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IMAGES HIJACKING SCREENS FOR LIBERATION
Snapshots Reflecting Palestine (1973-2023)
Since 1969, striking iconographic imagery of the liberation of Palestine has emerged from the Palestinian resistance. From the hijacking of airplanes to the live-streaming of the Al-Aqsa flood, these images become instruments that seize newspaper headlines, media screens, and trends on social media platforms to work for the Palestinian cause. They fuel the hearts of international solidarity for liberation.
During the Cold War (1968-1982) when international solidarity between the developing world and the Palestinian cause grew, Palestinian filmmakers in collaboration with different arms of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) were producing militant films destined for resistance fighters in military camps, families in refugee camps, international solidarity campaigns, progressive political organizations, activists and finally, Arab and third-world solidarity film festivals and forums. Today and since October 2023, we can witness a similar trend with regards to content creators and filmmakers from Gaza whose imagery continues to interrupt Instagram’s rigidly controlled algorithms. Their content reveals the horrors of the Palestinian struggle for survival and an unfolding Genocide, which in turn, has led to the building of spontaneous and self-organized solidarity campaigns all over the world.
IMAGES HIJACKING SCREENS FOR LIBERATION, is a film program consisting of three restored works from the film archives of the International Solidarity era and three contemporary works from post-Oslo era to the present. The program includes Mustafa Abu Ali, Basma al-Sharif, Arab Loutfi, Sami Al Salamoni, Mary Jirmanus Saba, and Tareq Rantisi. It explores the contexts NGOization, donor political economy, the ideologies of human rights and contemporary art and the return of the humanitarian gaze within a dominant global economy.
IMAGES HIJACKING SCREENS FOR LIBERATION is curated by Ali Hussein AlAdawy and is presented by ArteEast. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. The full program will be screened online on artearchive.org from October 11 - 25.
A rare film by the legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the founders of the Palestine Film Unit, the first filmic arm of the Palestinian revolution. Shot by a French news team, the footage was edited by Mustafa in Lebanon to produce one of the earliest films on the occupied territory in Gaza. Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza employs experimental editing tech- niques to produce a cinematically and politically subversive film. The film won the prize as best film at the Damascus Film Festival in 1973 and was screened at multiple festivals. It was the only film produced by the Palestine Cinema Group, which in 1974 became the Palestine Cinema Institute.
About the Filmmaker:
Mustafa Abu Ali (1940 in Maliha, Palestine – 30 July 2009 in Jerusalem, Palestine) was a Palestinian filmmaker.
Abu Ali studied at the University of California-Berkeley in the 1960s before studying cinema in London, graduating in 1967. One of the founders of Palestinian cinema under the auspices of the PLO, and the Palestinian Cinema Association in Beirut in 1973, (re-established in Ramallah in 2004), he wrote four screenplays and directed more than 30 films, for which he won more than 14 awards, the most recent from the 2003 Ismailia Film Festival.
- Year1973
- Runtime14 minutes
- LanguageArabic
- CountryPalestine
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- NoteNarration: Issam Sakhnini and Rasmi Abu Ali
- DirectorMustafa Abu Ali
- ProducerPalestine Cinema Group of the Research Centre
- EditorEmile Bahri
IMAGES HIJACKING SCREENS FOR LIBERATION
Snapshots Reflecting Palestine (1973-2023)
Since 1969, striking iconographic imagery of the liberation of Palestine has emerged from the Palestinian resistance. From the hijacking of airplanes to the live-streaming of the Al-Aqsa flood, these images become instruments that seize newspaper headlines, media screens, and trends on social media platforms to work for the Palestinian cause. They fuel the hearts of international solidarity for liberation.
During the Cold War (1968-1982) when international solidarity between the developing world and the Palestinian cause grew, Palestinian filmmakers in collaboration with different arms of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) were producing militant films destined for resistance fighters in military camps, families in refugee camps, international solidarity campaigns, progressive political organizations, activists and finally, Arab and third-world solidarity film festivals and forums. Today and since October 2023, we can witness a similar trend with regards to content creators and filmmakers from Gaza whose imagery continues to interrupt Instagram’s rigidly controlled algorithms. Their content reveals the horrors of the Palestinian struggle for survival and an unfolding Genocide, which in turn, has led to the building of spontaneous and self-organized solidarity campaigns all over the world.
IMAGES HIJACKING SCREENS FOR LIBERATION, is a film program consisting of three restored works from the film archives of the International Solidarity era and three contemporary works from post-Oslo era to the present. The program includes Mustafa Abu Ali, Basma al-Sharif, Arab Loutfi, Sami Al Salamoni, Mary Jirmanus Saba, and Tareq Rantisi. It explores the contexts NGOization, donor political economy, the ideologies of human rights and contemporary art and the return of the humanitarian gaze within a dominant global economy.
IMAGES HIJACKING SCREENS FOR LIBERATION is curated by Ali Hussein AlAdawy and is presented by ArteEast. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. The full program will be screened online on artearchive.org from October 11 - 25.
A rare film by the legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the founders of the Palestine Film Unit, the first filmic arm of the Palestinian revolution. Shot by a French news team, the footage was edited by Mustafa in Lebanon to produce one of the earliest films on the occupied territory in Gaza. Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza employs experimental editing tech- niques to produce a cinematically and politically subversive film. The film won the prize as best film at the Damascus Film Festival in 1973 and was screened at multiple festivals. It was the only film produced by the Palestine Cinema Group, which in 1974 became the Palestine Cinema Institute.
About the Filmmaker:
Mustafa Abu Ali (1940 in Maliha, Palestine – 30 July 2009 in Jerusalem, Palestine) was a Palestinian filmmaker.
Abu Ali studied at the University of California-Berkeley in the 1960s before studying cinema in London, graduating in 1967. One of the founders of Palestinian cinema under the auspices of the PLO, and the Palestinian Cinema Association in Beirut in 1973, (re-established in Ramallah in 2004), he wrote four screenplays and directed more than 30 films, for which he won more than 14 awards, the most recent from the 2003 Ismailia Film Festival.
- Year1973
- Runtime14 minutes
- LanguageArabic
- CountryPalestine
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- NoteNarration: Issam Sakhnini and Rasmi Abu Ali
- DirectorMustafa Abu Ali
- ProducerPalestine Cinema Group of the Research Centre
- EditorEmile Bahri