London Palestine Film Festival 2024 presents Real Visions (shorts session). This selection of non-fiction shorts play cross images, dreams, realities and memories. What proof do images reveal? How do visible truths affect our understanding of actualities, and our future existence?
The Bride and The Dowry
1979, Ibrahim Abu Nab, 26’
This rich historical documentary from Palestinian filmmaker, Ibrahim Abu Nab (1931 - 1991), narrates the aftereffects of the 1967 War on the people of the West Bank. From powerful testimonials from lawyers, academics and victims of displacement, to the chronicling of the story of a Palestinian leader targeted as he demands justice for his people, we understand the impact of Israeli occupation on Palestinian life, and the consequences of attempting to defy it. Environmental degradation, land seizures, and resource control are used as tools of oppression. Central to the narrative is the metaphor of a bride and dowry, used by an Israeli human rights lawyer to describe the cruel tactics employed to force Palestinians into submission. The film emphasizes the ongoing resilience of the Palestinian people, despite these relentless pressures.
Trigger warning: harrowing testimonials of torture and other violence
Nazareth
2021, Mike Halboom, 7’
A single photo from 1948: A return to the fateful year of 1948 in Israel, reframed by a single photograph that is taken up one face at a time. Four figures on a hillside bear witness to the revolutionary society, the new state, the new law. Like too many moments of catastrophe it is filled with invisibility charms and ghost relations. How to speak of what can’t be put into words, how to show what cannot be seen?
Tuesday by the Sea
Palestine/USA, 2019, Shourideh C. Molvi, 7’
The border demarcates the inside and outside. Conceptually two-dimensional and two-sided, but without a clear beginning and end, the border creates a length and not a width. This short film, with no dialogue, cuts between two locations, allowing us to see the very real distinctions of two places on a single day. This screening is dedicated to co-founder of Ain Media Gaza, Roshdi al-Sarraj, our loved friend and collaborator on the film, who was tragically martyred on 22 October 2023 when an Israeli airstrike hit his home in Tel al Hawa during breakfast with his family.
Gaza Atelier
Palestine, 2023, Montaser Alsabe, 11’
Ahlam, a young Palestinian fashion designer plans to open her own atelier in Gaza city. With the opening date approaching, things take a different path than what she is planning. But with a name like Ahlam, meaning dreams in Arabic, her ambitions won’t fade.
The Poem we Sang
Canada/Palestine, 2024, Annie Sakkab, 20’
This dream-like documentary meditates on love and longing: the love of one’s family and the longing for one’s home. Photojournalist Annie Sakkab strings together found footage, images, poems and memories to contemplate how to overcome the trauma of losing a family home and forced migration. Through this nostalgic journey, Sakkab transforms lifelong regrets into a healing journey of creative catharsis and bearing witness.
Man Number 4
UK, 2024, Miranda Pennell, 10'
Gaza, December 2023: a photograph shows men in a berm, soldiers in mid-distance and ghostly apartment blocks. A confrontation with this disturbing photograph on social media triggers questions about what it means to be an onlooker.