Join the Center for Palestine Studies for a panel celebrating the publication of Gaza on Screen (Duke, 2023) with a special screening of Arab and Tarzan Nasser’s film Gaza Mon Amour (2020).

Please note that advanced registration is required for this in-person event at Columbia’s Lenfest Center for the Arts.

ABOUT GAZA ON SCREEN (Duke, 2023)
Edited by Nadia Yaqub.
Gaza’s long association with resistance and humanitarian need has generated a complex and ever shifting range of visual material, comprising not just news reports and documentaries, but also essay, experimental, and fiction films, militant videos, and solidarity images. Contributors to Gaza on Screen, who include scholars and Gazan filmmakers, explore the practice, production, and impact of film and videos from and about the Gaza Strip. Conceptualizing screens—both large and small—as tools for mediation that are laden with power, the volume explores Gazan film and video in relation to humanitarianism and human rights, care, community, environment, mobility and confinement, and decolonization. The volume includes visual material ranging from solidarity broadcasts on Lebanese television, mid-twentieth-century British Pathé newsreels, and fiction films to breaking news, visuals of contemporary militant resistance, documentaries, and found footage films, arguing for a visual ecosystem in which differing types of film and video affect and inform each other. Throughout, Gaza on Screen demonstrates that screens shape and sustain relationships between Gaza and the world, and help to sustain the possibility of a different future.
More info

ABOUT GAZA MON AMOUR (2020)
Directed by Arab and Tarzan Nasser, 2020, 87 mins.
Gaza, today. Sixty-year-old fisherman Issa is secretly in love with Siham, a woman who works at the market with her daughter Leila. When he discovers an ancient phallic statue of Apollo in his fishing nets, Issa hides it, not knowing what to do with this mysterious and potent treasure. Yet deep inside, he feels that this discovery will change his life forever. Strangely, his confidence starts to grow and eventually he decides to approach Siham.
More info

PANELISTS
Nayrouz Abu Hatoum, Concordia University
Hadeel Assali, Columbia University
Helga Tawil Souri, New York University
Nadia Yaqub, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

INTRODUCTION
Nadia Abu El-Haj, Columbia University

Palestine Cuts is generously supported by Jeanne and Ken Levy-Church.

Join the Center for Palestine Studies to celebrate the launch of the English translation of Knights of Cinema: The Story of the Palestine Film Unit by Khadijeh Habashneh. The evening will include a reading from the book, screening exclusive recorded interviews with the author, and sharing various archival images and videos that testify to the foundation of Palestine’s revolutionary cinema. This event is co-presented by Maysles Documentary Center.

Knights of Cinema is an account of the creation of the Palestine Film Unit (PFU) and its founding members, from the photography department in the early years of the Palestinian revolution (1967-1968), to its evolution in the mid-1970's into the Palestinian Cinema Institution. Khadijeh Habashneh weaves her own memories into excerpts from letters and other communications of survivors, friends and PFU family members, with writings by scholars who analyzed the work and the contributions of this remarkable film movement (from the late 1960's to early 1980's). As such the volume offers a unique perspective on this aspect of Palestine film history — which ended with the loss of its archive in the mid 1980's — providing details that have not been previously published in English.

Khadijeh Habashneh (also known as Khadijeh Abu Ali) is a researcher, film maker, and activist for women’s rights and human rights. She worked as a volunteer with the PFU, and became an integral member in 1974, when the unit evolved into the Palestinian Cinema Institution (PCI). From 1976-1982, she worked as the head of the Archive and Cinematheque of the PCI, and wrote and directed two documentaries, including Children Without Childhood, also known as Children Nevertheless. Habashneh has also worked extensively on women’s issues. She was a founding member and served as executive member in the General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW) from 1980-2009, was a founding member and vice president of the Center for Women’s Studies in Jordan 1989-1997 and taught and published several books and articles in this field. 

The 2023-24 Palestine Cuts season is guest curated by Nadine Fattaleh and Nasreen Abd Elal. Palestine Cuts is generously supported by Jeanne and Ken Levy-Church.

Nadine Fattaleh is a Palestinian writer and researcher from Amman. She is currently a PhD student in Media, Culture and Communications at New York University. 

Nasreen Abd Elal is a multidisciplinary graphic designer, illustrator, and researcher whose work centers on the intersection of graphic design and justice-oriented movement work. She works as an information designer at Visualizing Palestine. She graduated with a degree in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies from Columbia University in 2021.