This screening is part of: MY HOMELAND IS NOT A SUITCASE: ANNEMARIE JACIR, EMILY JACIR, AND DAR JACIR FOR ART AND RESEARCH

Film Notes

PART 2: EMILY JACIR
Emily Jacir has built a complex and compelling oeuvre through a diverse range of media and methodologies that include unearthing historical material, performative gestures, and in-depth research. Her artistic career has seen her exhibit widely throughout the world, and receive numerous awards including the Hugo Boss Prize in 2008 and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize Fellow in Visual Arts in 2015; an honorary doctorate from NCAD in Dublin, Ireland; an American Academy of Arts and Letters prize (2023); the Andrew W. Mellon Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome (2015); and the Alpert Award (2011) and Hugo Boss Prize, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2008). She has also played a crucial role in researching, restoring, and exhibiting Palestinian cinema over the years. In collaboration with Monica Maurer, she helped unearth, reassemble, and restore works of early Palestinian cinema, including TALL EL-ZAATAR (1977), and has curated several important festivals or programs devoted to such films, including establishing the Alwan Arab Film Festival in New York from 1999-2002, which showcased Palestinian cinema for the first time in NYC; the 2002 Palestine International Video Festival (the first video festival to take place in Palestine and show the work of regional videomakers as well as international artists), and the New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival in 2007. Jacir has been actively involved in education in Palestine since 2000 and is deeply invested in creating alternative spaces for knowledge production internationally.

EMILY JACIR SELECTS:
SHORT FILM PROGRAM FROM THE 2007 NEW YORK ARAB AND SOUTH ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL
This program replicates a selection of films that Emily Jacir curated for the 2007 New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival, which focused on Palestinian Revolutionary Cinema, and included the first NYC screening of Mustafa Abu Ali’s THEY DO NOT EXIST (the version screened here also features an English translation Emily Jacir and Emna Zghal created specifically for the festival). Alongside the short films listed below, we will be screening a selection from the “War Diaries” – short videos conceived of and created by Emily Jacir, Jawad Metni, Prerana Reddy, and others, which were presented as part of the 2007 festival – that comprise footage shot by videographers and ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. Minimally edited by Emily and her colleagues and presented without voiceover commentary, the “War Diaries” aimed to convey glimpses of life under siege and occupation, in a format and perspective rarely seen in television news.

Qais Al-Zubaidi AWAY FROM HOME (1969, 11 min, 16mm-to-digital)
Qais Al-Zubaidi THE VISIT / AL-ZIYARAH (1972, 9 min, 16mm-to-digital)
Mustafa Abu Ali THEY DO NOT EXIST / LAYS LAHUM WUJUD (1974, 25 min, 16mm-to-digital)
Monica Maurer BORN OUT OF DEATH (1981, 9 min, 16mm-to-digital)
Samir Nimr KOFR SHOBA (1972, 34 min, 16mm-to-digital)

Total running time: ca. 95 min.