1. Representations of Palestine 1917 – 1948: Artist/curator Judy Price was commissioned to present a video programme for the Jerusalem Show. Price presented a programme in two parts based on archival material from the British mandate in Palestine. Price was available for a discussion after the screening along with Jack Persekian on the question of Palestinian representation in the still and moving image. The screening was held at Al-Ma’mal Foundation.
2. Representations of Palestine 1917- 1948
Acts of looking
In the second part of the film programme Representations of Palestine curator Judy Price selected archival material that included documentaries and newsreels with sound, and with a total duration of 60 minutes.
Archives are associated with the concept of memory, functioning as surrogate or virtual sites of remembrance or as metaphors for the process of recalling the past. Watching archival material can seem like an apparition in re-imaging or re-awakening ghosts of the past.
In viewing the archival images from the British Mandate in Palestine, 1917-1948, many of which are unedited fragments, one has to think very carefully about what one is looking at, recognising both what is represented and what is not. These images cannot be seen as the complete story of a certain time or place in history. They are rather a series of moments recorded, which offer insights, but no comprehensive view as well as multiple, challenging perspectives that were not there at the time of filming but certainly overwhelm the act of viewing the film material in the present. – Judy Price
3. Contemporary Video Art curated by Marc Mercier
The walk: Video art likes walking. It likes wandering. It searches. It discovers. It sees. It listens. It hides itself. It flies. It soars. It plays. It works. It is worried. It is merry. – Marc Mercier
A unique video progranme in the framework of the Jerusalem Show theme of walks in the city was curated by Marc Mercier of Instants Video, Marseilles, France. Colleagues Naϊk M’sili and Vincent Makowski from Instants Video were present for the screening for an insightful discussion related to contemporary video art from Europe.
Screening 1: Transients by Mikael Prey and Robert Rif, Sweden, 2007 (21’20)
The Sons of God (artists Leif Elggren and Kent Tankred) wander among the remains of a deserted city.
Screening 2: Ellipsis by Nora Martirosyan, Armenia, 2001 (12’)
This endless walk makes the encounter between different persons idling in the streets of Amsterdam, on a Saturday morning, impossible. The loop seems to be endless.
Screening 3: De l’autre côté de la montagne (On the other side of the mountain) by Teddy Peix, France, 2008 (28’30 )
A stroll where the eye of the camera simulates the eye of the spectator that becomes the protagonist. Between present and past, between the things we see and those we can’t see, the things we hear and those we can’t, the walker follow a secret rhythm that will lead him/her at the spring of a river.
Screening 4: Erratic Meandering by Ariane Maugery, France, 2007 (6’30)
Art through meanderings answers the human creative faculty to imagine and to live a transformation of each instant. It emphasizes his ability to fracture the real, creating surprises in his daily pedestrian relation to space and time. Meanderings appear simultaneously as a way of reading and writing space which can be captured and translated by drawings and the videographic medium. To meet a place. What does it mean? What does it imply?
Screening 5: I, by R.N, Iran, 2002 (6’)
To follow a continuous line and discontinuous landscapes.
Screening 6: Breakdown Dream by Messieurs Delmotte, Belgium, 2005-06 (17’35). A series of weird actions: aluminum rabbits, fireworks, flowers, balloon-man, smiley 3D water, Gallic pork-butchery.
4. Palestinian shorts curated by Alia Arasoughly
Filmmaker and director of Ramallah based institution; Alia Arasoughly curated a special film programme for the Jerusalem Show, with a total duration of 99 minutes. The programme was made possible by Shashat and screened at Al-Ma’mal.
The programme;
Screening 1: My Palestine (Filasteeni), by Dima Abu Ghoush, 2007 (10′). “What does ‘Palestine’ mean to you?” A question sounded simple, even naive at the beginning. But after this journey in people’s minds, hearts, and memories, searching for the true meaning of Palestine, it didn’t sound so simple!!”
Screening 2: The Last Station (Al-Mahatta Al-Akhirah), by Ghada Terawi, 2007 (7′). The Last Station is a personal experience of Exile, Return and the Dream of a Homeland. This journey between the Dream and the Reality contains much happiness, hope and yet much disappointments.
Screening 3: On the East Side (Fil-Hammi Sharqu), by Mahasen Nasser-Eldin, 2007 (23′). On The East Side follows a day in the lives of a group of friends in East Jerusalem. Abu Daoud shares his grief and grievance with his friends. His son is due to appear in Israeli Military Court the following day. Although they come from varying walks of life, these friends share a deep-seated daily struggle against Israel’s occupation.
Screening 4: The Shooter (Al-Takheekh), by Ihab Jadallah, 2007 (7′). Cinema is not the reflection of the reality it’s the reality of the reflection.
Screening 5: The Clothesline (Habl Al-Ghaseel), by Alia Arasoughly, 2006 (14′). For 21 days, a woman is imprisoned in her apartment during the Israeli invasion of Ramallah in March 2002. In an orgy of fear and terror, her hidden demons surface as shelling and bombing rages outside as she fights her own emotional war with a relationship gone wrong. The Clothesline contrasts scenes of intense domesticity with warfare. Throughout the war outside and her emotional war, her laundry hangs outside…a witness to the events outside the apartment and those inside it.
Screening 6: Make a Wish (Itmanna), by Cherien Dabis, 2006 (12′). A young Palestinian girl will do whatever it takes to buy a birthday cake. Eleven year old Mariam begs her mother for the extra money she needs to buy a cake at the local bakery. When Mariam arrives at the bakery she realizes that she does not have enough money. What begins as a simple trip to the bakery turns into a journey full of the grief and violence that accompany occupation.
Screening 7: A Horse for Today (An-Nahardah Hisan), by Hala Mansour, Palestine/Egypt, 2004 (10′). A boy is obsessed by his father’s absence and by his responsibility for the family. A horse running by the shore becomes a symbol of his absent father. So he makes a horse from clay to express his yearning and is able to earn money through selling it.
Screening 8: Four Songs for Palestine (Arba’ Aghani Li Filasteen), by Nada El-Yassir, 2001 (13′). Palestinians absorb the daily tally of lives lost to bullets and the ensuing burials recorded by television crews and carry the images around with them wherever they go. The film is about how death has become very much a part of life in the West Bank. It is an ode to numb survival. A Palestinian woman goes through her daily routines eating, drinking and feeding her son the harvest of bad news.
5. Film Programme V presented by The Palestinian Art Court- Al Hoash
A unique film/video programme was organized by AL-Hoash within the framework of the Jerusalem Show inviting Zan Studio and Ahmad Habash – Ramallah based artist group working in animation- to screen short animation films at the Kan Zaman Restaurant, The Jerusalem Hotel.