AN annual Scottish short-film festival will screen a programme of Palestinian films complete with a live music performance.
Glasgow Short Film Festival (GSFF) will show Weapons Of Criticism And Dedicated Consciousness – a 105-minute collection of short films about Palestine.
The screening will be held on Saturday, March 23, at GSFF’s Civic House Venue, and half of the screening’s ticket sales will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Outgoing programme director Sanne Jehoul said: “GSFF has platformed many Palestinian filmmakers over the years whose works deal with the oppression of Palestine and its people.
“In light of Israel’s current atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, we believe it’s crucial to reaffirm our support for those artists and their politics, as well as to be vocal about our support for the Palestinian struggle for liberation.”
The programme makes up part of a strand entitled Towards Liberation that will feature archive, documentary and short films from around the world to “examine threads around imprisonment, imperialism, representation and resistance”.
Weapons Of Criticism And Dedicated Consciousness gets its title from a quote by late Palestinian activist Edward Said, whose speech is featured in its opening short film, 20 Handshakes For Peace.
This short by GSFF favourite Mahdi Fleifel showcases Said’s speech and juxtaposes footage of the handshake that solidified the widely criticised 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and Palestine.
Jehoul said: “It’s a programme that approaches the Palestinian cause from different angles – there’s a visceral animation hybrid illustrating the dehumanisation under occupation, a film that uses Google Streetview to reflect on the inability to physically return home, an expansive sci-fi imagination of a resistance group, and more.”
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Also featured in the screening will be the first-ever Arab film to be featured at Cannes. Like Twenty Impossibles by Annemarie Jacir (2003) follows a Palestinian film crew’s journey as they are “challenged by the oppressive mechanics of the occupation and lack of freedom of movement”.
The screening will close with another film by Fleife, I Signed The Petition, which addresses one Palestinian man’s conflicting emotions as he supports a boycott movement.
It is hoped that the final film will be “a suitable point of reflection on collective action and solidarity for us all”.
Jehoul said: “We cannot platform work that is activist and political in nature, that is made with an aim beyond comfortable festival spaces, and then not lift up those artists and aims when it is most needed and precarious.
“At a time when we’re seeing an ethnic cleansing project livestreamed, I believe that is a duty and responsibility as an arts organisation.”
Following the screening, British-Palestinian musician and sound artist Kareem Samara will perform a free live-music set. The musician’s “joining of traditional and contemporary genres explores threads of decolonial possibilities and diasporic identity”.
Jehoul added: “Beyond this programme, there are also a few other films by Palestinian artists or about Palestine in the programme Repurposed for Dissent. And to reiterate the support in wider liberation movements, we are also showing films from Haiti, Sudan, Kosovo and more.
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“I don’t want to pretend we always get everything right, but at a horrendous time like this, we should use whatever platform and agency we have to combat the wave of propaganda that is trying to undermine the movement for Palestinian liberation.”
Bailie Annette Christie, the chair of Glasgow Life, one of GSFF’s funders, said: “This 17th edition of Glasgow Short Film Festival features a dynamic, diverse programme that will appeal to a broad range of audiences, and we look forward to welcoming them to what will, I’m sure, be another fabulous city festival celebrating great world cinema.”
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