Press Release: Award-Winning 1974 Franco-Belgo-Syrian Co-Production of 'Kafr Qassem' Revived

Press Release: Award-Winning 1974 Franco-Belgo-Syrian Co-Production of "Kafr Qassem" Revived

Press Release: Award-Winning 1974 Franco-Belgo-Syrian Co-Production of "Kafr Qassem" Revived

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press release was issued by the Open Committees, sponsored by Al-Awda NY]

On October 1, 2017 at 6pm, Anthology Film Archive in NYC will host the first U.S. screening and revival of the internationally acclaimed film Kafr Qassem, a 1974 Franco-Belgo-Syrian co-production by filmmaker Borhane Alaouié.
 

On an October afternoon in 1956, as Israel readied to invade Egypt, the Israeli military imposed a curfew on Arab villages with little prior notice. Arriving home after working in the fields, the villagers of Kafr Kassem were left unaware of the curfew or their violation of it. The film reconstructs the events leading up to that oft-commemorated day, while sharing the everyday lives of the townspeople so stoically that the viewer is left on edge by the eeriness of the human attempt at normalcy under unusually challenging conditions.
 

The film premiered in 1974 at the Carthage Film Festival where it won top Award for Best Film, Tanit D’Oro, and was honored and nominated for the Golden Prize at the Moscow Film Festival of 1975. Despite its regional accolades and reach, the film was only briefly run, screened in only a few locations outside Syria and Lebanon and remained dormant almost immediately after its release because of the political crises brewing in the region at the time, leaving the film largely forgotten until now when a group of volunteers found the film and began the translation and subtitling to be able to bring it to the English speaking world.

Using Pontecorvo’s 1966 “The Battle of Algiers” as a visual and political framework to tell the story, the film skillfully refuses to force any conclusions upon its audience. For example, the General in charge of the military during the events is depicted with same seeming objectivity as Lieutenant-Colonel Mathieu in the “Battle of Algiers.”
 

The film was made in Pontecorvo’s hallmark style of newsreel and documentary, using fictional realism to tell the story. It begins with the testimony of the General, while the returing workers are introduced through the narrative of the spy as he meets with military officials. The narrative continues on its serpentine meandering as it leads us to the final fate of the characters.
 

Alaouié uses near scientific accuracy in his depiction of the events, relying on official transcripts and records to build the narrative.  The audience is also treated to glimpses of the daily life of the townspeople, their history, their humanity and their ability to manage normalcy and humor in this surreal context.
 

Acclaimed French film critic, Serge Daney, called filmmaker-director Borhane Alaouié a “topographer-filmmaker” for his seeming laissez faire approach to provoking thought in his audience.
 

Alaouié began his career in 1968 and explained that this film was a break from the sort of activism in his circles at the time – despite the subject matter – stating:


Friends asked me, ‘You do not think that with the money of this film it would be better to buy Kalashnikovs? ‘I said ‘Kalashnikovs we have, movies, no.’ So, I went on. 

The film stars prolific Syrian actors Salim SabriAbdallah AbbassiShafiq Manfaluti and Charlotte Rushdie. 

Film Clip


Original Promotional Material

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412