#JAMAL AL-ASPHAR

[la-cineaste]

EPISODE 010: Translations of Memory: The Films of Palestinian Cinema (Part One)

Understanding the history of Palestinian cinema begins with an understanding of its positioning in survival through decades of war and the diaspora of its culture. The events of the "Nakba", which sought the displacement and dispossession of an entire Palestinian nation, in 1948 set a paradigm of violence against Palestinians and the sovereignty of their land. Many of these tragic events, and those that took place leading, were captured by filmmakers alongside the birth of celluloid film technology, however, many of these films remain either lost or destroyed to this day. Film historians, and many Palestinian filmmakers, can identify Palestinian cinema through its four periods that are divided by significant markers of social change. 

In Part One of Episode 010: Translations of Memory: The Films of Palestinian Cinema, we look into the signifying factors that shifted the first and second waves of Palestinian Cinema. Palestinian cinema is most recognized for its resistance to settler occupational forces that debilitated decades of independent productions, while its nation of people struggled to crystallize its unity and cultural homogeny, as much of its historical films were lost, and thus only exist today through memory and re-distributed by oral storytelling. 

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