The films, between documentaries and fictions, which are presented accompanied by presenting texts and posters, and of which extracts can be viewed in situ, return to key moments in Palestinian history, including those linked to Tunisia. Thus, we can see documented the arrival of Palestinian fighters at the port of Bizerte on August 28, 1982 and the air raid attack of the Zionist entity on August 1.is October 1985 from Hammam Chatt.
A small retrospective on the history of Palestinian cinema is proposed this year by the JCC as part of the tribute paid to this country and this nation which are currently suffering, and since 1948, the atrocities of the Israeli occupation accepted, supported and supported by international policies. An exhibition entitled “Palestine, the labyrinth of a memory in resistance” has been dedicated to it since the start of the festival, installed in the Main Hall of the Cité de la culture. This cinema saw its beginnings in 1935 with two documentaries, one filmed on the occasion of the inauguration of the technical school of an orphanage and the other filmed by Hassan Sarhan during the visit of King Saud to Palestine . Sarhan has since made several other films until the Nakba of 1948, after which he took refuge in Jordan. The Palestinian cause became the main subject addressed and cinema was no longer approached only as an art form, but also as a necessary tool to document clashes especially in times of armed revolts and intensification of military operations. As the refugee crisis has grown in importance, the camps and the question of asylum have also become essential components of Palestinian cinema. In this context, Palestinian filmmakers found themselves either in neighboring countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Syria as refugees or in other foreign countries. They could therefore no longer produce films, because they had lost their tools and their production companies in their country. In 1965, the national liberation movements marked the beginning of the armed Palestinian revolution. The cinema of this era was then called “cinema of the Palestinian revolution”. A group of cinematographers and directors founded the Palestine Film Unit, delivering a collection of films documenting the armed movement resisting the occupation and the suffering of the Palestinian diaspora. It is also the year of the creation, by photographer and filmmaker Hani Jawharya, of the Palestinian Cinema Organization (OCP) with the main founding objective of putting cinema as a whole at the service of the Palestinian revolution.
The revolutionary and political coalitions in Palestine also created their media and film units to produce revolutionary cinema. The Popular Front, General Command and Democratic Front produced dozens of films, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. The list of these films includes “No to a Peaceful Solution”, produced by Mustafa Abu Ali, Salah Abu Hanoud , Hani Jowharieh and Sulafa Jadallah in 1968, as well as 1971's “With Soul, With Blood” by Mustafa Abu Ali, who has been called the founder of revolutionary cinema Palestinian. Some filmmakers, however, were convinced that another cinematic language was perhaps more influential and universally accessible. A language, sometimes free of blood and bullets. Thus, Palestinian cinema has evolved towards a philosophical and intellectual cinema.
Thus, since the 1980s and the first films of Michel Khleifi, among others “Noce en Galilée”, filmmakers have begun to present their point of view on their society, an introspective approach which, placing the colonial strategy of the Zionists in the background, shows how it uses the flaws in Palestinian society to better destructure it and accelerate its erasure. While continuing to explore the inexhaustible resources of documentary, it is through fiction that they have chosen to portray the reality that we cannot or do not want to see. The 1990s saw the creation of a large number of Palestinian films shot by filmmakers who grew up under Zionist occupation in the West Bank, Gaza or in refugee camps. The early works of Rashid Masharawi and Elia Suleiman, for example, gave new visibility to Palestinians. It is on important chapters of this history that the exhibition “Palestine, the labyrinth of a memory in resistance” returns. It takes the form of a labyrinth in a scenography which, note its organizers, disturbs the senses of the visitor and recreates the permanent state of emergency which haunts Palestine. A maze in which the walls bear the scars of a prolonged colonial siege reaching its climax in Gaza, particularly with the ongoing genocide. The films, between documentaries and fictions, which are presented accompanied by introductory texts and posters, and of which extracts can be viewed in situ, return to key moments in Palestinian history, including those linked to Tunisia. Thus, we can see documented the arrival of Palestinian fighters at the port of Bizerte on August 28, 1982 and the air raid attack of the Zionist entity on August 1.is October 1985 from Hammam Chatt. The exhibition also pays tribute through film archives and audiovisual documents to the “martyrs of the image”, those who sacrificed their lives to transmit the truth. There are also extracts from essential works of Palestinian cinema that won Tanits d'or or marked previous editions of the JCC, like “Kafer Kassem” by Borhane Alaouié, winner in 1974, “Maâloul fête sa destruction” and “Noce de Galilée” by Michel Khleifi awarded in 1988, as well as “The wanted” by Ahmed Shomali awarded in 2015 and “ Little Palestine” by Abdallah Al Khateb in 2021.
We can also find the films “They do not exist” and “Palestine in the eye” by Mustapha Abou Ali. The latter, which is a short film made in 1977, relates the profound impact of the death of martyr photographer Hani Jawharia within the PLO film unit and looks back on his life through testimonies from his family, his own footage, including the moment of his death while filming for the unit in 1976.
