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 1: ANNEMARIE JACIR
Over the past twenty years, Annemarie Jacir has established herself as one of the preeminent Palestinian filmmakers in contemporary cinema, having written and directed three remarkable feature films and numerous shorter works. Her feature debut, SALT OF THIS SEA (2008) was the first feature-length narrative film by a Palestinian woman, and her subsequent features – WHEN I SAW YOU (2012) and WAJIB (2017) – have been widely acclaimed. Alongside her filmmaking, Annemarie Jacir has furthered the cause of Palestinian cinema through her work as a curator. She has organized numerous programs and festivals, above all the pioneering “Dreams of a Nation” project (2003). The first Palestinian film festival to take place in NYC, “Dreams of a Nation” traveled throughout Palestine the following year, and marked the first screenings within Palestine itself of many of the foundational works of Palestinian cinema.

ANNEMARIE JACIR SELECTS:
Mustafa Abu Ali
THEY DO NOT EXIST / LAYS LAHUM WUJUD
1974, 25 min, 16mm-to-digital
One of the most important works by Mustafa Abu Ali, who co-founded the Palestine Film Unit and is considered one of the “fathers” of Palestinian cinema, THEY DO NOT EXIST documents the conditions in Lebanon’s refugee camps, the effects of Israeli bombardments, and the lives of guerrillas in training camps. Shot under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, it is a stylistically unique work which stands at the intersection between the political and the aesthetic. In 2003, as part of the “Dreams of a Nation” festival, Annemarie Jacir organized its first ever screenings within Palestine, and – in the face of Israeli officials’ refusal to grant Ali a travel permit – went to extraordinary lengths to smuggle Ali himself from Ramallah into Jerusalem for the initial screening.

Akram al Ashqar, Nahed Awwad, Liana Bader, Riyad Deis, Rowan al Faqih, Ahmad Habash, Ismael Habbash, Annemarie Jacir, Enas Muthaffar, Razi Najjar, May Odeh, Amer Shomali, and Mohanad Yaqubi
PALESTINE, SUMMER 2006
2006, 35 min, digital
“Founded in late 2005, the Palestinian Filmmakers’ Collective’s goals include working with the Palestinian community to screen films, share technical and artistic skills, help make Palestinian films and information more widely available, create a Palestinian video library, and organize activities and projects to promote Palestinian cinema. In mid-2006 the collective invited established and new Palestinian filmmakers to come together in a project that would reflect the ‘mood’ of that summer. Limited to three minutes or less, the filmmakers were also restricted to using only one shot to tell their stories.” –PALESTINE FILM FOUNDATION

Total running time: ca. 65 min.