07 | Ghaleb Sha'ath | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-r-VNEqyoTKeL1wWcMIQFn_sweMSMCY/ | The Key was made by Ghaleb Sha'ath to accompany the Palestine delegation to the 1976 UN Habitat conference in Vancouver. It is the first Palestinian film produced by Samed Cinema Production Foundation. | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
43 | Beirut, Never Again | 1976 | 34:45 | Jocelyne Saab | full film | https://vk.com/video661463933_456239187 | https://jocelynesaab.org/ | Gunfire and song mix with a poetic voice-over written by the Lebanese writer and painter Etel Adnan (who also wrote a text for Letter from Beirut) in what would become the first entry in Saab’s “Beirut Trilogy”, which searches for traces of life amid the bombed-out buildings and errant fires of a ghost city, where even the children have become soldiers, looters, and scavengers. | English, French, Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
44 | Some of the Palestinians | 1976 | 55:53 | Mamoun Hassan | full film | https://vimeo.com/287798260 | ‘Some of the Palestinians’ – a 55-minute documentary directed and edited by Mamoun Hassan when he was stationed with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Lebanon in 1974. The film opens with a day in the life of Dr Murad, a Palestinian doctor appointed by the UNRWA to look after the health of the Palestinian people in a Syrian refugee camp. It progresses to a recently bombed camp in Lebanon to the West Bank, via Jordan. The crew members and in Lebanon, the cinematographer, were Palestinians working in UNRWA’s Audio Visual Division, the rest of the film was shot by Ernie Vincze, the distinguished British documentary and feature cinematographer. The final section presents a somewhat more acceptable picture of Palestinian life supported by UNRWA-sponsored humanitarian projects in women’s education and art in Ramallah. This last section was not directed by Mamoun, he explains why… I landed in Beirut with my wife and young family on 19 April 1974 to take up my appointment as Head of Films Branch, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees). A leftist leader had been assassinated in South Lebanon the previous day and that event is regarded as the start of the civil war. A few days later I drove down to Nabatieh Palestinian refugee camp in South Lebanon to film the consequence of Israeli bombing. The camp had been obliterated. A few days later I filmed the effect of bombing in Rashidieh, a camp further down the coast near Tyre. The brief was to document the services – Housing, Education, Health, Rations – that UNRWA offered the Palestinian refugees. My immediate boss and chief of the AV division was the legendary Myrtle Winter-Chaumeny (writer, photographer, sailor, dancer); the director of Information was John Defrates, the bravest man I have ever met, who was a Navy pilot in the icy waters near Vladivostock during WWll. I was given a fairly free hand but editorial control rested with UNRWA. What I saw in South Lebanon and elsewhere gave me the form of the film: the experience of life in the camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan – but not the West Bank because Israel refused me entry. Myrtle filmed that sequence. So the story is about war in Lebanon; life in one the oldest camps near Aleppo established in 1948; work in Baqa’a in Jordan which accommodated thousands of fleeing refugees after the 1967 war; and education in Ramallah. Mamoun is keen for people to view this film. It is a timely reminder that UNRWA’s humanitarian work is not done, despite the decision of the US administration to cut $300 m from its planned annual contribution to the UNRWA budget in 2018. He says, “Since I made this film, everything has changed for the worse for the Palestinian people. The locations for the film are now war zones or something very similar. The tragedy continues.” The restoration was made from an answer print of the edited film. This version did not have English subtitles for spoken Arabic. By referring to the only other known copy – a print held at the National Film Archive – we were able to transfer the subtitles exactly as they appeared on the film, which was invited to the London Film Festival in 1976. | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
45 | Here and Elsewhere | 1976 | 54:56 | Jean-Luc Godard / Jean-Pierre Gorin / Anne-Marie Miéville | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qp5wNYcNVqKBL81VS19Br1GRxfjO6BbB/ | Commissioned by the Arab League to produce a film on the Palestinian Revolution, Godard and Gorin’s plans were upended by the Black September. Godard, now working with Miéville, transformed the original footage into a scathing self-critique—paralleling the lives of a French and a Palestinian family. | Arabic, French | English | to enable English subtitles, download file and play in vlc with subtitle track set to 1 (English) | . | |||||||||||||||||||||
46 | L'Olivier | 1976 | 1:32:47 | Groupe Cinéma Vincennes | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RghyLnqCG8CBROt6Ew7nAmnGWrxh3QQb/view | L’Olivier responds to a concern French public support for the Palestinian cause is diminishing in the wake of the 1972 Munich operation. Structured to chronicle the Palestinian story and to explain the current chapter in the struggle, the film calls for global militant solidarities and, particularly, for European political engagements. | Arabic, French | English | to enable English subtitles, download file and play in vlc with subtitle track set to 1 (English) | . | |||||||||||||||||||||
47 | South Lebanon: The Story of a Village Under Siege | 1976 | 12:40 | Jocelyne Saab | full film | https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Zh8Ii3OBmGRUijxhf1wge7PuNhbkOhGB | https://jocelynesaab.org/ | The cease-fire declared on October 21, 1976, gave the Fedayeen the opportunity to reclaim this area—Fatah territory until it was abandoned in 1970—from the right wing militia. But Syrians and Israelis joined together to neutralise this Palestinian “autonomous force” and imposed a siege on two Lebanese frontier villages, Hanine and Kfarchouba, before attacking them. | Arabic, French | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
48 | Palestine in the Eye | 1976 | 28:33 | Mustafa Abu Ali | full film | https://youtu.be/Z5gQaoRtxTg | An homage to the cinematographer Hani Jawhariya of the Palestine Film Unit of the PLO, which contributed significantly to the emergence and body of the films of the Palestinian resistance. Jawhariya was killed in filming in Lebanon. The film is one of the few remaining documents of the work of the Palestine Film Unit. Palestine in the Eye chronicles the profound impact of Hani Jawharia’s death for the PLO Film Unit. The film reflects on his life through interviews with family, colleagues, and his own cinematography, including the moment of his death while filming for the Unit in 1976. Although the film has later been attributed to Mustafa Abu Ali, the Unit’s method of work was to describe everyone as a collective of “workers,” and we see this in the film titles, which collectively list the names of all those who participated as a non-hierarchical collective. Through this reflection on Jawharieh, we are offered an understanding of the workings of the Palestine Film Unit and its international connections | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
49 | Palestinian Vision | 1977 | 30:30 | Adnan Madanat | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjuw4jj5r6o&t=1s | A short film about Palestinian artist Ibrahim Ghannam. | Arabic | n/a | no english subtitled currently available. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
50 | Greetings to Kamal Jumblatt | 1977 | 56:41 | Maroun Baghdadi | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z813US7T0M | "Greetings to Kamal Jumblatt" is a poignant exploration of the transformative journey of the influential leader through personal interviews, historical footage, and his enduring legacy, capturing the essence of a revolutionary spirit in turbulent times. | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
51 | Because Roots Don't Die | 1977 | 53:07 | Nabiha Lotfy | full film | https://youtu.be/1sADEbrEyUA | The story of Tal al-Zaatar camp A group of meetings, dialogues and memories about the martyr camp (Tel Za'tar) and the suffering that the Palestinians faced since the pre-revolutionary period, and the massacre of Ein Rumaneh, and the bloody massacre in Tel al-Zaatar. The film tries to highlight the role of Palestinian women in resistance And revolution. | Arabic | no English subtitles currently available. please get in touch with us if you would like to provide some for the original Arabic | . | ||||||||||||||||||||||
52 | The Palestinian | 1977 | 2:20:43 | Roy Battersby | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZqXkoqSjp8 | This film, narrated by Vanessa Redgrave, documents the lives and the struggle of the Palestinian people. It includes interviews with survivors of the siege of Tel Zataar during the Lebanese civil war, and with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. | Arabic, English | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
53 | Tal al Zaatar | 1977 | 1:28:12 | Mustafa Abu Ali , Jean Khalil Chamoun and Pino Adriano | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5bifGTYghs | The film documents the August 12, 1976 massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees at Tall el-Zaatar, a UN-administered refugee camp in northeast Beirut. Produced after the massacre, but featuring footage shot before and during the siege leading up to it, Tall el-Zaatar reconstructs the history of the camp and recounts the long months of assault and resistance through the voices of the many survivors. Tall el-Zaatar was produced in two versions: one in Arabic for the Palestinian Cinema Institution of the PLO in Beirut, and the other dubbed into Italian for TV broadcast. Arabic film prints were damaged and lost following the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent plundering of PLO archives. Between 2012 and 2014, filmmaker Monica Maurer and artist Emily Jacir rediscovered the rushes of the film, including the original soundtrack in Arabic, which were kept at the Audiovisual Archive of the Democratic and Labour Movement (AAMOD) in Rome. Maurer and Jacir dedicated themselves to salvaging the rushes, restoring and digitizing them in order to make the film available to the public and safeguard these images as part of Palestinian collective memory. | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
54 | outtakes of Tal Al Zaatar | 1977 | 4:56 | Mustafa Abu Ali , Jean Khalil Chamoun and Pino Adriano | full film | https://vimeo.com/72928376 | outtakes from the filming of Tal Al Zaatar | n/a | n/a | |||||||||||||||||||||||
55 | “Porto di Sour” from Tal al Zaatar outtakes | 1977 | 5:52 | Mustafa Abu Ali , Jean Khalil Chamoun and Pino Adriano | full film | https://vimeo.com/72977584 | outtakes from the filming of Tal Al Zaatar | n/a | n/a | |||||||||||||||||||||||
56 | Letter From Beirut | 1978 | 48:24 | Jocelyne Saab | full film | https://vimeo.com/1016006179 | https://jocelynesaab.org/ | Letter from Beirut documents the filmmaker’s return to Beirut during one of the lulls, three years after the outbreak of the civil war, animated by the urge to return. She is confronted by the physical, emotional and psychological ravages of the war, terrified and sorrowful, she cannot find her place in the city. In that quest, she communicates with everyday people, friends, neighbors, people riding the bus across the city’s eastern and western flanks. To pace her journeying and dramatic unraveling of the film, Saab borrows the guise of a letter read in a voice-over, written by world-renowned poet Etel Adnan. A rare document from the civil war, Letter from Beirut lays bare and spontaneously how people make sense of their everyday in the midst of chaos, violence, terror and sorrow. | English, French, Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
57 | Land Day | 1978 | 39:41 | Ghaleb Sha'ath | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KwLFskg624 | Land Day is commemorated by Palestinian annually on March 30. On that day in 1976, Palestinian citizens of Israel rebelled against the attempts of the ruling authorities to expropriate and colonize large swathes of their lands around six villages in the Galilee. Palestinians announced a general strike and organized marches in different Arab towns, where violent confrontations with the police erupted resulting in six martyrs amongst the demonstrators. Since then, the 30th of March was marked as a national day in which Palestinians show unity and intention to defend their land and the attachment to their national identity. Yom El Ard recounted the events of that day and documented the first anniversary activities. It features interviews with victims of violence, mayors of the affected villages and shows rarely seen footage of that era. Watching it decades later, one can see how Israeli policy in the Galilee was an earlier version of what it would the military occupation in tandem with the Israeli settler movement would carry out in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the subsequent decades. | Arabic | n/a | |||||||||||||||||||||||
58 | The Palestinian Red Crescent Society | 1979 | 42:55 | Monica Maurer | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3-61h0Iv1w | Filmed in 16mm during 1978 - to highlight the sophisticated social, medical, educational infrastructure that the PLO built during the 70ies in the refugee camps in Lebanon. The documentary is a cinematographic testimony of the Palestinian effort to build a secular and pluralistic society, based on the participation of the people and thus strengthening their feeling of national identity and dignity. PRCS was shot in practically all the Camps in Lebanon, from Nahar el Bared in the North to Rashidiye in the South, from Nabatiye to Beirut - Sabra, Shatila and Burj-el-Barajneh. Among the personalities in the film are Abu Ammar (Yasser Arafat), Dr. Fathi Arafat (President of PRCS), Dr. Sait Dajani, Yusuf Iraki, Abdelaziz Labadi. | English, Arabic | English | . | ||||||||||||||||||||||
59 | The Children of Palestine | 1979 | 40:33 | Monica Maurer | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXPeQ44emtU | The film - following the UN Declaration of Rights - illustrates that fundamental rights - to life, education, health, home and family - are denied to Palestinian children due to the continuous state of war to which they are exposed. It's was filmed between the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979 in the Palestinian refugee camps (Shatila, Ain-el-Helouie, Rashidiye) and is also testimony to the social, cultural and health infrastructure that the PLO he built in the fields during the years of the "revolution". | English, Arabic | English | . | ||||||||||||||||||||||
60 | We Are All For The Fatherland | 1979 | 1:14:22 | Maroun Bagdadi | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5tC-vxR2R8 | This film gives an account of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon through meetings and interviews with common people and leading personalties from the south of the country. In a satirical twist, We Are All for the Fatherland mixes footage of the war and its ravages with cut scenes of young children trying to sing the Lebanese national anthem amidst armed conflict, military strategies and speeches. | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
61 | Children Without Childhood | 1979 | 21:21 | Khadijeh Habashneh Abu Ali | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10mhsOjgSCo | Produced by the Palestinian Cinema Institute and the General Union of Palestinian Women, the film revolves around the life of the orphans of Tall Azaatar Martyrs, in “Bait El- Somoud”, the house which was established for them by the GUPW. Through the lives of these children, the film shows the sufferings that Palestinian children endure, in diaspora camps and under the Israeli occupation. The film focuses on the contradiction between the “International Declaration of Child Rights” and the reality of the living conditions of Palestinian children. | Arabic | French | no english subtitles currently available. please get in touch with us if you would like to provide some for the original arabic or french. | . | |||||||||||||||||||||
62 | Step by Step | 1979 | 1:08:35 | Randa Chahal Sabag | full film | https://vk.com/video661463933_456239182 | This film is the result of two years of work, from February 1976 to March 1978. Through its analysis, and through certain documents, it looks beyond the period to grasp at the remote causes of the conflict. It attempts to draft a timeline of events: the dismemberment of Lebanon, the liquidation of the Palestinian movement, the new balance of powers in the Middle East under U.S. rule. The events that resulted from the Israeli occupation of part of Lebanon, and the intervention of the United Nations confirm this. In this sense, the film is not finished, as it endeavored to reflect the ever-evolving reality of a country, and the suffering of a people. | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
63 | Homeland of Barbed Wire | 1980 | 57:18 | Qais Al-Zubaidi | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIXANM9MV8w | nadilekolnas@gmail.com | Directors belonging to the PLO film organisations were barred from entering territories under Israeli administration. Kais Al-Zubaidi sent a West-German film team into the territories occupied in 1967. They talked to Palestinian peasants and refugees and to Israeli settlers. The former have lost their fields and meadows and are to be driven further East from the camps in which they lived since 1948. The latter call their new settlement area “liberated land”. | English, Arabic | |||||||||||||||||||||||
64 | Fertile Memory | 1980 | 1:39:54 | Michel Khleifi | full film (accessible with rental) | https://avilafilm.be/en/film/fertile-memory | https://mecfilm.com/ | Fertile Memory is the feature debut of pioneering director Michel Khleifi. Lyrically blending both documentary and narrative elements, Khleifi skillfully and lovingly crafts a portrait of two Palestinian women whose individual struggles both define and transcend the politics that have torn apart their homes and their lives. “Both Sahar and Romia are trapped by the society in which they live, but they experience this stuckness differently. Sahar possesses the words, the other doesn’t. Romia exists, but without defining herself as an individual. Both are frustrated by history, the intellectual one perhaps doubly so for her awareness of this frustration, of the loneliness imposed on her by her situation as a divorcée. Romia accepts her solitude after becoming a widow without bitterness, because she has decided that there is no other way. One character’s words corner those of the other, and I insisted on the film to work in that way, so that the viewer reacts to it, takes active part in the film, becomes an accomplice.” — Michel Khleifi | Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
65 | On Our Land | 1981 | 53:46 | Antonia Caccia | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDVz7OmTSWQ | “On Our Land is a unique document. It portrays Palestinian village life inside Israel, and does so movingly, honestly and with remarkable dignity and patience…and in its beautifully crafted 55 minutes it says more about the question of Palestine than many hundreds of pages.” Edward W. Said | Arabic, English | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
66 | Occupied Palestine | 1981 | 1:26:29 | David Koff | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JQ49NwkgEFM6HD_kIdtGU3l3qa3VWK51/ | Long before the first Intifada drew international media, David Koff interviewed Palestinian fighters and ordinary people whose families were displaced from their villages and the families of students who were killed by the Israeli occupation forces, in addition to interviews with Israeli settlers. | English, Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
67 | Forever in Memory | 1982 | 28:34 | Hekmat Dawood | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsz0C95TUII | A film documenting the life of the martyr Majed Abu Sharar, who was assassinated in Rome in 1981. The film discusses his childhood, upbringing, and his work leading up to joining the Palestinian Revolution and leading its Unified Media Office. The film contains interviews with Majed Abu Sharar, and testimonies of his friends and commrades. | Arabic | n/a | |||||||||||||||||||||||
68 | Why? | 1982 | 27:00 | Monica Maurer | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkJnhuP8xMg&rco=1 | Activist filmmaker Monica Maurer (1942, Munich) moved to Beirut in 1977 to work with the PLO’s Palestine Cinema Institute and over the course of five years, made six 16mm documentaries about and with the Palestinian resistance. After a successful collaboration in The Fifth War (1979) and Palestine Red Crescent (1980), filmmaker Maurer teamed up once again with Iraqi filmmaker Samir Nimr to make Why?. Shot in Beirut and released during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the film both portrayed the brutality of the siege and the indiscriminate attacks as well as people’s survival. The film is rhythmed by the urgency of sirens, communicating the human toll of the violence to a wider world in an attempt to rally support for the Palestinian revolution. Simultaneously, the film is loaded with the specter of an unclear future, the seeds of a massacre that was yet to come. | English, Arabic | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
69 | The Ship of Exile | 1982 | 15:33 | Jocelyne Saab | full film | https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19_9mQKQ8vcYPJdtBpvopH8j_U9lYm7Y7?usp=sharing | https://jocelynesaab.org/ | After living clandestinely in Beirut to escape the Israeli forces, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, left Lebanon aboard the Atlantis for a new exile in Greece and then Tunis. He talks about his destiny and the future of the PLO. Saab was the only journalist with a camera admitted on the boat. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
70 | Born out of Death | 1982 | 9:25 | Monica Maurer | full film | https://ok.ru/video/6650176735992 | The West-German director Monica Maurer made a number of important films for the PLO. The Israeli airstrikes against Beirut on 17 July 1981 killed 350 people, including a pregnant woman whose baby could be rescued from her torn-up womb. Maurer shows the people’s suffering and pain, their victimhood. She addresses the systemic causes of violence, referring back to the history of their country and formulating arguments for the necessity of a fight for liberation. | English, Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
71 | Beirut 1982: from PLO's Withdrawal to the Sabra and Shatila Massacre | 1982 | 17:28 | Ryūichi Hirokawa | full film | https://vk.com/video661463933_456239150 | After three months of fierce fighting by the Israeli troupes invading Lebanon, the PLO withdrew from Lebanon leaving the Palestinians unprotected. Nevertheless, in this film, we see Palestinian girls and children, who have been left in Lebanese refugee camps, playing amongst debris and hamming it up for the camera, while at the same time being under the constant threat of an unannounced attack. The narration lets the viewer know that the massacre is imminent and the film shows just how vulnerable their lives and daily life there is. The film then shows the scene of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps immediately following the massacre, with the scattered dead bodies of many Palestinians. | English, Arabic | English | . | ||||||||||||||||||||||
72 | Beirut, My City | 1982 | 34:48 | Jocelyne Saab | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD4c4xPbKEQ | https://jocelynesaab.org/ | Beirut, My City (Beyrouth, Ma Ville) by the renowned Lebanese director Jocelyne Saab, is one of the most important films to be created during the Lebanese civil wars - particularly during the Israeli siege of Beirut. The bulk of the film utilizes images captured by Saab with a narration written by the Lebanese poet and artist Etal Adnan. A moving and poetic film, it paints a complex painting of West Beirut as a place of misery and resistance, of discord and community, of madness and clarity. Truly a unique film. | French | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
73 | Lebanese, Hostages of Their City | 1982 | 8:33 | Jocelyne Saab | full fiilm | https://vimeo.com/877674529 | https://jocelynesaab.org/ | "She filmed the siege, mainly on her own, as her cinematographer didn’t want to take the risk. She films the destruction, the blockades, but above all the organization of a society trying to survive the siege and the bombardments. From these images, Jocelyne Saab made several films: films for television, such as the report Les Libanais, otages de leur ville (Lebanese, Hostages of Their City, 1982), broadcast on TF1, of which an unfinalized working copy has been restored, but also a deeply personal film, Beyrouth, ma ville (Beirut, My City, 1982), which bears witness to her sincere commitment to the Palestinian cause and the loss of her illusions when the fighters left the country." - Mathilde Rouxel | French | Arabic, English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
74 | Manifestazione per la Palestina - Roma, 21 settembre 1982 | 1982 | 9:34 | unknown | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up14c0a3QbA | Silent footage of the demonstration of solidarity with Palestine which took place in Rome on 21 September 1982 | n/a | n/a | |||||||||||||||||||||||
75 | Before the Massacre | 1982 | 44:11 | Christopher Sykes | full film | https://www.youtube.com/9437Yn80NTw | A BBC documentary about medical volunteers and their patients at the Gaza Hospital in West Beirut in the aftermath of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the siege and bombardment of West Beirut, home to the PLO and the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. The filming took place in the days immediately before the infamous Sabra-Chatila massacre, carried out by Lebanese Phalangist troops inside an area under Israeli military control. | English, Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
76 | Little Wars | 1982 | 1:08:00 | Maroun Bagdadi | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbIPElTW9iA | Little Wars tells the story of Lebanon’s civil war in 1975 through three characters. Talal, son of a Feudal lord, returns to his region after the disappearance of his father to become a warlord himself. Soraya is in love with Talal and tries to help him by abducting a businessman. Finally, Nabil, a photojournalist who uses the war to trade drugs and tries to pose as a hero, but is in fact very far from being one. Little stories happening during little wars. | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
77 | Return to Haifa | 1982 | 1:17:39 | Kassem Hawal | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ8bj_HgLYM | Return to Haifa is based on Kanafani’s novel the plot of which takes place in 1967, when Palestinian refugees living in the newly occupied territories had an opportunity to visit the places from which they had been expelled in 1948. Saeed and Safiyya, a Palestinian couple expelled from Haifa in 1948, visit the home that had been their own. Miriam, a Holocaust survivor and now a Jewish Israeli citizen who lives in their house, lets them in. She moved there with her husband shortly after the Palestinian couple had been uprooted. The Palestinian couple returns to Haifa hoping to discover something about their baby, Khaldun, whom they had left at home that April morning in 1948, not realizing that neither of them would be able to return. The abandoned baby had been adopted by Miriam and her husband who gave him a Hebrew name – Dov, now a soldier in the Israeli army. This tragic encounter depicted by the movie emblematizes the Nakba’s being not only the tragedy of the Palestinian people but also of the Israeli Jews who cannot escape confronting this past and becoming accountable for it. | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
78 | Beirut! Not Enought Death to Go Around | 1982 | 57:00 | Tahani Rached | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p0KJ99I36t58vFRGgaU6EB3ru5IdUfL5/view?usp=sharing | https://www.nfb.ca/film/beirut_not_enough_death_to_go_round/ | A moving and graphic portrait of the people of wartorn Beirut in their day-to-day struggle to survive in the rubble and despair. Filmed shortly after the 1982 massacres at Sabra and Chatila, the film gives a vivid picture of the plight of these people and of any people who are too poor to escape the ravages of war. | Arabi | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
79 | Hanna K. | 1983 | 1:51:00 | Costa-Gavras | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/157_WL8DKm0OMSLaiP6LcQN6wgVfVsK0u/view?usp=sharing | Israeli attorney Hanna Kaufman (Jill Clayburgh) has her beliefs challenged when she is appointed to the defense of Selim Bakri (Mohammad Bakri). Kaufman, who was born in the United States to survivors of the Holocaust, has always accepted Israel's right to exist. But she bears witness to some of the costs of its sovereignty when she meets Bakri, a dispossessed Palestinian man facing serious criminal charges who wants the same thing as his supposed enemies: to reclaim his family home. | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
80 | So Much I Want To Say | 1983 | 7:37 | Mona Hatoum | full film | https://vimeo.com/262094223 | https://lux.org.uk/work/so-much-i-want-to-say/ | The video So Much I Want to Say consists of a series of still images, changing every eight seconds, which show the artist's face in close-up with a pair of male hands gagging her mouth and preventing her from speaking. Meanwhile her voice on the sound-track repeats over and over the words of the title. This is one of Hatoum's earliest video works and is based on material from a live performance. During a tour of Canada in 1983 she participated in a slowscan video exchange between Vienna and Vancouver entitled Wiencouver IV. Slowscan satellite transmits an image every eight seconds, with continuous sound via telephone lines. Hatoum's contribution, transmitted live from Vancouver, was also titled So Much I Want to Say. The video work uses footage from the live transmission. It was made at the Western Front Art Centre and is a Western Front Production. Hatoum grew up in Beirut, but became an exile during a visit to London in 1975 when war broke out in Lebanon. She attended art schools in London (Byam Shaw 1975-9 and Slade 1979-81), where she began to make work about her experience of cultural displacement. She has said: 'my work is about my experience of living in the West as a person from the Third World, about being an outsider, about occupying a marginal position, being excluded, being defined as "Other" or as one of "Them"' (quoted in Mona Hatoum, London 1997, p.127). Her early performance works focused with great intensity on her body, which she used as a metaphor for oppression, often separated from the audience by some form of barrier, membrane, cage, cell, wall, hood or veil. In So Much I Want to Say the male hands, which gag Hatoum's mouth, form a physical and visual barrier between the artist and her audience, which seems on one level to prevent her from being seen, heard or understood. They provide a symbol for a cultural elite which stifles the voice of society's dispossessed, those who are alienated through their race, nationality and gender. By presenting images where she appears to be silenced, Hatoum exposes the predicament of political minorities who are silenced or ignored. Her ineffectual struggle to pluck the hands from her face contrasts with the persistent repetition of her voice on the sound-track, demonstrating that it is through her artwork that she has found a channel for her political ideas. | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
81 | The Negotiating Table | 1983 | 20:08 | Mona Hatoum | full film | https://vimeo.com/396694127 | When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Mona Hatoum responded to the conflict with a performance piece called The Negotiating Table.“The room is dark, lit only by a light bulb over a table on which the artist lies motionless. Empty chairs surround the table. Her body is bloodstained, covered with entrails, wrapped in plastic, and her head is firmly covered in surgical gauze. On the soundtrack news reports about civil war and speeches of Western leaders talking about peace can be heard.” It was John Pilger’s book Freedom Next Time (Bantam Press, 2006) that got me interested. A quick excerpt: “When I saw [The Negotiating Table] twenty years later, I was reminded that the injustice done in her country was like a spectre: unmoving and watchful, regardless of the manipulations and deceit of the oppressors and their backers. “The droning, insincere, incessant voices of Western broadcasters and politicians, one merging with the other, clip upon clip, produced an unforgettable heightened reality. Art succeeded where journalism had failed.” | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
82 | After The Massacre | 1983 | 45:26 | Christopher Sykes | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mBPpIfb1FE | 1983 BBC1 documentary about young British soldiers stationed in West Beirut in the aftermath of the massacre of civilians in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. A sequel to BEFORE THE MASSACRE (Beirut, 1982) | English, Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
83 | Variations on Discord and Divisions | 1983 | 29:13 | Mona Hatoum | full film | https://vimeo.com/243377299 | Live action with hood, knife, bucket, scrubbing brush, red paint, table, chairs, plates, raw beef kidneys, newspapers. First performed at ABC No Rio, New York, on December 2, 1984, with additional performances at A.K.A. Saskatoon, Western Front, Articule, Forest City Gallery, and the Art Gallery of Windsor, 1984-1985. Variations on Discord and Divisions begins in silence. Wearing coveralls and a black balaclava, a barefoot Mona Hatoum crawls slowly across the floor of the Grand Luxe Hall between seated rows of spectators. The stage is covered in newspaper and plastic, and makes a crinkling sound as she moves over it. When she finally arrives at her destined position below a hanging bucket, she stands. Whether spreading the liquid red contents of a bucket over the stage, or attempting to sit at a table only to repeatedly fall to the floor, Hatoum proposes a sadistic vision of human effort. Each variation confounds the supposed task at hand, yielding only further chaos, mess, and difficulty. Her careful but indelicate flops and swooshes use her full form and coveralls as an anonymous agent. With actions that mount in intensity (climaxing with the appearance of a knife and the serving of raw kidneys), the performance generates a sinister and dangerous space of conflict. Her performative gestures are later joined by a sharp sucking and crackling sound, a morse code-like tapping that grows in volume until the lights finally go out. Channels flip on a projection screen. Sounds of newscasters can be heard, alongside images of protests. A headline reads: “35000 people have been the victims of death squads since 1980. 1500 people have been butchered in cold blood in Nazi-like fashion…Twin refugee camps, one vast devastated morgue…Vicious immorale…Oppressed people…Famine, worse than ever.” | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
84 | Palestinian Identity | 1984 | 38:23 | Kassem Hawal | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o7jgGdhDJ8 | Kassem Hawal fled from his native Iraq after political persecution in 1970. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s he worked with the PLO Film Unit. His vision was the liberation of the region from imperialist and class exploitation. Palestinian Identity is a rare example of a PLO film made after their departure from Beirut. It documents the burnt and destroyed cultural and educational centres from which the israeli military stole films, photographs, historical and contemporary manuscripts. The film includes interviews with key members of the Palestinian cultural scene such as Mahmoud Darwish and Ismail Shammout and those in charge of cultural and educational centres to present a sophisticated intellectual understanding of israel’s attempt to destroy Palestinian identity and the resistance to it. It has not been screened since its premier at Leipzig in 1983. | Arabic, English | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
85 | Leila and the Wolves | 1984 | 1:34:33 | Heiny Srour | full film | contact distributor for link & password | Nadi Lekol Nas, nadilekolnas@gmail.com | Drawing on the Arab heritage of oral tradition and mosaic pattern, Leila and the Wolves is an exploration of the collective memory of Arab women and their hidden role in history throughout the past half century both in Palestine and in Lebanon. | Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
86 | Ma'loul Celebrates its Destruction | 1985 | 32:19 | Michel Khleifi | excerpt | https://youtu.be/m7cml-7wqjA?feature=shared | https://mecfilm.com/ | The Brussels-based Palestinian-Belgian filmmaker Michel Khleifi first returned to his birthplace to make the feature film Fertile Memory (1981). A few years later, he turned his camera on the original inhabitants of Ma'loul, a small village in Galilee that was destroyed by Israel after the 1948 war. Since 1948, countless Palestinian villages have been erased from the map. Ma'loul Celebrates its Destruction uses archival images of bombardments, destroyed buildings, and disfigured people to illustrate this. All that remains are ruins, bearing silent witness in the landscape. Ma'Loul, just west of Nazareth, is one such ruined village. It was inhabited principally by Palestinian Christians, who were forced to leave during the Nakba. Only once a year are residents allowed to revisit their old village, on Israeli Independence Day, also known as Nakba day. In Ma'loul Celebrates Its Destruction, Khleifi follows them on that day, revealing a world full of painful memories. A detailed painting still bears testimony to the existence of the village, which had seen Jewish, Roman, Ottoman, and Palestinian rulers come and go since ancient times. But Ma'Loul also lives on in the memories of its former—now elderly—inhabitants, who tell the story of exactly what happened. We get another perspective from a Palestinian school teacher, who explains to her young students why in the wake of World War II, the Jewish people had such an urgent need for their own nation, a place where they could feel safe. A strikingly mild assessment of the occupier, whom the teacher sees as a closely related brother people. An older man considers it unjustifiable that the Palestinians have become the indirect victims of the Nazi terror, in which they played no part whatsoever. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
87 | Gaza Ghetto: Portrait of a Palestinian Family | 1985 | 1:20:55 | Per-Åke Holmquist | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD0x_AGTLFg | info@arabfilm.com | The first documentary feature made in Gaza, this now classic film puts today’s headlines into historical perspective. It focuses on life under military occupation in Jabalia, the largest of all Palestinian refugee camps. A child is born and a child dies, and we come to understand the impact of decades of war and displacement on daily life and family rituals. We also meet Israelis personally involved: soldiers on patrol, settlers and government architects of the military occupation, Ariel Sharon, among them. | Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
88 | The Road to Palestine | 1985 | 7:24 | Layaly Badr | full film | https://vimeo.com/512227375 | Seven-year-old Layla lives in a refugee camp outside Palestine. Her father was killed and she was badly injured from an air raid. This film shares the life of Layla and her friends, who tell us how they imagine Palestine despite them having never seen it. | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
89 | The Shadow of the West | 1986 | 52:18 | Geoff Dunlop | full film | https://vimeo.com/886117156 | The Shadow of the West focuses on the plight of the Palestinians which can be seen as the most enduring residue of the modern encounter between the Arabs and the West. Edward Said traces the course of European involvement with the Near East via the Crusades to Napoleon's campaign in Egypt and the French and English mandates. | English, Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
90 | Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon | 1986 | 1:09:32 | Jean Khalil Chamoun & Mai Masri | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WbN5XMWKhaj7UUbLg5D65pohobdrQQKa/ | maimasri@gmail.com | In this award-winning documentary, directors Masri and Chamoun focus on the women who played a crucial role in fighting the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon. Preserving their stories on camera, Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon is a poignant documentary about courage, resistance, and hope. | Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
91 | Aqabat jaber: Vie de passage | 1987 | 1:00:27 | Eyal Sivan | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOFXGrsX18c | https://www.momento-films.com/ | As parched and spare as the landscape it chronicles, "Aqabat Jaber: Passing Through" is a coarsely realistic and depressing look at one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps. Strictly for specials houses, pic would fare better as a public broadcasting spec than a theatrical feature. Aqabat Jaber was set up on the occupied West Bank in 1948 for 65,000 Palestinians who were uprooted from 116 villages. Today there are only 3,000 refugees left. First-lime director Eyal Sivan takes his camera on-site to the remaining inhabitants, most of whom are convinced that they will one day, through political or divine intervention, return to their homeland. They all express similar sentiment - their land is the very source, they are homesick for their villages and orchards, and feel that Aqabat Jaber is a "temporary situation," although they've been there for 38 years (pic was shot in 1986). Some refugees welcome the chance to introduce themselves, air their grievances and bemoan their fates; others scorn the filmmakers. Sivan, ever sympathetic to their conditions, extracts detailed life stories from these displaced persons as he pans the daily life at the camps _women baking bread, men sitting around smoking from a hookah, children playing in abandoned baked earth houses. The United Nations Relief and Works Act, which set up the camp now provides it with a minimal of sustenance every two months. In the summer there's no water. It's all hopeless and full of despair. Being and nothingness are the watchwords at the camp as well as this docu. Sivan should have established the details of the camp's politics and history at the outset to make the individual stories more accessible to the viewer, instead of saving a paragraph of description for the end. There's no narration or music either. These people's plights are poignant, but there are too many unanswered questions as to why they're still here, why neighbouring Arab countries didn't take them in, and why their embitterment paralyzes. | Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
92 | Wedding in Galilii | 1987 | 1:52:17 | Michel Khleifi | full film (accessible with rental) | https://avilafilm.be/en/film/wedding-galilee | https://mecfilm.com/ | The mayor (Mohamad Ali El Akili) of a West Bank village wants his son (Yussef Abu Warda) to adhere to Palestinian tradition in his upcoming wedding. The trouble is, custom conflicts with the curfew put in place by the Israeli military. To get an exception, the father has to get clearance from the occupying governor (Makram Khoury), who, against all expectation, grants it. But there's a catch: The governor and his Israeli colleagues have to be on the guest list. | Arabic | English, French, Dutch | to enable English subtitles, download file and play in vlc with subtitle track set to 1 (English), to enable French or Dutch subtitles, do the same and select track 2(French) or 3 (Dutch) | |||||||||||||||||||||
93 | Intifada - Road to Freedom | 1988 | 21:59 | Jenny Morgan | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gv_sEx3Zfp3F9JlRqGUL2fxECdKwmGxy/ | The film explores the first Palestinian Intifada against the Israeli Occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It shows moving images of resistance against the Israeli occupation, while exploring the steadfast determination of the Palestinian People, confronting a modern army with stones. The film highlights the active and important role of women in the intifada. | Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
94 | Palestine in Flames | 1988 | 30:02 | Monica Maurer | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFYCfmzai6s | The film attempts to reconstruct - partly with archive material - the historical-political background of the Intifada: a revolt that has its roots in the 1920s, when due to the colonization of Palestine by Zionist Jews, coming mainly from Europe, ended the centuries-old peaceful coexistence between the three monotheistic religions (Islamism, Judaism, Christianity). In 1947 the UN decided to divide Palestine - then under British mandate - into two states: one Jewish and the other Arab. In 1948, with the creation of the State of Israel, the occupation of Arab lands and the endless series of clashes and wars began. | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
95 | Measures of Distance | 1988 | 15:34 | Mona Hatoum | full film | https://youtu.be/eKGPefM-Uf8 | info@vdb.org | Created in 1988, "Measures of Distance" illustrates Hatoum's early themes of family, displacement, and female sexuality. The video piece itself is fifteen minutes long and consists of intimate, colored photographs of Hatoum's mother showering. Hatoum overlays the photographs with letters from her mother to Hatoum. | Arabic, English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
96 | Exiles: Edward Said | 1988 | 54:10 | Christopher Sykes | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g1ooTNkMQ4 | Edward Said, critic, tells his story and the story of Palestine. | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
97 | The Dream (al-Manam) | 1988 | 44:52 | Mohammad Malas | full film | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qox0BC7N2sYDljhPSj6l-Ft5FWBcYC46/ | duniafilm@gmail.com, MEC Films Berlin | The Dream or Al-Manam is a 1987 Syrian documentary film by the director Mohammad Malas. The film is composed of a collection of interviews with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon during the civil war. The refugees were interviewed by Malas about what dreams they saw when they went to sleep. | Arabic | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||
98 | War Generation Beirut | 1988 | 50:00 | Mai Masri, Jean Khalil Chamoun | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnKolJGPv9Q | Filmed on the streets of Beirut, War Generation Beirut is an award-winning documentary film by Jean Khalil Chamoun and Mai Masri that explores the life experiences of three generations of young people as they struggle to survive in Lebanon’s war-torn capitol city. The film also traces the history and origins of Lebanon's Civil War. Filmmakers Jean Khalil Chamoun, from Lebanon, and Mai Masri, from Palestine, first met in 1982 and were married in 1986. They founded Nour Productions and have co-directed documentaries for international TV channels such as BBC, Channel 4, PBS, and Aljazeera Documentary Channel. For audiences around the world, the films of Mai Masri and Jean Chamoun have provided a glimpse into the everyday lives and struggles of people living in Palestine and Lebanon. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
99 | Voices From Gaza | 1989 | 51:06 | Antonia Caccia | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu-0_obE-34 | Made during the first intifada or uprising, it allows the people of Gaza to tell their own story. We hear men, women and children speak articulately and frankly about what it means to live under occupation, and to take part in the first Palestinian uprising. | English, Arabic | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||
100 | Al Nawss (The Quiver of the Branch by the Wind) | 1989 | 25:12 | Majdi El Omari | full film | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvciYwe0ABQ | A young Palestinian living in exile is searching for the reason of his attachment to a land where he was not born. The land of his father's tongue and of the stories of his grandmother who died in Gazza, of the faraway sea of Yafa and the dance of the Mary ... footsteps that surround him always, in spite of time and distance. He meets Nu'ma and she leads him to Om-Mazen who like him, lives in exile – in Egypt. Om-Mazen's age is that of questions and of roots... she speaks: telling the old story, the song, the place, names, dialects and examples...he asks her questions and the melodies are formed. He listens to her words and sees her moving far back in time to her childhood days. The girls describe the relationship between Om-Mazen and the young man... names, words, their present and the thoughts in their minds. One of the girls is the moon's lover, another is a spring that the young man had seen in Nablus and a third tells her story with a young man whom Om-Mazen had seen in Beirut. Their characters become part of the quiver, as well as Om-Mazen, the young man and the melody... the wind is always there and by it, quivers the branch. | Arabic | English |