Announcing أثر ATHAR — a queer film festival celebrating Palestinian film-makers

FILM PROGRAM 

BLESSED BLESSED OBLIVION
Jumana Manna, 2010, Palestine, 21 min
Arabic with English subtitles
Screening at AL Berlin on Tuesday 4 October

Inspired by Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), Blessed Blessed Oblivion weaves together a portrait of male thug culture in East Jerusalem, manifested in barbershops, autoshops and bodybuilding.

The video uses visual collage and the musical soundtrack as ironic commentary. Anger’s subjects — leather-clad bikers, serve as a counterpoint to the culture Manna attempts to portray, that of popular male “thug” culture in East Jerusalem. Simultaneously psychologizing and allowing herself to be seduced by the characters, Manna finds herself in a double bind similar to the conflicted desire that animates her protagonist as he drifts from abject rants to declamations of heroic poetry or unashamed self-praise.

Jumana Manna (@jumanamanna) is a visual artist working primarily with film and sculpture. Her work explores how power is articulated through relationships, often focusing on the body, land and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.

CONGRESS OF IDLING PERSONS
Bassem Saad, 2021, 36 min
English/Arabic with bilingual subtitles
Screening at AL Berlin on Tuesday 4 October

Congress of Idling Persons features five interlocutors who play themselves and greater fictions, in the shadows of recent world-historical events. DJ and translator Rayyan Abdel Khalek, musical artist Sandy Chamoun, writer Islam Khatib, and organiser Mekdes Yilma⁠ examine a cartography of protest, crisis, humanitarian and mutual aid, migrant labour, and Palestinian outsider status.

Punctuated by the late Arab Spring, the Black Lives Matter revolts of 2020, and the Beirut port explosion, the film weaves through transhistorical constants — from rage and mourning to spontaneity and besiegement — propelled by the speech and acts of its performers. If a group action is a riot and not a revolution, then who films it? If four is a riot, it is also a congress.

Bassem Saad (@bassem_s_) is an artist and writer based between Berlin and Beirut.

SOMETHING FROM THERE
Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, 2020, Palestine / Turtle Island, 7 min
Arabic with English subtitles
Screening at AL Berlin on Tuesday 4 October

Something from there is a short film on the substance of our original lands. Weaving between the voices of the artist’s parents, one a refugee and the other not, the film is personal, yet evokes a shared Palestinian experience.

A fragmented story of the artist’s father’s exile from Palestine in 1948 is the guiding narrative. As he explains, he has not returned since then—but for a single day in the sixties. Her mother, on the other hand, has lived in Palestine for much of her life (her contribution to the film was recorded while she sat on a patio in her hometown). Although her story is not the focus, it becomes clear that she is able to return and collect the “something from there” that is referenced.

The “something” is never named, though it is the centre of the narrative. Is it the soil? A piece of the land? The remains of our ancestors? The distinction between land and body is not made, and rather, something from there focuses on the power of memory and symbols to revive a denied homeland, defy official histories, and counter the settler colonial impetus to erase any assertion of Indigenous life.

Rana Nazzal Hamadeh (@rananazzalh) is a Palestinian artist and filmmaker living between Ramallah and Ottawa/Toronto. She holds an MFA in Documentary Media from Ryerson University and a BA in Human Rights and Law from Carleton University.

Nazzal Hamadeh’s photography, film, and installation works look at the complexity of decolonial disruptions, combining storytelling and critical analysis to draw links between our experiences and broader systems. Her practice is informed by the knowledge that emerges from the movements for justice around her.

HOMECOMING QUEENZ
Elias Wakeem, 2019, 11 min
Hebrew and English with English Subtitles
Screening at AL Berlin on Tuesday 4 October

Homecoming Queenz is a live performance shot by smartphones and was taken at Ben Gurion International Airport while on the way back from abroad.
Throughout the act the artist is collaborating with Oz Marinov as they try to pass through the border wearing unique clothing. The performance begins on the airplane while the couple are on their way back from abroad and is finished when they reach the reception hall at the airport.

Elias Wakeem is a gender queer artist and activist, who mixes languages, changes characters and plays different identities, using grotesque body forms that help him create a scene, which challenges the boundaries existing in his society. They use in particular, installation and performance art events, that present the mixture of their various characters and personas, while examining the reaction of the audience to their personal story.

Whether in a gallery or outside it, Elias knows the limits and tries to re-arrange them. Either by, expanding them or by tightening them, in order to open up their audience and encourage them to re-act or even act, on their own. With the purpose of learning from the mutual experience each of us have. For Elias, the term “Otherness”, expresses enrichment and not alienation. From the other, that is different, we can always learn something new. The other brings a new challenge, at the same time he can actually provide support, resulting in a universal magical energy.

BEYOND THE FRONTLINES: Tales of Resistance and Resilience from Palestine
Alexandra Dols, 2017, France, 1h 54 min
Arabic/French/English with English subtitles
Screening at AL Berlin on Tuesday 4 October

Beyond the Frontlines takes us on a journey both within our own minds and on the roads of Palestine, led by Palestinian psychiatrist and writer Dr. Samah Jabr.

An heir to anticolonial psychiatrist Dr. Frantz Fanon, she exposes the psychological strategies and consequences of Israeli occupation, and the ways in which Palestinians have learned to cope. In this multi-voiced movie, interviews and chronicles are intertwined together with poetic escapes suggesting the invisible dimension of Palestinian streets and landscapes. From this fragmented Palestine, women and men share their stories of resistance and resilience.

For everyday colonization does not only involve occupying land, homes, the sky or water. It does not seek to impose its rule through weapons only; it molds the minds as well, beyond the frontlines…

“Dr. Samah Jabr is a wise and thoughtful woman. She reflects on the subtle, devastating effect on the Palestinian people of years of brutal occupation. Alexandra Dols’ film shares her insights with us, generous, humane and deeply disturbing. Please see this film.” — Ken Loach

Alexandra Dols (@dols_______________) is a writer, director and producer. She graduated in cinematography from Paris University, where she specialized in scriptwriting and directing.

Thanks to @hybrid_pulse and @derrierelesfrontslefilm for your support with this screening! For more information about this film visit: https://beyondthefrontlines.com

MARCO
Saleem Haddad, 2018, UK, 22 min
Screening at AL Berlin on Tuesday 4 October

Omar has been living in London for a decade. One evening, restless after another pleading voicemail from his mother, he invites over Marco, a Spanish student newly arrived in London, who’s doing sex work to earn some extra cash. But when Marco arrives, Omar can’t shake the feeling that something’s not quite right about the young man. As their night together progresses truths are revealed, Omar discovers the lengths that Marco has gone to arrive in London.

Saleem Haddad (@salhad) was born in Kuwait City to an Iraqi-German mother and a Palestinian-Lebanese father. Haddad has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières and other international organisations in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and Egypt.

RASHA NAHAS— AMRAT امرات
Bashar Murad, 2022, Palestine, 3 min
Arabic with English subtitles
Screening at AL Berlin on Tuesday 4 October

AMRAT امرات filmed in Haifa, takes us on a walk through the places in Nahas’ hometown closest to her heart. It speaks of turning points in time and all the moments that happen in between as she explains: ‘Amrat symbolises a choice to hold on to how things are before they inevitably change or slip away. It’s a song about different states of being and the ambivalence of life’.

‘Amrat’ is Nahas’ way of reclaiming her city and its Palestinian identity at its core. The video opens in the remains of Wadi Salib, one of Haifa’s old neighbourhoods from which residents have been systematically displaced, it moves between the city streets, and ends at the Mediterranean Sea, a place that has always evoked peace in Nahas.

Skilfully captured by a crew of local creatives and directed by Palestinian pop artist and video director Bashar Murad, the video conveys pain and distortions, nature, and beauty all at once. It shows a city transforming and growing from within and without her.

As a genre-defying, narrative-focused artist, Rasha Nahas (@rasha_nahas) has been crafting a keenly singular music universe, cultivated in and loyal to the underground, and driven by candid lyrics with disarming vulnerability.