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Hany Abu-Assad's Historical Testimonies

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Hany Abu-Assad's Historical Testimonies Hany Abu-Assad’s Historical Testimonies History and Identity in Palestinian Cinema of the Everyday Teuntje Schrijver 5819334 Keizersgracht 637B 1017DS Amsterdam 06-52559976 [email protected] Dr. A.M. Geil MA Film Studies University of Amsterdam 0 1 University of Amsterdam 2 Table of Content Introduction .................................................................................................................... 5 1. Rana’s Wedding ........................................................................................................ 10 Journey .................................................................................................................. 14 Control ............................................................ Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. Witnessing ...................................................... Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. 2. Paradise Now .................................................... Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. Journey ........................................................... Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. Media technology ........................................... Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. Witnessing ...................................................... Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. 3. Omar .................................................................. Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. Historical narrative ......................................... Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. Knowledge ...................................................... Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. Conclusion ............................................................. Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. Reference List ........................................................ Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. 3 4 Introduction Since 1948 [Palestinian filmmakers] are a resistance movement, and keeping the case alive is a form of resistance. Making these films is like unconsciously making documents that can be kept in history and keep our case alive. (Interview with Hany Abu-Assad. Haider 2010) Besides some international productions, Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad made three feature films in his native country Palestine. He wants these films to become part of the Palestinian history-writing by making documents about the contemporary situation of the Palestinian occupation. In several interviews the director states his wishes to be a witness of the world and time, and to make films that stay in the world and in that way in history1. By making films as if they are “historical testimonies”, Hany Abu-Assad is placing himself in the position of the contemporary witness of the Palestinian situation supporting the Palestinian cause. Even though Hany Abu-Assad makes pictures about the now, the films reflect a bigger Palestinian history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the depiction of personal contemporary stories of the everyday. The historical trauma that shaped the Palestinian history and identity is reflected in the filmmaker’s films through its stories, images and sound. Therefore, this thesis will explore the way Hany Abu-Assad tells and depicts the Palestinian history and identity through stories of the everyday. Throughout his oeuvre he is trying to establish what his role as a filmmaker means and adds to the resistance against the occupation by making these testimonies. With every new work he makes, a change arises through which means the testimonies are being depicted and told, which reflects the development of the collective Palestinian identity and the filmmaker’s own growth and increased experience. Hany Abu-Assad was born in 1961 in Nazareth in a Muslim middle-class family amid a poor society. At the age of eighteen, he immigrated to the Netherlands to study aeronautical engineering. Later he fulfilled his dream to tell stories and make movies. Together with production company IJswater Films he produced his first feature film Het 14e kippetje (The 14th Chick) in 1998, which opened the Dutch Film Festival that same year. After that, he started shooting both documentaries and fiction films in Palestine. His 2005 production Paradise Now got nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film. By 1 See for instance: Haider 2010; IAmFilm 2013; Radio VPRO 2014. 5 then, Hany Abu-Assad had moved to Los Angeles and started working with American producers. Up until last year, the filmmaker would go to Palestine to shoot a movie and then leave again to the Netherlands or Hollywood where he actually lived. Last year, after finishing the film Omar (2013) the director returned to his hometown Nazareth to live there again. The journeying he did most of his life is represented in almost all of his films and also addresses the exilic character of the Palestinian identity. The situation the people live in under occupation and in exile contributes to the displacement of Palestinians. For many years, they have been approaching life and also history with the “ideology of refugees”. This makes structuring history problematic, because refugees always remain in a temporary and transient condition. In this state there is only room for memory as part of the passing moment. This transiency gave way to a collective Palestinian feeling whereby the only sureness was the expectation and hope for the returning to the homeland and re-immersion in the individual and collective time (Gertz and Khleifi 2). Being a refugee is like being on a perpetual journey. The journeys Hany Abu-Assad made in his life and also depicts in his films refer to this state a refugee is in. Hamid Naficy recognizes journeying as a common theme in what he calls “accented cinema”, which covers filmmakers who have diasporic, exilic or postcolonial experience. This experience is reflected in their films (11). Palestinian filmmakers are also accented because they either used to or still live abroad or because they live as an exile in their own occupied country. The journey, real or imaginary, is a common major topic that has been consistently used by exilic filmmakers and refers to their own history, their travels after exile that took them from their home and shaped their experiences and identity. Naficy, by addressing the journey as common accented theme, however, fails to take the state of a refugee into account. He does not explicitly discuss the fact that journeying leaves one nowhere, in a state of not belonging and therefore timeless. Moreover, he fails to notice the state of a person who is journeying as a refugee. I think that this is also the problem with the application of post-colonial studies to Palestine. There are many different forms for a country to be post-colonial, however when considering the Palestinian situation one cannot address it as post-colonial, since colonization is happening at this moment2. In the same way, when considering Palestinian filmmakers as accented, many concepts do apply to them. The filmmakers 2 See for further reading on the problems of the term “post-colonial”: Shohat, 1992. 6 are in a state of exile, though not all notions suffice. Naficy does not connect journeying to time in a way that clarifies the concept of being in a transient state, loose of temporality. He is more or less focused on the goal of the journey, rather than the current state that a journey brings forth. Palestinians are still in the process of the journey, leaving them in a constant transient state. There is no sight of the journey’s ending, because they refuse to accept that the current state is their destiny. Hany Abu- Assad addresses precisely this situation. In his films, the journeys his characters make are focused on the state of refugees. Abu-Assad’s three Palestinian fiction films analyzed in this thesis are: Rana’s Wedding (2002), Paradise Now (2005), and Omar (2013). All of the films were shot in Palestinian territories in Israel and deal with Palestinian society and daily Palestinian life. Next to one short and two documentaries, these are the only features dealing directly with the Palestinian situation. The three films were all produced amid a society under repression and constrained by tensions, which made the shooting period in the occupied areas a challenge. The situation of the Palestinians is a complex one, and so is their history. Different peoples have been living in the western area of the Middle-East since the last few millennia. Several different rulers have taken the land and borders have shifted multiple times, creating states bearing many different names. The region that is now known as Israel was known in the ancient times as Palestina, a land where Philistines lived: a people that came from Cyprus. After World War I the British had the mandate to rule the region of Palestine after the war against the Ottoman Empire. After World War II a plan was made for the British mandate to become a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a special governed Jerusalem. This last plan led to the war of 1948, after the Jewish settlers accepted the proposal and the Arabs did not. In the end, a Jewish state was established called Israel. In 1967, Israel gained the whole territory. Palestinians reacted to this in 1987 and 2000 with two intifadas. Though little changed since, in 2012 the United Nations changed Palestine’s status into an observer state, after which in 2013 the Palestinian authority changed its own name into the State of Palestine. Last year, in response to the kidnapping and killing of several teenagers on both sides, tensions increased again between
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