The Center for Palestine Studies is proud to present the launch of its new film initiative, Palestine Cuts.
Palestine Cuts is a new space for emerging and established filmmakers and video-artists to present and discuss their work in an engaging and encouraging environment. It promotes stimulating audiovisual projects (documentary and fiction film, video, installations, etc.) that challenge existing conventions and offer critical and alternative views about Palestine and Palestinians. Palestine Cuts also is interested in the broader regional and global socio-political, economic and cultural context of which Palestine is an intrinsic part. In this sense, we hope to bring Palestine-related work into conversation with other Arab and international filmmakers and audiovisual artists. Through screenings, discussions, master classes as well as open and closed workshops for work in progress and finished projects, Palestine Cuts hopes to attract a wide array of artists, producers, curators, critics, scholars, activists and others interested in committed audiovisual work that opens up new spaces for imagination.
For this very special opening event we have selected Off Frame: A Journey Through Militant Cinema, the first feature film by Palestinian filmmaker and producer Mohanad Yaqubi.
Off Frame follows the history of the Palestine Film Unit (PFU), the filmic arm of the Palestinian revolution, between 1968 and 1982. The film tells the story of the unit established by Sulafa Jadallah, Hani Johariweh and Mustafa Abu Ali, following their life and activities in the turbulent period of the Revolution in Amman between 1967 and 1971. The Unit's films drew inspiration from different global cinematic movements, such as social realism, neo-realism, the French new wave and the New York underground, and was influenced by the political and social atmosphere, not only in the Middle East, but in the rest of the world.
The PFU was part of an underground film industry that received the support of many leading filmmakers, including Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Jean Genet, Chris Marker, Julio Garcia Espinosa, Santiago Alvarez, Koji Wakamatsu and Masao Adachi.
Mohanad Yaqubi is a filmmaker and one of the founders of Idioms Film. He teaches film studies at the International Art Academy in Palestine. He is part of Subversive Films, a curatorial and research collective that focuses on militant film practices. Yaqubi is a Producer of internationally screened films such as Infiltrators by Khaled Jarrar, Pink Bullet by Ramzi Hazboun, and a co-producer of Habibi by Suzan Youcif and Though I Know the River is Dry by Omar R. Hamilton. He is also the creator and producer of the project Suspended Time, an Anthology film by nine filmmakers reflecting on 20 years after the signing of the Oslo peace accords. His latest short No Exit, written in collaboration with Omar Kheiry, had its premier at the Dubai International Film Festival.
April 30, 2015:
Opening Screening and Discussion with Mohaned Yaqubi
By Invitation Only