Cinema

How did Palestinian cinema evolve from local revolutionary films into a global art cinema?

From revolutionary documentaries to Cannes and the Oscars, Palestinian filmmakers have developed an international cinematic voice while struggling to preserve their identity and secure funding.

Husam Sam Asi 31 May 2021

As Palestine witnessed clashes between its people and Zionist immigrants in the 1930s, the first modest Palestinian filmmaking efforts emerged through Ibrahim Hassan Sarhan, the pioneer of Palestinian cinema. Other directors later joined him, most of them self-taught amateurs like himself. Yet their efforts yielded only a handful of documentaries and a single feature film before the Nakba of 1948, when they were displaced, along with their people, to neighbouring Arab countries. There they made films within those countries’ film industries.

Zionist cinema emerged at the same time. Unlike its Palestinian counterpart, it was not local in character: it was a promotional and propaganda cinema aimed at Western Jews, seeking their financial support or encouraging them to move to Palestine. After the establishment of Israel, its government enacted legislation to support cinema and use it as a soft-power weapon in its conflict with the Arabs. Hundreds of films presented the Arab-Israeli conflict from Israel’s perspective, promoting the state as an advanced Western civilisation. These films reached international audiences, and many appeared at major festivals. Ten were nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, making Israel one of the ten countries with the most nominations in the category, while Palestinians were excluded from the competition until 2003.

Palestinian cinema, meanwhile, found its identity in exile after the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1964. The cinema of the Palestinian revolution emerged, consisting of revolutionary films backed by the different Palestinian movements. Its focus was therefore on conveying a political message and documenting the Palestinian struggle rather than on artistic values, which were generally modest. As a result, its audience remained largely local and it did not achieve international recognition. Israel seized its archive in Beirut during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and it remains in Israeli possession.

The new Palestinian cinema

A new Palestinian cinema then emerged through the initiatives of filmmakers who had studied in the West. Among them was Mai Masri, who moved from San Francisco to Lebanon and made a series of documentaries of international calibre about Palestinian life in the refugee camps there.

“My aim as a Palestinian filmmaker was to tell my story in a new way that touches people everywhere, not just my local audience,” Masri says. “I want to convey my human message to the world, especially amid this reality and the falsification that targets our existence, our image, our story and our culture. For us, cinema is a weapon with which we defend ourselves, and nobody else can tell our story. But we must tell it in a cinematic language that is sophisticated, constantly renewed and truthful all at once.”

Within Palestine, the new cinema took shape decades after the Nakba under its pioneer, Michel Khleifi. After studying film in Belgium, he returned to his birthplace, Nazareth, and made the documentary Fertile Memory in 1980, the first feature-length Palestinian film shot in Palestine since 1948.

In 1987, Khleifi directed Wedding in Galilee, the first Palestinian fiction feature to reach international festivals. It won major awards, including the Golden Shell at Spain’s San Sebastián festival and the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes.

He was followed by the self-taught filmmaker Rashid Masharawi, from Gaza, whose Haifa became the first Palestinian film in the official selection at Cannes in 1996. Elia Suleiman also emerged during this period. Returning to Nazareth after his years in New York, he created a distinctive cinema built on a poetic interplay between comedy and solemnity, which commentators compared to the work of Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati.

“I don’t make cinema that broadcasts political slogans, but poetic, enjoyable cinema that also asks questions,” Suleiman says. “Each of my films has recorded a historical moment. Divine Intervention, for example, was about the intifada, and Chronicle of a Disappearance was about the beginning of Oslo. I don’t set out to present the Palestinian cause. Rather, I live through personal and social situations, and the Palestinian condition is already there. It would be an artistic mistake for my aim to be to talk about Palestine. I make cinema, and Palestinian issues arise within that cinema.”

Suleiman’s first feature, Chronicle of a Disappearance, became the first Palestinian film shown in the United States in 1996. Divine Intervention further enhanced Palestinian cinema’s international standing when it won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2002.

The international success of Divine Intervention put pressure on the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which had not recognised Palestine, to accept it in 2003 for consideration in the Best Foreign Language Film category as a Palestinian entry. But when Palestine received its first nomination in 2006 for Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, pro-Israel Jewish groups mounted a vocal campaign against the use of the name Palestine. The Academy decided to present the film as representing the Palestinian Authority, provoking Abu-Assad’s anger. Ultimately, it designated the film as representing the Palestinian Territories. Paradise Now was the first Arabic-language film nominated for an Oscar, and the only Arab film to win the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

“People have begun to recognise the lie of the occupying state and to sympathise with us and our cause,” Abu-Assad says.

After the United Nations granted Palestine non-member observer State status in 2012, the Academy agreed to use Palestine’s name for its entries in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Abu-Assad’s Omar, released in 2013, earned him a second nomination at the 2014 Oscars. It surpassed the Israeli entry, Bethlehem, which addressed the same subject: forcing young Palestinians in the West Bank to cooperate with Israeli intelligence. In addition to Abu-Assad, four Palestinian directors had been nominated in other categories, making Palestinians the most frequently Oscar-nominated Arab filmmakers.

“We have a stronger motivation than others because we feel that presenting our art is a way of resisting injustice,” Abu-Assad says. “To fight through your cinematic language, you have to develop it and be among the best. Despite international solidarity, they fight you simply because you are Palestinian. And you realise that to secure the support of those who stand in solidarity with you, you have to be exceptional — several times better than others.”

But Palestinian filmmakers lack national or government institutions to support their projects. Most, particularly those with Western citizenship, are therefore forced to seek funding from European funds, whose conditions many feel do not accord with their own vision of their cause.

“I always face these pressures,” says Sameh Zoabi, who lives in New York and has previously received European funding. “The French see the issue one way, the Belgians see it another, and the Americans have their own view. You take their notes and try to build something that is true to you.”

Abu-Assad, however, stopped seeking European funding after achieving international recognition with Paradise Now, and began relying on Palestinian investors. “I had to do that to escape the pressure of the funds, because it is very difficult.”

Those who hold only Israeli citizenship, meanwhile, have little choice but to seek support from Israeli funds, which require them to represent Israel at international events. They frequently rebel against that requirement.

When Suha Arraf presented her Israeli-funded film Villa Touma as Palestinian at the Venice Film Festival in 2014, Israel demanded its money back. Scandar Copti also provoked Israeli anger when, in Hollywood during the 2010 Oscar campaign for the Israeli-produced Ajami, he declared: “I cannot represent a state that does not represent me.”

“Preserving a film’s Palestinian identity is part of the struggle,” says Zoabi, who received Israeli government support for Tel Aviv on Fire. “As a director, you have to be aware of the danger of falling into the trap of becoming part of the occupying state in exchange for that support.”

Arab countries, on the other hand, boycott these films, prohibit their screening and exclude them from their film festivals. Tel Aviv on Fire, for example, was rejected by every Arab festival, even though it represented Luxembourg in the Oscar competition.

“My film does not represent Israel,” Zoabi protests. “We turn to Israeli funding because we have no other source. We have no opportunities in the Arab world because we carry Israeli passports. Besides, this is money from the taxes we have paid, and we have a right to take it. I have never changed my identity as a Palestinian. The film’s identity is my identity and the identity of its story.”

Abu-Assad declines to take sides on this question, understanding both positions. “The Palestinian director has no other choice and is reclaiming money he has paid. On the other hand, the Arab world rejects normalisation, even through a Palestinian director, out of concern that matters will become lax or be manipulated. Of course, failing to screen films that address our internal issues in the Arab world is a bad thing, but boycotting the Zionist state is a good thing. So it is difficult to pronounce a judgement on this subject.”

Several Palestinian directors have consequently emigrated to the West to obtain funding outside Israel. “We have grown accustomed to these difficulties and challenges, and that is a good thing because it forces you to improve your art. It also pushes you to find other sources of financing,” Abu-Assad comments.

Despite all the obstacles Palestinian filmmakers have faced, both at home and abroad, they have succeeded in strengthening Palestine’s presence on the international stage as a civilisation, a culture and an artistic voice. They have created accomplished cinema that presents their reality from their own perspective and preserves an identity that Israeli cinema had almost erased — even as Israeli cinema receives $20 million a year from its government, in addition to Western support.