Gaza Film Unit - Protecting the Palestinian Narrative

As reality becomes more horrific, we start to question the value behind imagination. Since the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza, the world has witnessed more atrocities than any of us can bear. For more than 300 days, Palestinians in Gaza experienced all kinds of suffering. Nearly 40,000 of Gaza’s people were killed. More than 70% of its construction was destroyed. 1.5 million of its people were forced to evacuate from their homes, and spend the night in tents, on sidewalks, and in hospital corridors.

Also hospitals were blown up by the occupation forces, turning them into mass graves. People spent days and weeks to recognise bodies and give them proper treatment. The lucky ones in Gaza, are those who found someone who can bury them after they died. Many of their bodies decomposed, in the streets, and under the rubble of their homes, which turned into an inferno over their heads, while they slept, dreaming of a better tomorrow. Gaza was an open prison, now it became a mass grave. What is happening in Gaza is challenging for Palestinians working in the cultural scene. Our social and cultural heritage, the history of our beautiful city, is being erased from existence in a systematic and deliberate manner. By blowing up cultural centers, educational institutions, and archaeological sites. This war on culture is threatening our graphic and written history, our civil records. As it already assassinated intellectuals and killed artists, slowly, by depriving them of treatment. Despite the cruelty of this scene to writers, artists, and filmmakers, especially those who knew Gaza before its destruction, it pushes them all towards one path, which is to take away their right to tell their story. And the world should listen to their voices. The responsibility falling on Palestinian intellectuals in general, and Gazans in particular, is more serious than ever before. Firstly, we must raise the level of our discourse when telling our narrative. Secondly, we need to help others speak with us, not on our behalf. The space in which the Palestinian artist is allowed to work is no longer acceptable. Rather, it has become very narrow. What is happening in Gaza requires all of us to have more courage in refusing to work within predetermined spaces.

We already lost everything.

In this special Palestinian program, we will find films in love with Gaza, a city that the occupation didn’t give the opportunity to talk about adequately, before wiping it out of existence. Our private and common history is being threatened by culturicide. The program includes four short films made in different periods of the history of Palestinian cinema. Viewed in order, it takes us on a short journey in and out of Gaza. Its diversity helps to create a solid debate on the Palestinian question today. 

The programme and the discussion that follows with the curators, is prepared and edited by Gaza Film Unit, a collective of researchers, artists and filmmakers from Gaza, aims to protect the Palestinian narrative, documenting the genocide and building an archive. 

The screening will be followed by a talk with the curators Eslam Elsaqqa and Ayman Alazraq, two Palestinian filmmakers who represent Gaza Film Unit.

Gaza Film Unit \ Palestine Film Institute

Curators: Eslam Elsaqqa and Ayman Alazraq

Screened:
FRI 25/10, 17:00 REGINA