Palestine: Ways of refusal

Seeing Palestinian men and women, 

watching them in their daily life, proposing a counterpoint to media images, clouding stereotypes, giving back a human face to resistance…

Whether it is the political struggles of the 1970s’ international anti-imperialist movement and the stories told by older generations about life in villages now destroyed and wiped from the landscape – but not from memory –, or the perseverance and determination needed to live out each day under occupation or siege, Palestinian cinema is striving passionately to keep the Palestinian population from becoming invisible. A living cinema that bears witness not only to their material living conditions but also to their resistance and their capacity to create, in the interstices of life, spaces of freedom that escape the rules of oppression. While filmmakers and artists have changed their tone since the 1970s – it now being less directly militant “on behalf of the Palestinian people” and “against reactionary forces” – their films resonate with highly political voices at the intersection of anti-capitalist, decolonial and green causes, of which Palestine today seems to be the epicentre. Yet, above all, they all constantly bear witness to what it means to be Palestinian. In Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, in the camps in nearby countries or in the diaspora, each and every one “desires a full and dignified life and determinedly holds on to this”. 

This programme is proposed in partnership with Jumana Manna