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alestinian cinema was among the first to emerge in the Middle East and North Africa along with Egyptian and Syrian cinemas. Egyptian cinema started production in 1923, followed by Syrian cinema in 1928 and Palestinian cinema in 1935. However, at the time, it was barely possible to separate Palestinian and Syrian national identities, which only emerged after the division of the region by imperial powers. Before then, Palestine was known as “Southern Syria” and was part of Greater Syria, which included today’s Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Yet, with the start of the British mandate in Palestine in 1917 and the French mandate in Syria in 1920, national identities gained a strong meaning. This translated into political, social, economic, and military actions against the imperial powers of the time that acted as if the region was theirs, dividing it in a humiliating manner into chunks of land.

The film industry in Palestine, which in a period of a few years saw a mass displacement of its people, was among the political, economic, and social changes taking place in the region. This mass displacement was reflected in a series of films that addressed the injustice against the Palestinian people alongside their life prior to the Nakba.

The first Palestinian movie theater was established in Jerusalem in 1908 and was known as “Cinematographe Oracle,” showing films on Saturday and Sunday nights. In 1912, a silent movie theater was established in the city, known as the “Cinema International,” where shows were organized based on ticket sales. At the time, these shows were mostly attended by male audiences who came from elite backgrounds.

In 1927, a law regulating movie theaters came to light in Palestine, which established the conditions under which the British mandate authorities were to control the sector.  he first Palestinian filmmaker was Ibrahim Hassan Sarhan, who shot a 20-minute short film of the visit of Saudi King Saud Bin Abdilaziz to Palestine in 1935. Other prominent Palestinians in the field included Ahmad Hilmi Alkilani who graduated from Cairo in 1945, and Muhammad Saleh Al-Kayali, who upon returning from his studies in Italy, established a cinema studio in Jaffa in 1940. He collaborated with the League of Arab Nations in 1945 to produce a film on Palestine.

Although the number of Palestinian films produced before 1948 was limited, the content of these films varied and provided important documentation of life before the Nakba. Such films include Realized Dreams, Studio Palestine, Ahmad Hilmi Pasha, and The Eid’s Night. Palestinian-Egyptian filmmaker Salaheddin Bardakhan produced the film A Night’s Dream in 1946, which was shown in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Amman, and Cairo at the time.

The impact of the Nakba on the film industry in Palestine

Following the Nakba and the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965, more Palestinian films saw the light. The first Palestinian film that was shot under PLO supervision was No to Peaceful Settlement in 1968. At the time, all production units were factional, where the Fatah movement, for example, had its own production unit. The Palestine Film Unit, which was part of the PLO’s research center, published a 12-minute short film about Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip in 1967 and its impact on the Palestinian people there. Leftist Palestinian groups such as the PFLP and DFLP had their own production units, and produced films at the time such as The Path in 1973 by Rafiq Hajjar and Our Little Houses in 1974.

A dozen films unfolded carrying titles such as Why We Take Arms, Why We Plant Flowers, and Palestine in the Eye. Arab producers also contributed to the Palestinian film industry at the time; for example, Iraqi producer Muhammed Tawfik who produced dozens of films such as the Child and the Toy (1986), and Syrian Muhammed Malas who produced The Dream of the City in 1983.

With the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1993, the Media and Culture Department of the PLO was converted into the Palestinian Ministry of Culture. In light of limited contributions, the Palestinian “Revolution films” could be considered dead today, as film productions by Palestinian factions outside the PLO are different in their approach and content from the productions of the Palestinian Revolution Cinema, including those produced by Islamic parties.

Emergence of Palestinian Cinema?

The last decade has seen an emergence of Palestinian cinema which had lost momentum in the 1990s and 2010s. Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman is among the top contributors to the Palestinian film industry with his masterpiece It Must Be Heaven (2019). In 2022, a storm of pressure on the film platform Netflix was launched after it published Farha, a Palestinian film that narrates the story of a 12-year-old Palestinian child during the events of the Nakba, which saw the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948.

In the film, Farha’s father hides her in a room to protect her, promising to be back. He is unable to return, and from her room, Farha sees the horrors of the Nakba unfolding in front of her eyes: a Palestinian family is executed in the backyard of her family’s house by a group of Jewish soldiers. The film reveals a snippet of what Palestinian refugees had to endure, while the implications of the Nakba are still very present today. Today, as Israeli politicians who threaten Palestinians with a second Nakba are becoming ministers in Netanyahu’s new government, films like Farha seem even more ominous.

Farha and other Palestinian films send a message that the Palestinian film industry is coming back into the spotlight after decades of being almost inactive. The second generation of Palestinian refugees educated itself and the third generation is now taking action, supported by the fine education it has received, which will translate into more Palestinian films and novels in the coming years. The cultural war between Palestinians and Israel seems to be taking a new turn, and it will only become more heated in the coming years.

The fact that Farha is among the top 10 films on Netflix, shows that the Israeli counter-campaign to defame it has failed. As the impact of the Palestinian film and cinema industry increases, more Palestinian films are likely to be made, creating more pressure on platforms by pro-Israeli groups. Yet, the message of Farha has resonated loud and clear: the Palestinian narrative cannot be stopped.

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hen the Guardian reported on the negative Israeli reaction to the Netflix release of the film Farha (2021), the debut feature by Palestinian-Jordanian director Darin J. Sallam, they gave away a crucial part of the plot. It is difficult to discern whether this was a deliberate act of sabotage to ruin the film for potential viewers or a clumsy mistake by Bethan McKernan, the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent.

What is undeniable is that there has been a concerted effort to rubbish the film and suppress it. Just before the film was released worldwide on Netflix, hundreds of spam accounts left negative reviews on IMDb in what the Middle East Eye described as an “organized campaign.” Furthermore, Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s minister of finance, described Netflix’s decision to platform it as “crazy.”

So why has this film created so much controversy? Not to repeat McKernan’s mistake, I advise the reader to watch the film before reading any further. I will be analyzing the film in some detail in what follows so as to work out why it has unnerved so many and in order to tackle some of the criticism that has been leveled against it. I first watched Farha on the opening night of the 2022 Safar Film Festival in London, knowing nothing about it beforehand—I believe is the ideal way to experience this film.

The film is set in Palestine in 1948. Fourteen-year-old Farha (Karam Taher) wants her father (Ashraf Barhoum), the mayor of their small village, to allow her to continue her education in the city. Her uncle (Ali Suliman) argues in favor of Farha being educated rather than married off and the father eventually agrees. Just as Farha is on the cusp of achieving her dream, her village is attacked by Zionists. It’s a testimony to the filmmaking that you could be fooled into thinking you have seen extensive battle scenes when much of the war is implied through sound rather than image. Farha’s father locks her in a pantry for her own safety and seals the door. He promises to return at a later time.

We begin to feel Farha’s increasing claustrophobia. Everything is a challenge: from finding a light source to collecting rainwater through a hole in the wall and solving the problem of how to go to the toilet in such a confined space. All this happens almost silently or with very effective use of sound. It is pure cinema that allows us to get close to Farha as we experience the visceral intensity of being confined with her. We long for her to find a way to break the door.

Then, through a gap in the door, Farha witnesses the arrival of a family. A woman gives birth. Farha calls out for the father of the family. Just as we think he is going to rescue her, Zionist soldiers arrive. The film goes from second gear into fifth. Every passing second the tension mounts. The danger the soldiers represent is palpable. At one point, a female soldier reaches inside the garment of the Palestinian woman who gave birth and extracts the large, heavy metallic key to her house tied around her neck. The soldier teases her by telling her she can keep it as a souvenir, implying she will never see her home again.

The family is eventually lined up and shot. We don’t see the moment of their execution, only the reaction on Farha’s face as she witnesses the horror. Then comes the crucial part, the part McKernan ruined for the Guardian readers: the newborn baby is left behind. A young Jewish soldier is ordered to kill him without wasting a bullet. He contemplates stomping on the baby, but in the end leaves a handkerchief over him and joins his departing unit. Finally, when Farha finds a hidden gun and blows open the door, she discovers flies feasting on the dead baby’s corpse.

With such a powerful, unflinching story, the Israeli reaction to Farha is perhaps not surprising. The irony is that much of Sallam’s secondary research on the events of 1948, which the Palestinians refer to as “Al-Nakba” (The Catastrophe), came from the work of Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappé. The violent expulsion of some 750,000 plus Palestinians from their villages which led to the creation of Israel is hardly a secret. The Israeli denial is a testimony to the power of the film.

What is surprising are some of the negative reviews the film has received in the Arab press. Some have critiqued the film for pandering to Western orientalism by having a young girl longing to be educated and being denied that right by her Arab community—but those critics misread the early scenes. The film shows Farha’s struggle but also her triumph. She persuades her father to let her be educated and you feel that he is secretly proud of her “stubbornness.”

The film is very clear about the fact that her education wasn’t so much interrupted by her community but by the attack on her village by the occupying forces. The uncle who helped persuade her father to allow her to be educated turns out in the end to be an informant for the Zionist soldiers. This irked some critics who perhaps would have preferred for all Palestinians in the film to be depicted as heroes rather than as complex characters. The uncle, realizing that the Zionist soldiers lied to him about their intention, breaks down at one point. He reminds us that no one thought the destruction of Palestine was going to be so remorseless and complete.

The sudden passing of Hatem Ali, 58, a highly-respected Syrian film director and actor caused a storm in social media in the Arab world with people recalling his legacy and his priceless contribution to cinema. His collective work left a remarkable impact on Arabs’ collective memory.

With his sudden passing in Cairo, Ali left a huge void behind him. Hatem Ali was uniquely multitalented – he directed, acted, and wrote screenplays – and his cinematic productions tackled important historical, social, religious, and political themes.

The environment in which Hatem Ali was born and grew up is vital to understanding the true importance and meaning of his contribution to Arab and Syrian cinema. He was born to a Syrian family in the Golan Heights in 1962 and at the age of five became a refugee when Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

The Syrian director spent most of his teenage life in Al-Hajar al-Aswad, an area which is adjacent to the Yarmouk refugee camp, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. Palestinian-Syrian director Majed Kayali asserts that Ali attended youth camps organized by the youth wing of the Palestinian Fatah movement in the early 1980s.

Hatem Ali and Palestine

The production of Al-Taghreba al-Falastenya (The Palestinian Exile), a 31-episode drama series, is one of Hatem Ali’s greatest contributions. In this drama series, he documented life under the British occupation of Palestine, the creation of Israel, the displacement of the Palestinians, and the daily life in refugee camps after the Nakba (Catastrophe), which describes the mass exodus of Palestinians in 1948.

The series was exceptional in many different ways: the first of its kind, reflective of reality and reviving the memory of younger generations of what had befallen on the Palestinians in 1948, of displacement and destruction.

In Al-Taghreba, Ali tackled social, economic, and cultural matters that were crucial for Palestinians. This included the differences between the peasant lives in villages and the urban lives in cities, the conflicts between landlords and peasants, the divisions among Palestinians, and the cultural and linguistic differences among various segments of Palestinian society.

Unlike his character Rushdi who refused to leave his homeland, Ali’s life took a different turn. Since 2012, Ali lived in self-exile which seems to have been a political message of refusing to accept the Syrian civil war which broke out following the 2011 uprising.

Not only did Ali direct The Palestinian Exile series, which went viral at the time of its broadcasting in 2004, but he also acted in it. Ali played the role of Rushdi, a young man whose father was killed in the fight against the occupying British forces, and who later in 1948 was separated from his mother. Rushdi had to live with his uncles away from his mother whose new place of residence came under Israeli control in 1948. He would only meet her for a few minutes, in 1967, after being smuggled into present-day Israel by a Palestinian-Israeli.

The series ends by Rushdi tearing up an offer letter he receives from Pakistan to undertake his undergraduate studies, sending a message to Palestinians that they should not leave their country despite the difficult conditions of living under occupation.

In 2008, Ali agreed to direct a TV series based on the Time of White Horses, a novel written by Palestinian novelist Ibrahim Nasrallah, which portrays life in a Palestinian village. However, his dream didn’t come true as certain mainstream Arab TV channels hesitated to produce the series because it was about Palestine.

Leaving Damascus

Unlike his character Rushdi who refused to leave his homeland, Ali’s life took a different turn. Since 2012, Ali lived in self-exile which seems to have been a political message of refusing to accept the Syrian civil war which broke out following the 2011 uprising. After 2011, Ali kept moving between capitals without publicly criticizing the Assad government, which didn’t send a representative to his funeral.

In 2015, the Syrian Actors Syndicate fired Ali and 200 other actors “for not paying their annual fees.” The state-owned media in Syria allocated limited coverage to Ali’s death. This can be taken to be indicative of the regime’s views on Ali, which are similar to those it holds on Jamal Suliman, a well-known Syrian actor and a friend of Ali.

Upon his departure from Syria, Suliman was unable to return to Damascus to bid farewell to his ailing mother. He recalled how she would call him “Abu Saleh,” his name in Al-Taghreba, stressing the importance of the series in the collective memory of the old and young alike.

Ali’s love for Damascus was exceptional. In the two-part drama series The Four Seasons, he detailed the daily life of a family in Damascus. His work could easily be used by anyone looking for references about the daily life in Damascus in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.

In 1998, he directed Al-Zeer Salem, which brought him a lot of fame in the Arab world.

Ironically, and against his dying wish, Ali passed away in a hotel in Cairo, while stopping there to prepare for another drama work. Damascus, which he loved, expressed this love back, with thousands from all walks of life attending his funeral, including actors who are known to be loyal to Bashar al-Assad, in a rare scene that Damascus has not witnessed in nearly 12 years.

Restaging History

In addition to his works that tackled social and political issues, Hatem Ali left an important mark on historical drama in the Arab world, narrating important historical events, with his works translated into many languages. In 1998, he directed Al-Zeer Salem, which brought him a lot of fame in the Arab world.

The TV drama addresses the events that sparked a 40-year war following the killing of Udai bin Rabia’s brother, highlighting blood feud, a complex phenomenon that predates Islam in the Arab world.

Ali’s contribution to historical drama includes a series on Saladin and his conquest of Jerusalem, and the history of Muslims in Andalusia, including the rise and the fall of Muslim rule there.

Additionally, he directed a drama series about Omar ibn Al-Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam, documenting his life starting from the age of 18 until his death. His works documented the less-known and less-visited history of the Arab and Muslim worlds, including that of Spain.

Just before he passed away, Hatem Ali renewed his two-year Syrian passport. Upon his death in Cairo, his body was transported to Damascus, the city he loved and depicted in his works, to be laid to rest at Bab al-Sghir Graveyard, uniting Arabs and Syrians in a rare scene, and leaving behind important historical dramas.

Hatem Ali was not an ordinary director, but an original and brilliant one, who felt the pain of his people and understood their history. Just as he turned significant historical events into everlasting memories, Hatem Ali’s memory too will be honored by many in the region that will remember him as an outstanding director and actor.

The complete stoppage of film production and theatrical releases, due to the coronavirus, has spawned several articles and ideas about the future direction of cinema. The inability to work with other people on set (actors, camera, sound, costume, art departments, etc.) seems an insurmountable challenge to current production methods and the massive economic consequences have created a pessimistic outlook on working in what is generally referred to as ‘the industry’ (and in some ways, erroneously since there are multiple types of them around the world- including within the U.S.).

Alternatively, with a significant portion of the world in lockdown, there has been a massive and exponential increase in the online streaming of new, different and classic cinema as well as a potential expansion of audiences, viewers and markets. The history of cinema is filled with examples of new technologies and cataclysmic events, such as war, radically altering both production and distribution methods.

The advent of sound, post-war Italy and the invention of video are three significant periods in film history that resulted in massive shifts in how films were developed and produced. We are now approaching another significant period that could see a different approach to both the production and distribution of cinema.

Changing Production Methods: A Short History

The silent film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) by F.W. Murnau showcases the possibilities of a cinematic and storytelling language that has reached a plateau of beautiful and evocative cinematography with lighting and shadows as well as shot selections (e.g. wide, medium, close-up) that both contribute to and open up the narrative. The performance of this film is understated and effective in capturing emotion through movement and expression with minimal use of inter-titles – in comparison the first sound feature with synchronized talking called The Jazz Singer (1927) was released the same year with a completely different approach.

Moonlit characters in German Director F.W. Murnau’s Hollywood film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

The fictionalized film Singin’ in the Rain (1952) gives a technicolor history lesson of Hollywood’s then past and how the advent of sound created a myriad of new problems: bulky, static microphones that picked up unwanted sounds; previously silent film stars suddenly with unusual or accented voices; and a shift in writing from showing the story to ‘telling’ it. These are some of the more obvious dilemmas that occurred with a sudden and dramatic shift to ‘talking pictures’- the result was a loss of stardom for many silent actors and more profoundly a period of stagnation especially in terms of storytelling and cinematography during the 1930s.

An over-sized mic inside the costume of the heroine in the Gene Kelly technicolor musical Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

The end of WWII lays the foundation for another radical shift in film production methods. Italy had been devastated by the fighting that had seen the Fascists dominate only to be dispersed with the country turning into a battleground between Italian Partisans, invading Nazi regiments and U.S. troops coming from the south. Classical monuments, local neighborhoods and entire cities were left in ruin. London stoically survived, Paris was left psychologically battered but relatively untouched, Berlin was divided by the victors and Japan was rebuilt. Rome and the rest of Italy were largely left to mend themselves. This created a myriad of locations for Italian filmmakers who had been trained in the studio system of the 1930s (ironically with the benevolent association of Vittorio Mussolini who was the second son of the Italian Fascist leader ‘Il Duce’).

Youths walk the war-ravaged landscape in Roberto Rossellini’s groundbreaking Italian Neo-Realist film Rome, Open City (1945)

Using large scale cameras, scripted stories and experienced technicians that used the style of the previous decade mixed with a dramatic use of non-professional actors, the use of actual locations of devastated war-torn cities and a myriad of extra people and sights, this confluence of time, place and talent became known as Italian Neo-Realism, and includes directors such as Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City – 1945) and Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves – 1948). This cast a long and influential shadow over cinema during the next several decades in terms of both production style and the preponderance of themes related to poverty and desperation.

The despondent father and son in Vittorio De Sica’s Italian Neo-Realist classic Bicycle Thieves (1948)

The Sony portapak (1967) is in many ways the start date of the video revolution – a small, affordable video camera with separate VTR (video tape recorder) attached by a cable. The resolution was low by contemporary standards and it originally only recorded in black and white but the technology was still seized upon by artists and filmmakers.

The ability to pick up a camera, shoot and see whatever you wanted without the (burdensome and expensive) process of learning the art of cinematography and waiting for several days to see the footage, appealed to visual artists who alternated between using it for documenting performance art and as part of the work itself.

The Korean artist Nam Jun Paik famously created works that made use of video monitors in live multi-media performances such as TV Bra For Living Sculpture (1969) as well as large-scale gallery installations. The early video had its aesthetic despite its limitations – often hand-held with extreme contrast and sometimes brash colors.

Considered a pioneer of ‘video art’ this is one of Nam June Paik’s large-scale installations called Electronic Superhighway (1995, fifty-one channel video installation)

Video did not immediately replace film (in fact 16mm documentaries were still the standard in the 1970s and common in the 1980s)- but it has eventually come to dominate every form of Film and TV production just over half a century after the portapak.

Virtually every documentary is now shot on video (it has long been the best choice in terms of cost, accessibility, and flexibility), and almost every feature film is now shot in high-end digital video (albeit in the ‘cinematic’ style of traditional 35mm). Ironically the contemporary genre of ‘artist film’ to be projected in a gallery is the one area where 16mm or 35mm film is now used (mostly as a defining aesthetic to differentiate itself from what is now the dominant medium of video).

We have been living in an electronic age for several decades and home video has also exploded and spread from videotapes (the 1980s-1990s) to DVDs (2000s) and more recent instantaneous streaming.

More Change To Come?

When larger crewed productions resume, the sheer volume of canceled or delayed projects seems likely to be drastically reduced due to several factors such as minimized or canceled budgets, compromised locations and the inability to travel to certain regions or countries. Co-productions between countries has been the norm in the 21st century in terms of access to lucrative tax incentives for shooting in a certain state or country but this will likely change. There will be enormous political pressure and accountability in terms of funding and grants, and potentially difficult questions in terms of human logistics as well as things like location insurance and access to buildings and landmarks.

In this context a new kind of cinema is ripe to be born both in terms of production and distribution; museums and galleries could take on a larger role in financing and promoting feature films and there could potentially be a kind of re-convergence between art and cinema.

The immediate inclination to create films without a crew points back to some of the early formalist work done by visual artists such as Hans Richter in Germany and Fernand Leger in France (who would take their painterly style and apply it to the new medium of cinema in the 1920s), or by the previously mentioned ‘video artists’ of the 1960s and 1970s where lo-fi works created a new kind of aesthetic. There are numerous examples of filmmakers working this way already and the current conditions could accelerate these trends, such as increased CGI and animated elements, or collaboration that is structured around a post-production exchange of footage, clips, music composition and interactivity.

The slowdown in the pace of life has also allowed many people to fill up their time with reading, listening and watching films again as opposed to simply flicking through clips (something that is surprisingly common in the 21^st century – even among students of film).

Streaming sites have been enormously successful over the last half-decade and sites such as Mubi and the Criterion Channel offer more of a world cinema perspective alongside ‘classic’ Hollywood fare. The current streaming bonanza could potentially benefit a direct distribution model for tens of thousands of films (through new and different streaming channels) that have played at film festivals but had a limited reach to their target audience.

The concept of theatrical distribution has also been a hot topic for several years provoking much discussion and writing – the idea of going to the cinema as a kind of over-priced specialist event (like the Opera) or supporting your local ‘independent’ theatre that seats less than 100 as a kind of good-will gesture, have both been exposed as flawed business models that have been struggling to keep afloat.

Many smaller cinemas in Europe and North America have closed in the last decade and those that have survived are often pushed into watered-down programming choices in an attempt to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, while essentially offering a version of the same content that crowds the larger cinemas.

A decline in large-scale film productions could benefit filmmakers who may be shooting a more intimate and new kind of cinema. In many ways streaming sites, film festivals and museum (cinematheque) programs have already been the last bastion in offering an informed, diverse and experimental choice of feature films outside of the multiplex cinemas. Now may be a time to increase collaboration (streaming festivals online), look for innovation (broadened types of hybrid releases) and even switch economic models (tailored distribution).

Paradoxically the global lockdown could potentially create a new, more organic interest, and resurgence in the communal experience that promotional ‘entertainment’ centers and the non-profit independent cinema have been struggling with.