Reviews

Film review: Belonging

Ali Abunimah 15 April 2007


“What does it mean to be Palestinian when you have never been to Palestine?” That question was posed during a recent visit to Qatar where I met a number of Palestinian high school students living there. Although each had a very strong sense of pride in his Palestinian identity — as well as an awareness that he was denied access to other nationalities and identities — none had ever visited Palestine. Like millions of other Palestinians in exile these students are forbidden from even visiting the country their families left, due to racist laws that make it freely accessible only to those Israel recognizes as Jews. 

Chicago Palestine Film Festival shorts reviewed

Maureen Clare Murphy 11 April 2007


The short films featured at this year’s Chicago Palestine Film Festival neatly demonstrate the wide spectrum of Palestinian cinema and cinema on Palestine. The shorts range from a contemplation of the mloukhieh dish (don’t make the mistake of comparing it to spinach!) to a young Palestinian boy in America trying to join the ranks of the cowboys in his neighborhood’s play of “cowboys and Indians.” Showing with Leila Khaled, Hijacker the opening night of the festival, Make A Wish stands out amongst the shorts. 

Violence or nonviolence? Two documentaries reviewed

Maureen Clare Murphy 9 April 2007


When she hijacked two planes over thirty years ago, refugee Leila Khaled helped put the Palestinian struggle on the international radar. A generation later, however, the realization of Palestinians’ rights is elusive as ever and the tactics of their resistance are increasingly scrutinized. The limits of resistance are examined in Ronit Avni and Julia Bacha’s documentary Encounter Point as well as Lina Makboul’s Leila Khaled, Hijacker. 

Film review: "Summer 2006, Palestine"

Shuruq Harb 28 March 2007


Summer 2006, Palestine — a crossover between film, video art, individual expression and a collective voice — is a unique experience in the Palestinian cultural scene. This collection of short films brings together 13 individual artists with different degrees of experience within the Palestinian film scene and other visual arts disciplines to convey the summer of 2006 in Palestine. The project is the result of an initiative led by several Palestinian filmmakers from the Palestinian Filmmakers’ Collective. 

Requesting Permission to Narrate: "Dreams of a Nation" Reviewed

Alexander Provan 6 March 2007


Since 1948, Palestinians have not only occupied the painful position of many oppressed peoples who are systematically displaced, disenfranchised, denationalized, brutalized and murdered; they have also been put in the awkward, even tragicomic, position of having to convince the rest of the world of their very existence. This problem of visibility lies at the heart of Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema, an illuminating, if incomplete, anthology of essays on the efforts of Palestinians to represent themselves on film to the world and to each other. 

Book review: Two Palestinian women recall their lives in exile

Maureen Clare Murphy 18 February 2007


Both Salwa Salem’s and Ghada Karmi’s childhoods were violently disrupted by what Palestinians call al-Nakba, or the Catastrophe — the involuntary mass exodus of nearly three quarters of the Palestinian population when the State of Israel was established in 1948. Marking the destruction of their country, this event would define their lives as ones of exile. In their respective memoirs, The Wind in My Hair and In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story, Salem and Karmi recall idyllic childhoods in Palestine before 1948 in a society rich with culture and defined by the extended family. Their individual experiences, chronicled in their engrossing works, give a window into that of a generation of Palestinians born into dispossession. 

Offering an Alternative Vision: "One Country" Reviewed

Remi Kanazi 16 January 2007


For years the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been mired by a series of failed peace negotiation, enmeshing Israeli Jews and Palestinians in a seemingly intractable struggle. Even 59 years after the creation of the state of Israel the quest for Jewish security has not been realized, while Palestinians – those dispossessed in 1948, 1967, and the 3.8 million living under Israeli occupation – have not seen a just resolution to a conflict that has marred their history and shaped their identity. The international community, including many Israeli and Palestinians, still subscribe to the notion that the two-state solution is the only way to settle the conflict. 

Book review: "The Attack: A Novel"

Amal Awad 18 December 2006


Yasmina Khadra is the pseudonym for Mohamed Moulessehoul, a former Algerian army officer who decided to write under his wife’s name to avoid army censorship. He was in Sydney last year for the Writers’ Festival, at which he spoke about his novel The Swallows of Kabul. It was set in Afghanistan, but he confessed that he had never been there before, and I couldn’t help but wonder how he described the land and the atmosphere of oppression. Reading The Attack, I wondered the same thing. While there is little description of surroundings, and Khadra is a very capable writer, I doubted he had ever been there. This doesn’t weaken the book so much as emphasise that his narration is an outsider’s voice. 

Film Review: "Visit Palestine" and gain an insider's view

Maymanah Farhat 1 December 2006


Katie Barlow’s documentary Visit Palestine was one of the most riveting films to be featured in this year’s Chicago Palestine Film Festival. In the film Barlow follows Irish human rights activist Caoimhe (pronounced Cueeva) Butterly during her stay in Jenin refugee camp in 2002. Among her extensive involvement in the Jenin community, Butterly worked with local volunteers shortly after the 2002 massacre, unearthing the bodies of over sixty civilians who had been killed in the incursion. Butterly’s willingness to risk her own safety to intervene in and witness the ongoing assault on Palestinian civilian life gained her the respect and trust of Jenin residents, as she was welcomed into the homes of several families. 

Book Review: Ramzy Baroud's "The Second Palestinian Intifada"

Remi Kanazi 31 October 2006


Over the last five years, the Palestinian people have faced a host of obstacles in their fight for sovereignty, preventing them the opportunity to create a life those in the Western world brag about. A principal impediment facing the Palestinian struggle today is the constant reaffirmation that the Palestinian people — deemed by Israel and the US — are “terrorists,” “militants,” or animalistic beings lesser than those of the “civilized world.” In Ramzy Baroud’s new book, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of People’s Struggle, this myth is shattered.