Palestinian Cinema A
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Traditions in World Cinema Series Editor: Steven Jay Schneider N Associate Editors: Linda Badley and R. Barton Palmer U G R This new series introduces diverse and fascinating movements in world cinema. Each volume E I O concentrates on a set of films from a different national or regional (in some cases cross-cultural) T H cinema which constitute a particular tradition. Volumes cover topics such as: Japanese horror R G cinema, Italian neorealist cinema, American blaxploitation cinema, African filmmaking, global G E ‘post-punk’ cinema, Czech and Slovak cinema and the Italian sword-and-sandal film. E R K T H Z L E A I N F I PALESTINIAN CINEMA D Landscape,Trauma and Memory NURITH GERTZ AND GEORGE KHLEIFI Although in recent years, the entire world has been increasingly concerned with the Middle East and Israeli-Palestinian relationship, there are few truly reliable sources of information regarding PALESTINIAN CINEMA Palestinian society and culture, either concerning its relationship with Israeli society, its position Landscape,Trauma and Memory P between east and west or its stances in times of war and peace. One of the best sources for A understanding Palestinian culture is its cinema which has devoted itself to serving the national L struggle. Filmmakers have strived to delineate Palestinian history and to portray the daily life of E NURITH GERTZ AND GEORGE KHLEIFI L a S Palestinians – men, women and children.As well as attempting to connect the past to the typically n d T distressed present, Palestinian cinema has endeavoured to suggest a future of national unity, s c a I revealing time and again how the longing for personal liberty clashes with the hardships of p N e national existence. , T r I a A In this book, two scholars – an Israeli and a Palestinian – in a rare and welcome collaboration, u m N follow the development of Palestinian cinema, commenting on its response to political and social a a transformations.They discover that the more the social, political and economic conditions worsen n d and chaos and pain prevail, the more Palestinian cinema becomes involved with the national C M I struggle. As expected, Palestinian cinema has unfolded its national narrative against the Israeli e m N narrative, which tried to silence it.The reflection of the Israeli in Palestinian cinema is one more o r E harsh and painful testimony to the resentment and hostility between the two peoples, who share y a common patch of earth and landscape. M Nurith Gertz is Professor of Cinema and Literature at the Open University and Professor and A Head of the Program in Theory and History, Department of Cinema and Television, Tel Aviv University, Israel. George Khleifi is Deputy director, Institute of Modern Media, Al Quds University, Ramalla, and a Palestinian filmmaker. Cover design: River Design, Edinburgh Cover image:Yadon Ilaheyya/Divine Intervention, 2002. Directed by Elia Suleiman. Ognon Pictures/SOREAD-2M/The Kobal Collection barcode E d Edinburgh University Press i n 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF b www.eup.ed.ac.uk u r g ISBN 978 0 7486 3408 8 h PALESTINIAN CINEMA TRADITIONS IN WORLD CINEMA General Editors Linda Badley (Middle Tennessee State University) R. Barton Palmer (Clemson University) Founding Editor Steven Jay Schneider (New York University) Titles in the series include: Traditions in World Cinema by Linda Badley, R. Barton Palmer and Steven Jay Schneider (eds) 978 0 7486 1862 0 (hardback) 978 0 7486 1863 7 (paperback) Japanese Horror Cinema by Jay McRoy (ed.) 978 0 7486 1994 8 (hardback) 978 0 7486 1995 5 (paperback) New Punk Cinema by Nicholas Rombes (ed.) 978 0 7486 2034 0 (hardback) 978 0 7486 2035 7 (paperback) African Filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara by Roy Armes 978 0 7486 2123 1 (hardback) 978 0 7486 2124 8 (paperback) Forthcoming titles include: American Commercial-Independent Cinema by Linda Badley and R. Barton Palmer 978 0 7486 2459 1 (hardback) 978 0 7486 2460 7 (paperback) The Italian Sword-and-Sandal Film by Frank Burke 978 0 7486 1983 2 (hardback) 978 0 7486 1984 9 (paperback) Czech and Slovak Cinema: Theme and Tradition by Peter Hames 978 0 7486 2081 4 (hardback) 978 0 7486 2082 1 (paperback) PALESTINIAN CINEMA Landscape, Trauma and Memory Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS © Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi, 2008 This book was first published (as Landscape in Mist: Space and Memory in Palestinian Cinema) in Hebrew in 2005 by Am Oved and the Open University, Tel Aviv. Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 10/12.5 Adobe Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 3407 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 3408 8 (paperback) The right of Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. CONTENTS Introduction 1 1. A Chronicle of Palestinian Cinema 11 2. From Bleeding Memories to Fertile Memories 59 3. About Place and Time: The Films of Michel Khleifi 74 4. Without Place, Without Time: The Films of Rashid Masharawi 101 5. The House and its Destruction: The Films of Ali Nassar 119 6. A Dead-End: Roadblock Movies 134 7. Between Exile and Homeland: The Films of Elia Suleiman 171 Conclusion 190 Epilogue 193 Bibliography 200 Filmography 212 Index 216 TRADITIONS IN WORLD CINEMA General editors: Linda Badley and R. Barton Palmer Founding editor: Steven Jay Schneider Traditions in World Cinema is a series of books devoted to the analysis of cur- rently popular and previously underexamined or undervalued film movements from around the globe. The volumes in this series have three primary aims: (1) to offer undergraduate- and graduate-level film students accessible and comprehensive introductions to diverse and fascinating traditions in world cinema; (2) to represent these both textually and contextually through atten- tion to industrial, cultural and socio-historical conditions of production and reception; and (3) to open up for academic study and general interest a number of previously underappreciated films. The flagship volume for the series offers chapters by noted scholars on traditions of acknowledged importance (the French New Wave, German Expressionism), recent and emergent traditions (New Iranian, post-Cinema Novo), and those whose rightful claim to recognition has yet to be established (the Israeli persecution film, global found footage cinema). Other volumes con- centrate on individual national, regional or global cinema traditions. As the introductory chapter to each volume makes clear, the films under discussion form a coherent group on the basis of substantive and relatively transparent, if not always obvious, commonalities. These commonalities may be formal, styl- istic or thematic, and the groupings may, although they need not, be popularly identified as genres, cycles or movements (Japanese horror, Chinese wenyi pian vi TRADITIONS IN WORLD CINEMA melodrama, Dogma). Indeed, in cases in which a group of films is not already commonly identified as a tradition, one purpose of the volume may be to estab- lish its claim to importance and make it visible. Each volume in the series includes: •an introduction that clarifies the rationale for the grouping of films under examination • concise history of the regional, national or transnational cinema in question • summary of previous published work on the tradition • contextual analysis of industrial, cultural and socio-historical condi- tions of production and reception •textual analysis of specific and notable films, with clear and judicious application of relevant film theoretical approaches •bibliograph(ies). Other volumes may include: •discussion of the dynamics of cross-cultural exchange in light of current research and thinking about cultural imperialism and globalization •interview(s) with key filmmakers working within the tradition • filmograph(ies). vii To our children, Tyme, Bakr, Shlomzion and Rona The research that this book was based upon was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) (grant number 786/03) and by the Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization (IPSO). The authors thank Meital Alon-Oleinik who did the scientific editing. INTRODUCTION “History has forgotten our people,” writes Yazid Sayigh (1998) about the Palestinians, while Emile Habibi, in his book The Six Day Sextet (1968a), pre- sents the opposite position: “We are the people who have overlooked history.” Today, with the establishment of Palestinian nationality and its historical nar- rative in writings, art, and literature, both positions seem inaccurate.1 Yet, the notion that the post-1948 Palestinian historical narrative has thus far not been told in its entirety or, at least, that it has yet to find its full artistic expression, is still prevalent among writers and scholars. According to Anton Shammas, we can certainly find parts of this story in individual literary works such as The Pessoptimist (Habibi, 1974), Arabesque (Shammas, 1986), Returning to Haifa (Kanafani, 2000), and “Why Have You Abandoned the Horse?”2 What is missing, however, is the overall story: “the experience of being uprooted, the banishment and the crime, the absence” (Khouri, 1998). Researchers tend to cite various causes that have led to this predicament. Some remark that “chunks of the Palestinian memory have been subjected to colonization by other types of discourse” (Nassar, 2002: 27–8) and have been silenced by the Israeli narrative (Manaa, 1999b; Said, 2000). Consequently, Palestinian history has been told from the viewpoint of the winning side. As Manaa would argue: The Europeans followed by the Zionists – the powerful and triumphant side in the national conflict over the Holy Land . generally ignored even the mere existence of the indigenous people of the land and their right 1 PALESTINIAN CINEMA over the country .