WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/research/westminsterresearch Palestinian filmmaking in Israel : negotiating conflicting discourses Yael Friedman School of Media, Arts and Design This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © The Author, 2010. This is an exact reproduction of the paper copy held by the University of Westminster library. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Users are permitted to download and/or print one copy for non-commercial private study or research. Further distribution and any use of material from within this archive for profit-making enterprises or for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: (http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail [email protected] Palestinian Filmmaking in Israel: Negotiating Conflicting Discourses Yael Friedman PhD 2010 Palestinian Filmmaking in Israel: Negotiating Conflicting Discourses Yael Friedman A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2010 Acknowledgments The successful completion of this research was assisted by many I would like to thank. First, my thanks and appreciation to all the filmmakers and media professionals interviewed during this research. Without the generosity with which many shared their thoughts and experiences this research would have not been possible. I want to thank also to the Israeli Film Fund, the Cinema Project of the Rabinowitz Tel Aviv Foundation, the Makor Foundation for Israeli Films, the Gesher Multicultural Film Fund, and the Second Broadcast Authority for Television and Radio for access to films and documents. Special thanks to the New Foundation for Cinema and Television for their extraordinary cooperation and help. I am grateful to the CREAM research centre at the University of Westminster for supporting this research and for providing meaningful platforms to exchange ideas and share experiences with fellow students and staff. I am especially grateful to my supervisors, Rosie Thomas and Roza Tsagarousianou whose wise comments, encouragement and assistance over the years were indispensable. Several like-minded Israeli friends helped me to think through the painful realities at home and the challenges of writing about them from a distance. I am grateful to Gali Gold, Daphna Baram, Eyal Sivan, Nir Cohen, Nimrod Ben-Cnaan and Ilana Bakal for their insights. Finally, my loving thanks to my family, whose love and support over the years enabled me to sustain the ups and downs of a PhD project. To Anna, who only a few months old endured a PhD. obsessed mother, and to my husband Peter whose love, support, interest and help brought me to the finish line. Abstract In recent years Palestinian cinema is evidently growing, as more films emerge from diverse sites of production: the Palestinian Authority, the different Palestinian diasporas and inside Israel. While scholars have often discussed Palestinian cinema without necessarily differentiating between the various sites of production, this thesis offers an in-depth analysis of Palestinian filmmaking inside Israel by Palestinians citizens of Israel. It addresses a lacuna in the research of Palestinian cinema by examining in detail the context of production of Palestinian films within the Israeli film industry, outlining the structural conditions and the discursive environment within which Palestinian filmmakers in Israel work. Moreover, through a close reading of key films, and references to others, this thesis identifies shared thematic characteristics of this body of work, and discusses the ways in which the films relate to both the Zionist and the Palestinian national discourses. Broadly, my analysis shows that while as with Palestinian cinema at large the films discussed in this thesis engage with issues of history, space and resistance they are nuanced in ways which relate to the specific circumstances of Palestinians in Israel. Concerns of ‘belonging’ and identity consume much of the films’ production and distribution processes as well as their thematic focus. Their production within Israel problematises the categories of both Israeli and Palestinian cinemas as ‘national’ cinemas, since their hybridity on the one hand exposes the ambivalence of the Zionist discourse and disturbs notions of Palestinian national resistance on the other. Thematically, many of the films’ narratives, especially of the younger generation, feature processes of ‘becoming’, as the films’ subjects search for places of belonging and identity positions. In so doing, the films often functioned as ‘sites’ through which conflicting discourses of identity, culture and politics were negotiated. In the films, and through the process of making the films, the filmmakers examined, scrutinized and often positioned themselves in relation to dominant Palestinian and Israeli/Zionist discourses, within the wider cultural trajectories of East and West. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Historical and Theoretical Contexts 20 The Zionist Discourse of Euro-modernity and its ambivalence The Political map of Palestinian Citizens of Israel Hybridity and young Palestinians in Israel Conclusion Chapter 2 Context of Production: The Israeli Industry 44 Palestinian films in Israel: 1948-1990s. Early Beginnings: the 1980s Michel Khliefi Al Jadid Palestinian films in Israel since the 1990s The Israeli Film Industry The Television Industry A Note on Censorship Diversity in Practice: the limits of the discourse Conclusion Chapter 3 Context of Production: Palestinian filmmakers in Israel 77 NGOs and Film Schools Strategies of Production of Individual Filmmakers Working outside/ Working inside The Israeli Industry and the limits of the discourse The importance of locality: working in one’s homeland Beyond the national conflict Conclusion Chapter 4 History, Memory, Identity 103 Counter Narratives: The Nakba in the films of ‘second generation’ Palestinians in Israel Private Investigations: national identity and young Palestinian filmmakers Conclusion Chapter 5 Marginality, Liminality and the Arab Town in Israel 149 ‘In-between’: Liminality and third spaces The Arab Town: images of dysfunction Absence and stagnation Chaos and fragmentation Conclusion Chapter 6 Crossing the Green Line: Palestinian-Israeli filmmakers and the Intifada 191 Visible Evidence: Representing ‘the Battle of Jenin’ Transcending actuality: the Jenin films as ‘works of mourning’ Popular resistance and national heros Conclusion Conclusion 219 Bibliography 226 Filmography 246 Appendix 1 List of Interviews 247 Introduction Palestinian cinema is generally understood to be a project of counter-representation. Set against the backdrop of Israeli colonialism, as well as misrepresentation in the world’s media, it provides, as Edward Said (2006) put it, “a visual alternative, a visual articulation, a visual incarnation of Palestinian existence in the years since 1948“ (3). While emerging from the margins, modest in its output and facing many obstacles, Palestinian cinema is growing steadily. In recent years, more and more films are being produced by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, by Palestinian citizens of Israel and by Palestinians in the different Palestinian diasporas. Opportunities for exhibition and distribution of Palestinian films are also expanding: more Palestinian film festivals are being organised around the world, efforts are being made to create outlets for exhibition in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and in Israel, the internet is increasingly being utilised as a platform for exhibition and debate, and recent Palestinian films have been showcased in mainstream festivals and gained cinematic general release in the West. With this proliferation, new avenues for research and analysis are opening up, as demonstrated by the growing number of academic publications about Palestinian cinema. This thesis seeks to contribute to this ongoing research into Palestinian cinema by providing a focused analysis of an area that has been comparatively neglected to date, filmmaking by Palestinians citizens of Israel, inside Israel, in recent years. Before the parameters of this thesis can be more rigorously defined, some background on the complex development of Palestinian cinema is needed. Historically, nascent Palestinian cinema was already emerging in Palestine under the British Mandate, when several pioneering filmmakers began producing films (Khleifi, 2001; Gertz and Khleifi, 2008; Hennebelle, 1979; Downing, 1979). Compared to the emerging Zionist cinema and the amount of foreign filmmakers that Palestine attracted, the Palestinians’ interest in cinema was relatively limited and production was sporadic (Gertz and Khleifi, 2008; Khleifi, 2001; Downing, 1979; Freeden, 1948). While some of the Palestinian filmmakers exhibited a nationalist consciousness, seeking to develop a distinct Palestinian cinema 1 as a reaction against Zionism (Hennebelle, 1979; Khleifi, 2001), there were also collaborations between Jewish and Arab filmmakers around that time (Shohat, 1989a). The