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.

SYRIA
Qais al-Zubaidi
THE VISIT / AL-ZIYARAH
1972, 9 min, 16mm-to-digital. In Arabic with English subtitles.
“THE VISIT sublimates narrative and visual conventions into a diaphanous haze of lyrical evocation. Linearity is here dissolved not through anti-narrative deconstruction but through a refutation of its alleged logical primacy.” –Celluloid Liberation Front, THE BROOKLYN RAIL
 
Mohammad Malas
THE NIGHT / AL-LEIL
1992, 116 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In Arabic with English subtitles.
“In THE NIGHT, Malas returns to the Syria of the late 1930s and ’40s to reclaim not only his own childhood as the son of a deeply troubled father, but also his country’s struggles with colonial rule and with Zionist settlements in neighboring Palestine. Malas’s alter ego is a young boy who lives with his parents in Quneitra, a rural village in the Golan Heights, not far from the Palestinian border, which was later annexed [and occupied] by the [Zionists]. Dense with historical references and haunting images, THE NIGHT offers an all-too-rare glimpse into daily life in the [Arab] world – and into one man’s efforts to understand both father and fatherland.” –SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL