For a Free Palestine: Films by Palestinian Women

Rosalind Nashashibi,Basma Alsharif, Razan AlSalah, Larissa Sansour and Jumana Manna

Thursday 17th June at 6.30pm

A fundraising screening of films by five female Palestinian artists, in collaboration with Another Gaze.

All proceeds go to facilitating medical, legal, and infrastructure aid in Gaza. Refreshments will be provided.

About the films:

Rosalind Nashashibi, Electrical Gaza (2015, 17’)
Electrical Gaza recasts Gaza as an enchanted place behind sealed borders, codified through danger and division, bristling with beauty and life. Shot prior to the Israeli assault on the area in 2014, it imagines scenes of the region where violence is, for once, not at the center.

Rosalind Nashashibi, Dahiet Al Bareed, District of the Post Office (2002, 7’)
One slow, hot afternoon in a neighbourhood built to be a utopian suburb for employees of the Palestinian Post Office; now becomes a lawless no-man’s-land between occupied East Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Bazma Alsharif, We Began By Measuring Distance (2009, 19’)
Long still frames, text, language, and sound are weaved together to unfold the narrative of an anonymous group who fill their time by measuring distance. Innocent measurements transition into political ones, examining how image and sound communicate history. We Began by Measuring Distance explores an ultimate disenchantment with facts when the visual fails to communicate the tragic.

Razan AlSalah, Your Father Was Born A 100 Years Old, And So Was The Nakba (2017, 7’)
A ghostly voice echoes: the disembodied, imaginary voice of the filmmaker’s grandmother, a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon who was never able to return to her hometown. Her words haunt Google Street View images of Haifa, the only means she has of visiting her lost home.

Larissa Sansour, Nation Estate (2012, 9’)
Nation Estate is a sci-fi short film offering a clinically dystopian, yet humorous approach to the deadlock in the Middle East. The film explores a vertical solution to statehood. One colossal high-rise houses the entire Palestinian population – now finally living the high life. Each city has its own floor: Jerusalem on the 13th floor, Ramallah on the 14th floor, Sansour’s native Bethlehem on the 21st and so on. Intercity trips previously marred by checkpoints are now made by elevator.

Jumana Manna, A Sketch of Manners (2013, 12')
Alfred Roch, member of the Palestinian National League, is a politician with a bohemian panache. In 1942, at the height of WWII, he throws what will turn out to be the last masquerade in Palestine. Inspired by an archival photograph, A Sketch of Manners (Alfred Roch’s Last Masquerade) recreates an unconventional bon vivant aspect of Palestinian urban life before 1948.

All films courtesy of the artists and Another Gaze.

Thanks to Jess Clifford for organising this event.