March 20, 2024
Insurgent Transmissions: A Palestine Film Series
Insurgent Transmissions is a film series highlighting the varied Palestinian experience. Made by contemporary Palestinian makers, the films depict the many ways that Palestinians resist occupation in their daily lives and filmmaking practices. Beginning with Annemarie Jacir’s touching family drama, Wajib, the programming will unfold as a series of transmissions: Jacir chooses the second film, and each subsequent filmmaker will select the next film in the series. The films in Insurgent Transmissions highlight the works of contemporary Palestinian filmmakers, amplifying their voices through their films and the films they see as most urgent in this moment of cultural erasure and genocide.
This monthly series is presented by Mizna at Bryant Lake Bowl April–July 2024. Ticket fees go towards supporting the featured Palestinian filmmakers. Online tickets are $10, tickets at the door are sliding scale $5–15. Additional opportunities to support urgent grassroots fundraisers in Gaza will be available at the screening.
ACCESSIBILITY: To make these events accessible, masks are STRONGLY ENCOURAGED. Unfortunately we cannot require masks because Bryant Lake Bowl serves food and drinks inside the screening space. Films will be in Arabic with English subtitles.
Tickets
APRIL SCREENING
On April 24, 2024, at 7pm, join us for a screening of Wajib by Annemarie Jacir. In addition to ticket fees going to support the featured Palestinian filmmakers, we will be raising money for Crips for Esims for Gaza, an initiative which has been raising money to keep people in Gaza connected despite a months-long internet blackout.
ABOUT THE FILM
Abu Shadi (Mohammad Bakri) is a divorced father and school teacher in his mid-60s who lives in Nazareth with his daughter. Now that she is about to be married, the aging patriarch is anticipating life on his own. In preparation for the wedding, his architect son, Shadi (Saleh Bakri), who lives in Rome, travels to Nazareth to help the family. As Shadi and his father spend a day together hand-delivering wedding invitations to each guest in keeping with local Palestinian custom, the tense details of their fragile relationship come to a head, while each faces the reality of their very different lives. Performed brilliantly by actual father and son Mohammad and Saleh Bakri, Wajib demonstrates Annemarie Jacir’s filmmaking mastery through its style and subtleties.
MAY SCREENING
On May 29, 2024 at 7pm, join us for a screening of Infiltrators by Khaled Jarrar. In addition to ticket fees going to support the featured Palestinian filmmakers, we will be raising money for Crips for Esims for Gaza, an initiative which has been raising money to keep people in Gaza connected despite a months-long internet blackout.
ABOUT THE FILM
The checkpoint is closed. “Detour, detour!” shouts a taxi driver, announcing the beginning of yet another uncertain search for a way around the barriers curtailing Palestinian movement in the West Bank. Infiltrators is a visceral “road movie” that chronicles the daily travails of Palestinians of all backgrounds as they seek routes through, under, around, and over a bewildering matrix of barriers.
JUNE SCREENING
On June 26, 2024 at 7pm, join us for a screening of Foragers by Jumana Manna. In addition to ticket fees going to support the featured Palestinian filmmakers, we will be raising money for Middle East Children’s Alliance’s efforts in Gaza, an initiative which has been responding to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
ABOUT THE FILM
Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it moves between fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like Akkoub and Za’atar (thyme), and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants. For Palestinians, these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that further alienates them from their land while Israeli state representatives insist on their scientific expertise and duty to protect. Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from the chases between the foragers and the nature patrol, to courtroom defenses, Foragers captures the inherited love, joy and knowledge in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law. By reframing the terms and constraints of preservation, the film raises questions around the politics of extinction, namely who determines what is made extinct and what gets to live on.
JULY SCREENING
On July 24, 2024 at 7pm join us for a screening of Fertile Memory by Michel Khleifi. In addition to ticket fees going to support the featured Palestinian filmmakers, we will be raising money for Middle East Children’s Alliance’s efforts in Gaza, an initiative which has been responding to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
ABOUT THE FILM
Fertile Memory is the feature debut of pioneering director Michel Khleifi. Lyrically blending both documentary and narrative elements, Khleifi skillfully and lovingly crafts a portrait of two Palestinian women: Farah Hatoum, a widow living with her children and grandchildren, and Sahar Khalifeh, a novelist from the West Bank.
Michel Khleifi carefully observes the two women in their daily lives and highlights their very different personalities and individual struggles within the politics that have torn apart their homes and their lives. Their divergent opinions and lives play an important role in underlining their common status as Palestinians under Israeli rule, and as women in a male-dominated society. Yet, despite these contrasts, the mother and the writer share the same fight for freedom and dignity.
SEPTEMBER SCREENING
On September 4, 2024 at 7pm, join us for a screening of The Reports on Sarah and Saleem by Muayad Alayan. In addition to ticket fees going to support the featured Palestinian filmmakers, we will be raising money for Middle East Children’s Alliance’s efforts in Gaza, an initiative which has been responding to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
ABOUT THE FILM
Sarah is Israeli and runs a café in West Jerusalem. Saleem is Palestinian from East Jerusalem and works as a deliveryman. Despite being worlds apart, Sarah and Saleem risk everything as they embark on an illicit affair that could tear apart their unsuspecting respective families. When a risky late-night tryst goes awry and threatens to expose them, the two of them look on helplessly as their frantic efforts to salvage what’s left of their lives further escalate things. Caught up in the occupying machinery and socio-political pressure, Sarah and Saleem find themselves trapped in a web of deceit and not even the truth looks able to stop it.
OCTOBER SCREENING
On October 2, 2024 at 7pm, join us for a screening of A World Not Ours by Mehdi Fleifel. In addition to ticket fees going to support the featured Palestinian filmmakers, we will be raising money for Middle East Children’s Alliance’s efforts in Gaza, an initiative which has been responding to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
ABOUT THE FILM
A World Not Ours is an intimate and humorous portrait of three generations of exiles living in the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family. Filmed over more than 20 years by multiple generations of the same family, A World Not Ours is more than just a family portrait; it is an attempt to record what is being forgotten, and mark what should not be erased from collective memory.
NOVEMBER SCREENING
On November 6, 2024 at 7pm, join us for a screening of The Roof by Kamal Aljafari and Ambience by Wissam Aljafri. In addition to ticket fees going to support the featured Palestinian filmmakers, we will be raising money for Middle East Children’s Alliance’s efforts in Gaza, an initiative which has been responding to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
ABOUT THE FILMS
The Roof by Kamal Aljafari
This deceptively quiet film presents a portrait of Aljafari’s family in Ramleh and Jaffa that hovers between documentary and cinematic memoir, guided by a nimble camera moving calmly but ceaselessly around the rooms of homes inhabited, damaged and ruined.
The title refers to the roof missing from the house where Aljafari’s family resettled in 1948, a home unfinished, an incomplete construction project. The use of stillness and off-screen space creates a sense of suspension, of time spent waiting, of aftermath, of lives lived elsewhere.
Aljafari’s striking use of his “cast,” his family, reveals the influence of Bresson’s use of nonprofessional actors as models whose performances emanate from their presence, not from acting.
Ambience by Wissam Aljafri
Despite the noise and chaos of the refugee camp, two young Palestinian refugees discover a creative way to record music in order to meet a competition deadline.
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