Palestinian filmmakers are overcoming the hardships and restrictions of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and West Bank to create a remarkable body of work.
Covering diverse issues ranging from imprisonment to intergenerational differences, religious tolerance and identity, these directors are documenting the reality of life in the two enclaves through fiction and factual films.
Their work is being shown at festivals worldwide, with five films included at October’s Malmo Arab Film Festival, the largest event specialising in Arabic language films outside of the Middle East and North Africa.
These included Annemarie Jacir’s critically acclaimed feature-length drama ‘Wajib’, while among the new generation of young filmmakers participating was 18-year-old Natalie Jubeh, whose debut work ‘The Foreigner’ won first prize in the short documentary class at Italy’s Nazra Palestine Film Festival, and third place at the Muscat international Film Festival.
‘The Foreigner’ tells the extraordinary story of Don Hutchison, a Pennsylvanian native who first came to Palestine in 1965 to work as a teacher at the Ramallah Friends School. He returned to Ramallah in 1967, two weeks after Israel seized the West Bank, and was mistakenly given Palestinian citizenship by the occupying forces.
Hutchison’s Palestinian wife died, leaving him to raise their young children in Ramallah, where he still lives after refusing all offers to return to his native United States.
“For him, he feels like a foreigner in the US, while Palestine is his home,” says Jubeh, who was a pupil at the Friends School where she first encountered Hutchison. She’s now in the first year of a film production degree at The University of British Columbia in Canada, where she hopes to hone her skills to make Palestinians better heard.
“In Canada, when I say I’m Palestinian, lots of people don’t know where Palestine is. I have to show the story of my country, and for me filmmaking is the best way to do that,” says Jubeh, who began making fictional films as a young teen. “It’s important we have storytellers who can reach the wider world. People no longer read newspapers, so film is the best way to show the Palestinian story. Maybe the world will open up and see what’s really happening in Palestine.”
CRISIS OF IDENTITY
Mohammad Shalodi, 24, is another whose debut was shown in Malmo. ‘Wa’ad’ showcases the experience of an eponymous photography student who enrols at an Israeli university. Aged 23, she’s originally from Gaza but grew up in Jerusalem.
“We’re friends - the idea came from a conversation between us about the situation in her college,” says Shalodi, who studied photography in Jerusalem before graduating in film production from Dar Al Kalima University College in 2017. “I decided to record what was happening. The majority of Palestinians who live in Jerusalem feel this same psychological provocation.”
Meanwhile, Sawsan Qaoud - Jubeh’s mother - is a veteran documentary maker as well as a lecturer at Jerusalem’s Al Quds University and has been a key figure in the development of Palestinian’s film sector.
She founded Ramallah’s Mashahid for Art Production in 2013, a production services company that provides facilities to filmmakers, also producing films and TV documentaries. In 2019, she will launch the Jerusalem Media Training Centre in conjunction with Al Quds University. This will train both students and industry professionals.
“It’s for people who need different skills and tools. There will be various courses with specialist trainers,” says Qaoud, 47.
“If we as Palestinians get better at telling and documenting our stories and have the opportunity to show what we really feel through film or other arts, it will be much better for our society and for our future. It's kind of a treatment for our hearts, for our souls and for the occupation. It will give us more of a voice.”
Qaoud’s films include ‘Women in the Stadium’ (2011), which shows the struggles of Palestinian women’s football team to play and train amid Israeli intransigence. This year’s The Palestinian Diaspora Orchestra documents how the group has recruited musicians of Palestinian origin to play classical musical music in the West Bank and Israel.
“I usually look for stories that are hidden, that only I can access. I try to have details and different points of view that reflect our story as Palestinians and to our pain as Palestinians in different way,” says Qaoud. “My focus is more human, not political, but it’s inevitably political to an extent because we live politics every day.
“Arts gives you freedom of thinking, freedom to use your own imagination, to tell your own story - trying to escape the constraints that you live through.”