Cinema of Palestinian Return
Friday, May 3 – Saturday, May 18
Anthology Film Archives

The month of May marks the 76th year of the nakba, a commemoration soaked in the blood of Gaza, whose people have faced relentless massacre and dispossession by Western and Zionist forces. Preserving, circulating, and politically engaging with the cultural production of the Palestinian struggle is a minimum demand. The films that emerged from this struggle are tethered to the dreams of the Palestinian people, who despite setback and catastrophe continue to assert their right to return to their homeland.
 
“Cinema of Palestinian Return” is guest-programmed by Kaleem Hawa and Nadine Fattaleh.

OCCUPIED PALESTINE, PROGRAM 2
Kassem Hawal
RETURN TO HAIFA / A’ID ILA HAYFA
1982, 75 min, 35mm-to-digital. In Arabic with English subtitles.
“The first feature-length Palestinian fictional film, RETURN TO HAIFA adapts Ghassan Kanafani’s 1969 novella by the same name. Filmed in Lebanon during its crushing civil war, the film team relied on the communities of Palestinian life-in-exile and the infrastructures of the Palestinian resistance for its production; per Hawal’s screen notes, resistance fighters went door to door in Beddawi and Nahr al-Barid refugee camps to furnish the actors for the scenes of mass exodus filmed in Tripoli. What results is a national initiative, at once polemical and cautious, of exodus and its attendant psychologies.” –Kaleem Hawa