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These recent short films culled from the International Film Festival Rotterdam move between imagined worlds from the past, present, and future. Subjects range from Bangladeshi freedom fighters in 1980s Lebanon to the current war in Syria to an imaginary sci-fi Palestine.
Robert Lachmann was a German-Jewish ethnomusicologist. In the 1930s, his radio show “Oriental Music” explored the musical traditions of Palestine and included regular live performances by musicians from different ethnic and religious groups. Inspired by Lachmann’s musicological studies, Palestinian artist Jumana Manna travels through Israel and the Palestinian territories of today with recordings from the program.
Drawing on the stories known collectively as The Arabian Nights, The Dream of Shahrazad contextualizes recent upheavals across the Middle East within a broader historical and cultural legacy. A charismatic conductor uses Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade suite as a tool for political education, leading up to a final performance at Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace.
Photographer and painter Hani Hourani captures the urban essence of Jerusalem in his densely worked images. These are paintings on canvas in acrylic and mixed media.
In order to confront the ghosts that haunt him, Palestinian director Raed Andoni assembles an eclectic group of ex-prisoners to build a replicate of Al-Moskobiya, Israel’s main interrogation centre, where he was himself jailed at age 18.
The Jordanian artist places the viewer amid the old city, a patchwork of tan boxes, brown roofs and white domes, punctuated by the occasional smear of green. He renders the rare bits of nature less precisely than architectural details, but maintains throughout a deft balance between actuality and impression.
Off Frame, AKA Revolution Until Victory is Mohanad Yaqubi’s study of the films produced by the Palestine Film Unit of the PLO in the 1960s and 1970s. These films reflect a primary concern with self-representation for the Palestinian people and their struggles for self-determination. Unearthing films stored in archives across the world after an unprecedented search and access, the film beings with popular representations of modern Palestine and traces the works of militant filmmakers in reclaiming image and narrative through revolutionary and militant cinema.
This documentary tells the story of the establishment of Israel as seen through the eyes of the people who lived it, with the aim of enhancing global understanding of what happened 1948. It is also the last chance to hear first-hand accounts of what took place in Haifa, Jaffa, Dayr Yasin, Acre, Jerusalem, Ramle and Lydda from the Israelis and Palestinians who personally fought in and fled from this land, including interviews with veterans, refugees, survivors and historians of the war collected in Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
Two Blue Lines provides an unswerving examination of the human and political rights situation of Palestinian people living under Israeli rule. The documentary, shot over a period of twenty five years in Israeli occupied Palestinian territory, presents Israeli narratives of the Palestinian experience from the 1930’s to the present that are seldom heard outside of Israel.
Through educational events, humanitarian support, and cultural preservation, the Jerusalem Fund is helping build the movement for Palestinian liberation.
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