Double feature & panel about the role of film archives in (re)framing national identity and memory.

Guest speakers: Rona Sela - film director, Dr. Honeida Abu Ghanem

Date: December 2, 2017
Place: Tel Aviv Cinematheque
Festival program

Looted and Hidden: Palestinian Archives in Israel
Director: Rona Sela
Israel | 2017 | 45 min | English & Arabic w. Hebrew subtitles
Looted and Hidden unravels the fate of Palestinian film archives that documented the Palestinian Revolution from the late 1960s to the beginning of the 1980s. Based on a lengthy battle to obtain access to classified materials, long-lost archival footage and interviews with key figures, the film focuses on the cinematic treasures Israel looted in Beirut in the 1980s and has controlled since then in military archives. It raises questions about archival institutions in colonial countries and zones of conflict, and points to the need to dig into the hidden in order to reveal what has been erased or rewritten.

Off Frame AKA Revolution until Victory
Director: Mohanad Yaqubi
Palestine | 2016 | 62 min | English & Arabic w. Hebrew subtitles
Off Frame is a unique historical portrait of the Palestinian people's struggle to produce their own image. Using material long hidden in archives across the globe, the film reaches back through the modern history of Palestine and reverses decades of colonial dominance with a mosaic of struggle from the perspective of the colonized.