This screening is part of: POLITICS OF THE IMAGE: COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN THE PALESTINIAN LIBERATION MOVEMENT AND THE TWO GERMANIES
Most films by the PLO focused on documenting the present lives of Palestinians in exile. The PLO was prohibited in Israel and the Occupied Territories, and access for Palestinian refugees was forbidden. In rare cases, the organization sent in foreign film crews with instructions about whom and what to document. LAND DAY (1976) by Ghaleb Shaath, manager of the film laboratory of the Palestine Martyrs Works Society (SAMED), is one example. In AIDA (1985), another official PLO/GDR coproduction – but in fact a one-man effort by Marwan Salamah – the children in the PLO’s orphanage in Tunis stay connected with their homeland by living both their heritage and the new social relations of the Palestinian Revolution.
Ghaleb Shaath
LAND DAY
1983, 50 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In Arabic and Japanese with English subtitles.
Marwan Salamah
AIDA
1985, 25 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In German with English subtitles.
Total running time: ca. 80 min.