Almost lost to oblivion, this film resurrects from the archives recently discovered fragments of Palestinian cinema associated with the Palestinian Revolution, dating from between 1968 and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut.
During the 1960s, there was a film group operating in Palestine whose members considered themselves the allies of revolutionaries, sent to fight on the artistic front. Their documentary, scripted, and pseudo-documentary films were of a propagandistic nature, explaining the motives and goals of the revolutionary movement inside Palestine. The camera and the image itself became the weapons of political struggle—all in the traditions of classical agitprop. At the same time, they created another image of the Palestinian people; no longer refugees, but freedom fighters, that is, the aim of the revolution was to win the right to create one's own identity—the right to self-representation.
The film also includes a chronicle of Jean-Luc Godard’s famous visit to Palestine: together with his colleagues in the Dziga Vertov group, he travelled there in the 1970s to shoot the documentary film Here and Elsewhere. As a rare document and archaeological gesture, this picture by the Palestinian director Mohanad Yaqubi revives a history that is real and alternative, projecting it into the present. The film premiered in 2016 at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was subsequently screened in the “Forum” section of the 66th Berlin Film Festival (2016).
Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory
Directed by Mohanad Yaqubi. Palestine, France, Qatar, 2016. 63 min.
18+