In the early years of Palestinian cinema, known as the cinema of revolution, the Gaza Strip (hereinafter GS) held an exceptional presence as being a principal Palestinian land and a basic theme of that cinema. That presence reflected the important status of the GS in the course of the Palestinian national movement since the occupation of 1967 and the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution, which it early on accompanied it, and alongside which it developed throughout the Seventies of the last century. Gaza maintained its central place in the period that followed and became especially visible in the Oslo cinema of the Nineties, following an interim period in the Eighties. However, that role became gradually to recede since the outbreak of the Intifada of al-Aqsa so that the subject of the GS became one of fighting and siege.
In this paper I attempt to follow the journey of Gaza in Palestinian cinema, all the way from its centrality to its marginality, basing myself on what I consider to be the cause of each shift.
“Scenes from the occupation of Gaza”
Early on, and in the first years of the Palestinian revolution, Gaza, to the exclusion of other localities, became the subject and title of a film called “Scenes from the occupation of Gaza” which was the sole production of the “The group of Palestinian Cinema” attached to the Palestine Research Center. This group was founded in 1972 within the framework of the Research Center and included Palestinian film makers belonging to various political organizations as well as independents, and produced a single film then stopped for administrative reasons.
That documentary was directed by Mustafa Abu `Ali and lasted 13 minutes. It was filmed by Muti` Ibrahim and `Umar Mukhtar, in addition to archival material, and with commentary by Rasmi Abu `Ali and `Isam Sakhnini. In certain scenes, that cinema group relied upon foreign journalists and photographers who had entered Gaza to film from it. The documentary won the golden prize for short films at the Palestine Festival of movies and programs in Baghdad in 1973 and the Prize of the Union of World Youth at the Leipzig Festival of that same year. The title of that documentary indicates that it filmed scenes of Israel’s occupation and everyday activities in the GS. In depicting the struggle, it filmed scenes of Gazans heroically resisting the occupation.
The fact that this documentary film appeared during the early days of Palestinian cinema reveals that filmmakers were fully aware of the centrality of Gaza in the history of the Palestinian national struggle as contrasted to such awareness and centrality in contemporary Palestinian cinema and the role of Gaza in it, as well as the various forms of heroic struggle of Gaza in other films that belong to the revolutionary period of Palestinian cinema.
That documentary has three principal characteristics: First, is that it is the only film produced by a collective of Palestinian filmmakers in the Palestinian revolution and one which transcended political factions. Second is the fact that it was one of the earliest productions of revolutionary cinema, that is to say it helped to define the identity of that cinema. Third, that it was based on Gaza and confined to it, as both the site of occupation and of resistance. These three points which distinguish that documentary reveal an early awareness among filmmakers and the substantial and consolidating role of the GS in Palestinian revolutionary cinema. The fact that the situation today is the opposite is noteworthy and renders the discussion of both cinematic and political awareness and role to stretch until the Nineties.
The GS in the Oslo cinema
During the Eighties, when Palestinian cinema witnessed an interruption followed by transformation due to the decline of the revolution at the start of that decade and the dispersal of the PLO-- individuals, leaders and institutions-- among various Arab countries, the decade of the Nineties witnessed a rebirth associated with the Oslo Accords where the GS also occupied a prominent position.
At that point, Palestinian filmmakers gradually began to make inroads into the realm of feature films, following an interim experiment which coincided with the Intifada of Stones, namely, “A Wedding in Galilee” by Michel Khlaifi in 1987. The Oslo Accords allowed the PLO to enter the West Bank and the GS which then became an authority with services and security duties devoid of nationalist meaning and struggle. This is precisely what the cinema of that era reflected, especially in the GS.
Of five Palestinian feature films in the Nineties, three were stories centered on Gaza, while two were outside the Oslo framework and thus not about Gaza. The first of these two was “Chronicle of a Disappearance” in 1996 by Elia Slaiman, where its scenes shifted between cities of the Palestinian interior and the West Bank. The absence of Gaza was due to the fact that the film melded with the director’s autobiography, starting with Nazareth. The second film, “The Milky Way” by `Ali Nassar in 1997 was a story further distant in time and place, taking place in the period of military rule in a village in Galilee.
These two films were outside the Oslo framework, the first relatively so, the second totally, indicating no special status for Gaza. But Gaza was prominent in the three films of the Oslo cinema which more closely reflected the situation of the Palestinians at that time, lending the GS its central place in the cinema of revolution. Gaza then returned to the very center of Palestinian cinema as was the case in the earlier period of that cinema.
These three films are, first, “Tale of the Three Jewels” in 1995 by Michel Khlaifi, the most mature of the three. The other two, “Until Further Notice” (“ Curfew”) in 1994 and “Haifa” in 1996, are both directed by Rashid Masharawi. In all three, Gaza and its characters are at the center of the story, and all three display characteristics one might categorize as Oslo cinema because of the wretchedness and despair which reflected the daily lives of the Palestinians in these two Oslo locations, the West Bank and the GS.
Thus, Gaza was once again the true locus of Palestinian life where their nationalist movement took hold and reflected the wretched situation of that movement in the Nineties. This lasted until the Aqsa Intifada broke away from that wretchedness and introduced new films (“Divine Intervention” by Slaiman, “Paradise Now” by Hani Abu As`ad, and “Salt of this Sea” by Anne-Marie Jacir) all of which portrayed characters no longer wretched and inspired by a hope carried by that Intifada, but events took a different course when FATH clashed with HAMAS and Gaza once again came to occupy a position more marginal in Palestinian cinema.
In Palestinian cinema before the year 2000, the GS was central to the story and characters and constituted the substance of Palestinian cinema. But things began to change, beginning with the Aqsa Intifada and ending with the Tufan al-Aqsa, a period of almost a quarter century.
The heavy shadow of the fighting in Gaza
The Second Intifada moved the center of gravity of Palestinian cinema as regards its stories to the West Bank, turning its cities and refugee camps into the primary locations of its characters. We will not find a single long feature film during the first decade of the new century where the story centers on Gaza, and this even before the FATH-HAMAS conflict in the Strip which the Islamic Resistance would henceforth come to control. In the second decade, Gaza returns to the cinema from the viewpoint of fighting and divisiveness, but only after a film that bears no relationship to the actual situation in Gaza, which is Susan Youssef’s Habibi, Rasak Kharban (“My Love, Your Head is Skewed”) of 2011. This is a totally social film, treating the surrounding environment as if didn’t exist, and heavily involved in a social issue, namely, an impossible love between a boy and a girl in the GS. Another movie whose subject was also divorced from the surrounding reality was Hani Abu As`ad’s Ya Tayr al-Tayir (“The Idol”) which tells the story of a young man’s journey to Cairo to sing, and from Gaza to Cairo to become an idol. Both films are simple and light weight, in which the reality of Gaza disappears, and both ignore the conflict between the two Palestinian movements.
The most salient image of the GS, and one which shows up the conflict between the two Palestinian sides by restoring political activism to the GS and thus reflects its reality cinematically, even if portraying the most grievous aspects of that reality was, first, the 2015 film called “Dégradé” by the twins Tarzan and `Arab Nasir, and secondly by the 2017 film called “Writing on Snow” by Rashid Masharawi. These two films are noteworthy for the fact that they reflect the essentially political reality of the Gazan situation just as was the case in the Oslo cinema twenty years before. The central axis in both is the infighting, even if portrayed in an entertainment mode in the first movie and in a simplistic mode in the second.
The position of the GS in Palestinian political life became crucial at that era in Palestinian cinema through these two films. The first, “Dégradé”, tells the story of some women in a beauty parlor divorced from its surroundings where fighting is taking place and where the current Palestinian scene is depicted through these women’s conversations, each of whom represented a particular social current or view, and through what we surreptitiously hear or see outside the parlor. In the second film, “Writing on Snow”, the characters are also divorced from the outside. Once a battle has broken out between two movements, the characters take shelter in their homes and here also they represent the diverse movements: Islamic, FATH and PFLP.
Irrespective of the intrinsic merit of these movies, Palestinian cinema has since 2000 marginalized the GS for diverse reasons the most salient of which is the increasing dominance of the West Bank and Jerusalem in that cinema after the Second Intifada, in addition to filmmakers, male and female, from the Palestinian interior who came to focus their stories on their own cities, specifically Nazareth and Haifa, linking them to the West Bank, and also because of the dominance of political events. The GS was only marginally present in two films outside the political context but in two others where its presence was very intentional and very much within a political context, with all this latter’s failures and defeats. It was as if the GS had garnered its share of misery in that cinema, beginning with the Oslo cinema of the Nineties and then the naivete of the characters and their disappointments. This is true even of the two movies that treated internal conflicts merely as a political background to the story and its characters during the second decade of the present century. In both cases, the presence of the GS in cinema had an overwhelming political cause where alliances were followed by infighting. Thus, the GS was represented by characters who were wretched and lost, as in the cinema of the Nineties, or otherwise locked away in some sealed off space, as in the latest two films, either in a parlor or at home.
The shadow of the heavy siege over the GS
In general, Palestinian cinema reflects the situation of the Palestinian people in their diverse societies. But the case of the GS is clearly more compelling than others in cinema. This is due, firstly, to its advanced status in every major political transformation in the current history of the Palestinian nationalist movement, from the start of the revolution and until today; and, secondly, its receding presence in Palestinian film productions. Hence, the salience of the GS in one sphere and its receding presence in the other have made it a clearer example than others in how the Palestinian reality is depicted on its screens. The GS makes a short appearance here and when it does it depicts reality. We saw this already in the Oslo cinema and before that in revolutionary movies as we saw it later in the depiction of fighting and eventually in the presence of the siege.
In their second movie of 2020, “Gaza Mon Amour”, the Nasir twins return to narrate the love of an elderly couple, accompanied by scattered scenes that indicate an external state of siege by the occupation regime and an internal situation dominated by a HAMAS government. It is as though the GS is in reality a huge prison, for if the lovers try to move a little distance away in a boat, a soldier’s voice orders them to come back. That scene encapsulates a state of siege by land and sea which overshadows the misery of the GS and its characters.
In recent years, another film was produced in which the siege of Gaza occupies a prominent place, namely, “A Gaza Weekend” of 2022 by Basil Khalil. In this movie, an Israeli woman and her foreign friend are stuck in the GS and spend the entire film trying to secretly get out, at a time when a Covid-like epidemic is spreading throughout the world while the GS, being besieged, is the only safe spot in the region.
The siege is psychological in the first movie and material in the second. The first is relatively sensitive in its characters, the second is totally insensitive towards them. Both movies attempt to extract comedy from the siege of Gaza. The first movie, almost a continuation of “Dégradé”, is nearer to sarcasm, most of which is contrived and issues from the actual condition of the Palestinians in the GS and the dominance of a factional mentality and the HAMAS government. The second movie, “A Gaza Weekend”, is politically and artistically bad, where the comedy is nearer to clowning at the expense of the Gazan siege.
Of more than 50 Palestinian feature films, these are the only ones where the GS constitutes the center of the story. The return of Gaza in pre-2000 movies was followed by a gradual decline in movies after that year. The fighting characterized that decline and followed by the siege, while the GS remained a lively and essential subject of documentaries which recorded the tragedies of that place more than the feature films.
The GS as a subject of documentaries
In cinematic terms, the geography of the GS reflected its central political status which would necessarily have been prominent, as was the case before the year 2000. Thereafter, there were certain reasons which distanced the GS for the period of a quarter century and until today from the subject of cinema. First was the feverish political momentum brought into the struggle by the al-Aqsa Intifada in the West Bank. Second was the fighting between the two movements in the GS which drove the cinema away and made the fighting a principal subject. Third was the Israeli siege and HAMAS gaining power in the GS. The fighting and the siege drove the filming of GS stories to take place outside the GS since no filming could take place inside it. All this prioritized documentary films where the GS was always present as a principal subject, indeed as a Palestinian territory in the first place, in documentary cinema. To be noted however is the fact that these documentaries were produced by foreigners who came into the GS to shoot their films.
At a time when Palestinian feature movies shrank inside and about the GS, the production of documentaries grew during the siege for exactly the same reason that caused the shrinkage of the feature movies, i.e. the siege and the wars, which meant the critical humanitarian situation in which the Gazans lived their lives. This in turn led to the fact that the GS entrenched itself in documentaries over the last two decades and even more so in the last decade. Among these documentaries one can cite “Samouni Road” of 2018, “Gaza” and “Another Leap” of 2019 and “Let’s go, Gaza!” of 2023.
The GS witnessed other films at diverse times but in recent years it has occupied a prominent place in documentaries by foreign directors who were able to get into the GS and film there, conveying both the human suffering and the hope for a life of dignity where individual dreams might come true. These documentaries do not deal with a collective history or investigate some tragic event but rather narrate the daily lives of individuals who have lived through some tragedy or else seek to avoid one. They depict their characters through their worries and aspirations and as individuals who solely in person and in detail convey the sense of a collective tragedy.
Gaza’s absence in Palestinian feature films in recent years has been balanced by its presence in documentaries. The sense here is one of solidarity which depicts the GS as a newsworthy documentary subject , both political and humanitarian, and as the locus of Israeli wars from one year to the next, or as a lengthy siege that followed the Palestinian infighting of 2007.
What of collective genocide?
When this ongoing genocidal war which began in 2023 comes to an end, the GS will no doubt become the subject of documentaries by Palestinians or foreign sympathizers, given the gravity of the humanitarian catastrophe. Hence no question need be posed here since the documentary genre is in essence drawn to such cases. But the question is urgent as regards feature films produced by Palestinians, since the GS, which had always been a main presence in Palestinian political life, will, after this genocidal war, be even more in need of making it central within Palestinian politics and the Palestinian national movement. The question, then, is about the position of the GS in Palestinian feature movies, not documentaries, which latter will find in the devastated land and society a documentary theme of great value and relevance.
Palestinian feature films depend essentially on foreign production and might be described in very general terms as joint ventures. In reality, there are no movies that do not display a western influence, from funding, to festival, to distribution, and especially after the year 2000. Western and especially European companies and institutions, being the principal funder of these films, i.e. the nerve center of Palestinian cinema, have tended increasingly towards strictness where the Palestine question is concerned, through accepting some film projects and rejecting others. This will be increasingly the case after Tufan al-Aqsa, and endless examples exist of institutions that ignore Palestinian cinema. Their victims during the first year of genocide are foreigners as much as Arabs and Palestinians, in both Europe and North America.
The urgent question here that one could pose regarding the status of the GS in feature films that coincide with, or follow the genocide is this: Will the GS, which was absent, or was absented from Palestinian cinema production since 2000, basically for two Palestinian reasons which were the infighting and the siege---Will it also be absented or continue to be marginalized after the end of genocide but this time for western reasons? Excessive western bias in favor of, or else in neutrality towards the Zionist colonialist narrative---will this be met with acquiescence and subservience by Palestinian filmmakers in order to guarantee them funding, festivals and distribution? Or will Palestinian cinema after the genocide emerge from the tragedy of their people to impose its narrative on another side with contrary or hostile views?
In order not to end this paper with a question to which the answer is complex or pessimistic, I would argue that the answer is effectively here through a film called “Upshot” by Maha Hajj, which won the Golden Leopard award for short feature films at the Locarno Film Festival in 2024. This was the first short Palestinian feature film which was coterminous with the ongoing genocide, and which expressed true affinity with the people of Gaza. But this was not simply confined to the GS. In its delicate handling of the catastrophe that the GS is still living through, the film was crucial in restoring the GS cinematically and with exceptional artistic and narrative skill, to its previous historical and political status, one which it had always held in the modern history of Palestine and its national movement.
Gaza ascended in Palestinian cinema then faded away. But a minor initiative this year can provide a subject of discussion as to a hoped-for ascent of the GS once again. Filmmakers need nothing other than sympathy for, and solidarity with the Palestinians of the GS and the West Bank, for their heroism and sacrifices, in one word, their centrality in the Palestinian national journey.
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