Version:

The Palestinian Revolution was brought to a jarring halt in 1982. Israel's conquest of Beirut entailed the liquidation of complex revolutionary infrastructures developing in Lebanon over the preceding decade. For many, the death of the revolution spelt new agonies of exile and rupture; it shattered once-inviolable ideological convictions; and it culminated in savagery and despair at Sabra and Shatila.

 

pff_02.-kassemhawal.receiving-silver-prize-for-our-small-houses-1974-leipzig_web.jpg

Kassem Hawal receives the Silver Medal for Our Small Houses at the 1974 Leipzig Film Festival. Image courtesy of Kassem Hawal.
Kassem Hawal receives the Silver Medal for Our Small Houses at the 1974 Leipzig Film Festival. Image courtesy of Kassem Hawal.

How might artists who had celebrated the revolution's virtue and momentum in previous years respond to these cataclysmic ideological and human disasters? Learning Not to Dream takes its title from an on-going conversation on this theme with Kassem Hawal, the Iraqi-born director and cultural activist who founded and led the film unit of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine from 1972.

 

The research suggests a possible epilogue or counterpoint to the Palestine Film Foundation's recent project The World is With Us: Global Film and Poster Art from the Palestinian Revolution, 1968-1980. In that project, the PFF worked closely with Hawal in relation to a body of ideologically assured Marxist-Leninist films made for the PFLP in the 1970s. These included the 1974 film-poem 'Our Small Houses', which won the Silver Medal at the Leipzig Film Festival that year. The film foresaw transnational workers' solidarities prevailing over colonial, national, or confessional divisions. Its call for revolutionary union was wed to a warning about the deadly logos of empire and nationalism: "They will make you wear the uniform. Tomorrow, it's either you kill or get killed." 

 

pff_01.-our-small-houses-1974-collage_web.jpg

Our Small Houses, Dir. Kassem Hawal, 1974. Script by Abou Naseer; read by Nazik [al-Malaika].
Our Small Houses, Dir. Kassem Hawal, 1974. Script by Abou Naseer; read by Nazik [al-Malaika].

 

Nearly a decade after Our Small Houses, with the revolutionary project in ruins, Hawal made a long-overlooked 1983 documentary under the auspices of the Libyan Information Ministry - Massacre: Sabra and Shatila. This was the first Arab film to treat the atrocities of September 1982. It was also Hawal's first work of the post-revolutionary period. Massacre: Sabra and Shatila thus offers a possible starting- point for questions about ideological disenchantment, physical displacement, and artistic re-orientation in the wake of 1982.

 

Learning not to Dream will combine technical and qualitative research activities. Technically, the project involves the digitisation, subtitling (into Arabic and English), and archival safeguarding of the film – drawing on a surviving analogue video source. The filmmaker will be involved throughout, with the digitised and subtitled work provided to him on completion and collaborative exhibition or distribution prospects developed. Concurrent with these technical processes, the PFF will conduct research into the film's making and content while extending discussions with Hawal regarding its relationship to works of the earlier period (including 'Our Small Houses') and to the director's experience of the demise of the Palestinian Revolution.

 

pff_06.-massacre.1983.survivortestimonies_web.jpg

Survivor testimonies, Massacre: Sabra and Shatilla, Dir. Kassem Hawal, 1983
Survivor testimonies, Massacre: Sabra and Shatilla, Dir. Kassem Hawal, 1983

 

By combining technical preservation work with collaborative research, the project aims to secure a singular work of Arab political cinema while generating contextual insights relating the film to a post-revolutionary rupture marked by ideological-aesthetic disillusionment and uncertainty. Through a close reading of the film and its making, and via on-going conversations with the filmmaker, Learning Not to Dream works toward an account of this pivotal juncture as it was experienced and remembered by one of the most distinctive filmmakers of the revolutionary era. 

About the artist

The Palestine Film Foundation (PFF) is a London-based research and exhibition structure specialising in film and video work from and upon Palestine. Founded in 2004, the PFF manages a range of film preservation, subtitling, education, and programming activities in the UK, including the annual London Palestine Film Festival.

 

This project will be conducted by the PFF's co-director, Nick Denes, who leads the PFF's research and preservation programme. Denes is a film curator and sociologist. He is Senior Teaching Fellow in the Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS, University of London, and has published widely on moving images of and from Palestine, the 'new far right' in the contemporary EU, and surveillance in Palestine/Israel.


test