Despite the bombs, the silence, the complicity, the dehumanization, and despite attempts to obliterate their existence, their past and present, Palestinians refuse to disappear, they are here to stay. Being is not premised on a recognition exacted from those implicated in your colonization and erasure. Rather it is a life practice, a politics of patience and refusal, a will to remain and return to the land, and a desire to thrive decade after decade, intifada after intifada.

Refusing to Disappear is a series of decentralized film screenings and discussions held in different cities and venues across Belgium to engage with the rich legacy of Palestinian storytelling through films. Furthermore, it is a program that asks us to bear witness, remember, and rage against the Israeli war on Gaza and Palestine and to move collectively towards liberation, for a life in freedom and dignity for all, from the river to the sea.

Refusing to Disappear does not come in a vacuum, it is a response to various global film screening initiatives. These gatherings serve as platforms for substantive discussions, educational pursuits, and an earnest exploration of the historical narrative of Palestine.

SCENES OF OCCUPATION FROM GAZA

Mustafa Abu Ali, 1973, 13’

A rare film by the legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the founders of the Palestine Film Unit, the first filmic arm of the Palestinian revolution. Shot by a French news team, the footage was edited by Mustafa in Lebanon to produce one of the earliest films on the occupied territory in Gaza. Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza employs experimental editing techniques to produce a cinematically and politically subversive film. The film won the prize as best film at the Damascus Film Festival in 1973 and was screened at multiple festivals. It was the only film produced by the Palestine Cinema Group, which in 1974 became the Palestine Cinema Institute.

INTRODUCTION TO THE END OF AN ARGUMENT

Jayce Salloum & Elia Suleiman, 1990, 41’41’’

With a combination of Hollywood, European and Israeli film, documentary, news coverage and excerpts of ‘live’ footage shot in the West Bank and Gaza strip, Introduction to the end of an argument / Speaking for oneself… Speaking for others… critiques representation of the Middle East, Arab culture, and the Palestinian people produced by the West. The video tape mimics the dominant media’s forms of representation, subverting its methodology and construction. A process of displacement and deconstruction is enacted attempting to arrest the imagery and ideology, decolonizing and recontextualizing it to provide a space for a marginalized voice consistently denied expression in the media. Intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the Occupied Territories, has come to the makers courtesy of the media. And it is through the media that their impressions of the uprising have accreted via image and text.

This screening is a collaboration between the Kitchen & Globe Aroma. 

  • Screenings: 18/12/2023 – 7pm
  • Reservation : thekitchenbxl@riseup.net
  • Screenings will be subtitled in English and the discussions will also be moderated in English.