Watch: A fleeting moment of the 1948 Nakba in Ahmad Habash's short film "The Well"

Ahmad Habash’s new short film, The Well (Al-Bier) is deceptively simple, portrays a fleeting moment in the turbulent 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Three generations of males — a young man and his son and an elderly hajj — find themselves running for their lives, seeking refuge from an unseen and unnamed threat in the rolling Palestinian countryside.

Their sanctuary is a well that is the stuff of local legend. The hajj begins to tell the young man and his son the tale of the magic well. But there is no fairy tale ending for the trio, who get a taste of the humiliation and defeat of the Nakba or catastrophe to come.

This quietly beautiful film showcases the Palestinian landscape, and Habash lets his camera linger on the crawling spiders, turtles and ants that go about their own pace as history is made all around them.

Ahmad Habash is a Palestinian filmmaker, animator and artist who was born in Iraq and now lives in New Zealand. His haunting, award-winning short film Flee, in which sand is used as a medium for animation, is not to be missed. Habash also directed and animated Fatenah, a short film based on the true story of a young woman in Gaza whose access to medical treatment is thwarted by Israel’s cruel siege.

Comments

Return I wish

Permalink robby martin replied on Sat, 01/26/2013 - 19:51

Oh wishing well, oh wishing well, into your depts mother Falastine's tears they fell, from your busom your children fled, every penny I have I drop in to make a wish, for their return to the home they so miss.

I have read descriptions,

Permalink Timothy Ray replied on Sun, 02/03/2013 - 23:55

I have read descriptions, based on reports of Nakba survivors, of the Zionist soldiers urinating in the wells of the Palestinians as they carried out the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The reports also referred to deaths of elderly Palestinians on the forced walk from their homes and lands and the miscarriages that pregnant young women experienced. The Nakba was, let's be honest, an undeniable and hideous form of anti-Semitism. The real meaning of "Semite" is a group of ancient peoples including the Arabs, Hebrews, Phonecians, and others, who spoke Semitic languages. The German, Russian, and Polish surnames of so many Israelis cannot be found in in the Bible. This leads to the conclusion that the European Zionists were half breeds - only partially Semitic. How can modern humans continue to use such expressions as "Arab anti-Semitism"?