PALESTINIAN CINEMA Landscape,Trauma and Memory

PALESTINIAN CINEMA Landscape,Trauma and Memory NURITH GERTZ AND GEORGE KHLEIFI 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 conditions 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 narrative 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 . The Palestinians have been described as nomads, as peasants, or as miscellaneous groups and sections lacking any national consciousness. (Manaa, 1999b: 9–10) Yet, according to scholars, the Palestinians did not suggest a counter-narrative, either because “they had not realized the power historical accounts have to acti- vate people,” or because the connection between the people and the various quarters of the homeland had been an organic and intimate one and “they therefore did not see the significance of history as an argument for their national rights” (ibid.). Several scholars and writers have referred to the difficulty of coping with the 1948 defeat as one of the reasons for the absence of such a national story. Anton Shammas, for instance, claims that guilt and shame over that devastating blow partially explain the lack of a Palestinian historical story (Khouri, 1998), and Rashid al Khalidi (2001) maintains that it is the consequence of Palestinian resistance to confronting the numerous reasons for that national failure. Many writers attribute the absence of a Palestinian historical narrative to the exilic condition manifested in life behind shut-off borders, on the road, in a state of temporality. Elias Sanbar (1997) questions the possibility of organizing time when space is barred off. Edward Said ([2001] 2002), for his part, wonders how one might arrange time when “every progress is a regression,” when “there is no direct line connecting the home to the place of birth, school and adulthood, when all events are accidental.” Muhammad Hamza Ghanayem (2000) mentions that Palestinians have replaced a comprehensive historical approach with the ideology of refugees, which sanctions the “idea of temporality” and does not lend itself to structuring history. For many years the refugee ideology dominated Palestinian culture. In other words, the idea of the temporal prevailed: while drifting about and fighting, the refugee always remains temporary, and in a transient condition there is no room for memory, except as the passing moment. (Ghanayem, 2000: 17) Or, as Sanbar phrases it, “the strong consciousness of a transient state and of com- plete mobility gave [the Palestinians] a feeling that the only permanency is the one of the anticipation for the return to the homeland and with it re-immersion in the individual and collective time” (Sanbar, 1997: 24). The difficulty in constructing a historical sequence is clearly revealed in the Palestinian tendency to “ignore the present by trading it for a past, which is static, a past ruled by images and rituals”3 (Harkabi, 1975) and to fix the historical narrative along three veins: the memory of a paradise lost, the lament for the present, and the description of the intended return (Tamari, 1999a).4 In 2 INTRODUCTION this tendency, Palestinian history resembles other histories of exile and dis- placement, in which everyday existence is experienced through the mediation of nostalgia for the lost nature-and-nation unity, and for the utopian homeland that remains untainted by contemporary affairs (Jameson, 1986; Naficy, 2001: 153).

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