Before 2023, the cameras were already rolling.
These films—made across two decades—bear witness to the ground reality of decades-long rebuilding and surviving of Palestinian civilians. What they reveal is not a prelude, but a long, unbroken present of disintegration, marked by persistent violence and reciprocal distrust: the impossibility of permanence under occupation, of building a home, a memory, a future, when all may be taken from you without warning.
This program includes stories from refugee camps in Lebanon, from inside the walls of Jerusalem, and across Palestinian geographies fragmenting under the weight of checkpoints and exile. In Still Life and Terrace of the Sea, capturing Palestinians in Lebanese exile, we see the futility of hope rooted in place: homes that have already vanished, leaving behind only blueprints of belonging. Good Times lays bare the absurdity of a city divided by a concrete wall. Videomappings: Aida, Palestine reclaims erased geographies through hand-drawn memory. 20 Handshakes for Peace turns political spectacle into farce, while Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel and Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork peel back the narratives of occupation to expose the architecture of erasure.
These are not films that “explain” Palestine. They demand that we listen to what has long been spoken: that Palestinian dispossession did not begin in the aftermath of October 2023, and it may not end with a ceasefire.
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