Video Concerning the Arab World

TransArab Itinerant 2003-2005

2003 / 2005 / 2006 / 2009 - TransArab

Video Concerning the Arab World

This programme is not intended to provide an overview of independent video in Arab and Islamic countries, nor does it seek to be representative in any way.

The works being presented, like the programme as a whole, reflect the notion of “slices of reality”, in the sense that they are subjective visions, aware of their partiality, which do not exclude contradiction or conflict. Visions that perceive a strong tension on their surface and take up these eddies of confusion and violence as cause for  urgent reflection and knowledge.

Images and stories, realities in themselves, rhizomatic realities: interwoven without a centre or a fixed meaning. And for that very reason, instead of giving rise to cultural dualism based on opposition, they engender a web of underground connections.

Qualb el Umur (QU) is a project of the Arab Education Forum. It provides spaces and opportunities for people, especially young people, to work in small groups, to reflect on and express their work and experiences, and interact, learn, communicate, and build. This film is the first products of the QU project in Palestine and were done in cooperation with Palestine Mirror Production and the popular Art Center. The Children were given the space to work on their own films and learn and grow through reflecting on their life and trough teamwork. In the film A Day in our Life, the children aged 12-16 years present their life in the Amari refugee camp in Ramallah. They use documentary as well as role play to introduce the audience to details of daily life in a refugee camp in Ramallah, including people's memory which is an integral part of their life.

Through the story of Bir'im, a destroyed Palestinian village, we encounter Nahida and two other women from the kibbutz built on its land. The trio's moving story focuses on a struggle for the return of the villagers to their homeland, a central issue in the Palestinian experience.

The testimonies of Arab infiltrators in Israel.

When terrorism becomes even more closely linked to Arabs and Islam, a terror prevention rehabilitation camp known as the (Arab Terrorist Management Camp) is designed to help potential Arab terrorists overcome their terrorist tendencies. The film starts off in a documentary fashion but slowly takes the shape of an infomercial mocking the capitalization on "terrorism”.

“Avenge But One of My Two Eyes” is a ramble between three arenas at the height of the “El Aqsa” Intifada: the practice of the Masada cult, reinvented in the mid-1940s and interwoven with the leading Zionist discourse, the condition of oppression and besiegement of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories, and the continuous religious and secular cult of Samson, aka “Samson the Hero”. Real places, times and situations penetrate one another and integrate, presenting the Israeli reality as it is: embroiled, violent, suicidal.

A video essay of life in Baghdad before the invasion and occupation. Men dance, women draw and Sufis sing as they await the coming of another war. Notes, gifts, promises, paintings, trash, and other ephemera from the city which is now hardly a city.

Moqtada al Sadr and his militia, the Mehdi Army, have been America's most intractable opponents in Iraq. For five years, they have controlled large sections of the country - including half of Baghdad, defied attempts to marginalize them politically, fought pitched battles with the US Marines and only grown in size and influence. But in the Spring of 2008, the Iraqi and U.S. military launched surprising attacks against Sadr strongholds in Basra and Baghdad. After a few weeks of stiff resistance, cease-fires were negotiated and the Mehdi Army melted away from the street.

When filmmaker Mai Masri returned to her hometown of Nablus after a fourteen year absence, she discovered a new generation of Palestinian fighters: the children of the Intifada.