Art for the Struggle, Struggle for the Art is a collection of five short films from the revolutionary period of Palestinian cinema—from 1968 to 1974—exploring the importance of archive film in social and cultural documentation. Curated by filmmaker and artist Saeed Taji Farouky, who will lead a discussion on radical filmmaking—then and now—after the screening.

All donations from this year’s festival will go to Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), providing humanitarian assistance as well as health and social services to Palestinians whenever and wherever needed. You can donate here.

Far Away From Home

dir. Qais Al-Zubaidi, 1969, 11min

A beautiful and moving experiment in which Al-Zubaidi invited the children he had just filmed in Al-Sabineh Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to narrate their own footage. The result is a disarming and reorienting experience that says as much about the construction of media perception as it does about the children themselves.

The Game

dir. Shirak, 1973, 16min

A short fiction film—a rarity in the era of revolutionary cinema—that lays painfully bare the cycle of violence children are subjected to, and the inevitable consequences of that violence. The fatalism of The Game is a disturbing counter-point to the casual innocence of Qais Al-Zubaidi’s Far Away From Home, also part of this programme.

Cowboy

dir. Sami Al-Salamoni, 1973, 15min

An experimental montage of archive and re-appropriated Hollywood footage that creates links between the treatment of Native Americans, the dispossession of the Palestinians, and the representations of these and other genocides in cinema history.

Quneitra 74

dir. Mohammad Malas, 1974, 20min

A peripatetic docu-fiction on displacement, reconstruction, and the fragility of memory this film returns with the inhabitants of Quneitra to their Golan Heights village after its destruction by the Israeli military. Refusing to linger on the ruins as mere aesthetics, director Mohammad Malas has his protagonist look directly into the eyes of the audience — a stark reminder of the world’s complicity.

Children Without Childhood

dir. Khadijeh Habashneh, 1972, 21min

Co-produced by the General Union of Palestinian Women, this film from one of Palestinian cinema’s chief archivists reflects both the suffering and endurance of the orphans of Bayt Al-Sumud (The House of Steadfastness). Starkly exposing the gulf between international law and the reality of Palestine, Habashneh’s landmark work shows how Israel’s physical violence and cultural erasure have changed little in the more than 50 years since the film was made.