TIME SUSPENDED [Uitgestelde Tijd]
an exhibition for Witte de With, Rotterdam, Kunsthall Bergen, Norway and Netwerk Galerij, Aalst
List of works in the exhibition:
(titles marked with an * will NOT be showing in Bergen)
Continually running:
Ici et ailleurs
Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville
50 min., France, 1974
The French Central Committee for the Palestinian Revolution invited Jean-Luc
Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin (then known as the 'Dziga Vertov Group') to film
the Palestinian refugee camps on the West Bank in the Gaza Strip, Hebron and
Lebanon, which they did in February 1970. On their return to France they had
a title for the film but no fixed form for it. Four years later, 'Jusqu'à
la victoire' was re-named 'Ici et ailleurs'. This was the time span the film-maker
granted himself to fully get to grips with the intricacies of the meanings of
his own images. What initially started as a study on life in the camps ended
up as a reflection on the influence of film in the writing of history. Godard
and Miéville (who had subsequently replaced Gorin) interweave the past
and the present, film and television, sound and image and confront a French
family (here) with the Palestinian Fedayin (elsewhere).
imovie [one]: The Agony of Silence
Els Opsomer
12 min., Belgium, 2003
Els Opsomer created this video using amateur software iLife. It is a lyrical
video letter for her friends, an introspective tale of her short visit to Palestine.
The photos she took there (of which some are in the book TIME SUSPENDED) are
subjected to a detailed investigation. Subtitles reveal the content of the letter,
where she ponders on how you can keep your human dignity intact in an area where
violence is the order of the day. The contemplative atmosphere is enhanced by
the soundtrack by Stefaan Quix.
a.m./p.m.
Herman Asselberghs
45 min., Belgium, 2004
In A.M./P.M. there are no human beings in sight. Photos of cosmopolitan cityscapes
are systematically scanned and display views of office blocks, flats, dark corners,
illuminated windows and skyscrapers. On a soundtrack you hear a woman's voice
recounting her story and that of the world; about images of today, about a journey.
Her monologue is a fictionalised version of the impressions that Asselberghs
picked up during his trip to Palestine. He consciously chose for the film to
show the explosive and mediatized situation in the region by taking an absolutely
minimalist audiovisual approach. The fact that he creates an detached view by
using a female voice instead of his own, coupled with deviating from a run-of-the-mill
documentary style, produces a complex approach to his ideas and feelings on
the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The soundtrack was composed by David Shea,
the artist Claude Wampler did the voice-over and the photographic images were
taken by Els Opsomer.
Transit
Taysir Batniji
6 min., Egypt/Palestine, 2004
For the last few years, most especially since the second Intifada broke out
in 2001, the Rafah border has been the only way for people from the Gaza Strip
to leave or enter the region. People travel via Cairo airport, men traveling
alone separated from the other travelers, and under heightened Egyptian guard.
All the travelers encounter each other in an open-air transit zone in Rafah,
waiting for the moment when the Israelis will permit them transit to Gaza. This
wait can last from a day to several weeks.
Even though it is forbidden to take photos in the transit zones between Egypt
and Gaza, Taysir Batniji secretly photographed his journey to the Gaza Strip
in 2004. The work Transit presents these images and reflects on the extremely
difficult conditions under which Palestinians must travel.
Displayed on screens of own choice:
De Palestijnen (*)
Johan van der Keuken
45 min., The Netherlands, 1975
In 1975, on the eve of the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war, Johan van der
Keuken travelled to South Lebanon at the request of the Dutch Palestine Committee.
He filmed the rural folk who were under fire from both sides: bombarded by the
Israeli army and under attack from the local feudal warlords. Van der Keuken
showed the Palestinian conflict as a class struggle. He drew parallels with
the class distinctions in European society which gave rise to National Socialism
and anti Semitism and which, in the Arab world, have created an explosive element
for the Palestinians, who are the new dispossessed. In 1975, Johan van der Keuken
regarded the Palestinian struggle, aimed at returning to their own country,
from the perspective of forming a Palestinian democracy in which Jews and Palestinians
could live and work in harmony.
House
Amos Gitai
50 min., Israel, 1979
A House in Jerusalem
Amos Gitai
98 min., Israel, 1998
In 'House' dated 1979, and 'A House in Jerusalem' from 1998, Amos Gitai once
again reveals his talent as an archeologist in time and space. In the first
film we see interviews with construction workers as well as current and former
occupants of a villa undergoing renovations in Jerusalem. The new owner is a
Jewish Professor who has taken over the residence from a Palestinian Doctor
who, without so much as a by your leave, was divested of ownership when the
Jewish state was proclaimed. Twenty years down the line, Gitai returned to the
same address to repeat the process. Since then the neighbourhood has changed
and the house enlarged, and again we hear the comments of building workers and
Jewish residents. The son of the original Palestinian owner keeps memories alive
of the family home. The film-maker links microcosm to macrocosm and creates
a component in which the complicated history of the site reflects the complicated
history of the country. In short, he reveals that problems in one section of
the territory mirror the problems of the entire territory.
La Mémoire Fertile (*)
Michel Khleifi
99 min., Belgium / Palestine, 1980
This is the first film about Palestinians to be made by a Palestinian in his
own country. The story about two women in a male-dominated political conflict
is also the story of two generations. Farah Hatoum lives as a widow with her
children and grandchildren, while Sahar Khalifeh works as a novelist on the
West Bank. Despite their starkly different backgrounds, the mother and the intellectual
are engaged in the same struggle for freedom and dignity.
Journal de campagne
Amos Gitai
83 min., Israël / Palestina, 1982
'Journal de campagne' covers a visit to the Occupied Territories before and
after the war with Lebanon. Very little has changed since. Gitai filmed soldiers
at check points, colonists on hillsides, young children throwing stones and
choking on tear gas as well as Palestinian villages under curfew. In keeping
with all his films, this road block movie homes in on the long and lateral traveling.
By stark contrast to the restrictions on freedom of movement for both Palestinians
and Israelis, Gitai's mind is continually in motion. In the words of the film-maker,
"film helps us to understand that the world cannot be reduced into simplistic,
two-dimensional images."
Aqabat-Jaber, Passing Through (*)
Eyal Sivan
81 min., Israel / Palestine, 1987
Aqabat-Jaber, Peace With No Return (*)
Eyal Sivan
61 min., Israel / Palestin, 1995
Aqabat-Jaber is one of the sixty Palestinian refugee camps that were set up
by the United Nations in the early 1950s. With an estimated 65,000 inhabitants
it was once the largest camp in the Middle East. When war broke out in 1967,
about 95% of the population fled to the other side of the Jordan and the refugee
camp, just three kilometres to the south of Jericho, turned into a ghost town.
Eyal Sivan filmed the camp for the first time in 1987, just before the Intifada
began. He tells how what started as a temporary solution ended up as a permanent
way of life. He returned in 1995, on the day after the Israeli army had forced
total evacuation of the areas surrounding the camp. Following the signing of
the Oslo Agreements in 1993, the three thousand occupants in the camp officially
became the responsibility of the Palestinian Authorities. Unfortunately, the
occupants have not seen any changes. They remain refugees and they still cannot
return to the villages from where their parents once fled.
Introduction to the End of an Argument (Speaking for Oneself…/Speaking
for Others…)
Jayce Salloum & Elia Suleiman
43 min., 1990
In this video, the Lebanese-Canadian film-maker Jayce Salloum and the Palestinian
film-maker Elia Suleiman show us the distorted media reports that dominate about
the Arab world and the Intifada. Clips from American, European and Israeli films
are contrasted with their own footage and with news pictures from the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip. Their close reading of the systematic media spin exposes
the racist and ideological prejudices that westerners have been subjected to
for years. The repetitive nature of this media orientalism seems, furthermore,
to match what is a disturbing foreign policy.
Cantique des Pierres (*)
Michel Khleifi
105 min., Belgium / Palestine, 1990
In his typical stylistic combination of documentary and fiction, Khleiffi tells
the story of two Palestinians who fell in love in the 1960s. They meet each
other again after a separation by force of circumstance of 18 years. He spent
16 years of his life in an Israeli prison cell, and she emigrated to the US.
They meet each other again when the Intifada - an unequal struggle of stones
against guns, of children against soldiers - is at its most intense. They both
have to get used to each other again, but also to the new situation, hesitantly
searching and putting out feelers in a still uncertain state of affairs.
Conversation Nord-Sud
Simone Bitton & Catherine Poitevin
47 min., France, 1993
While the first Gulf War was still raging, the French film critic Serge Daney
wrote about the 'typical French/Arab Art of Conversation' and how he was no
longer able to pick up this customary way of conversing with his Arab friends
again. This film provides the right setting and he is in conversation with the
Palestinian historian Elias Sanbar. Watching personal and mediatized images,
they compare notes on the parallels and differences of their respective lives.
For years the two writers have lived within walking distance from each other.
Daney talks about the Parisian neighbourhood where his mother raised him. Sanbar,
on the other hand, shows the only photo he has of himself as a child with his
mother in the family home in Haifa. He was just one year old and peace was abruptly
shattered in that very year by the events of 1948.
News Time
Azza El-Hassan
52 min., Palestine, 2001
While her friends and colleagues were busy covering the second Intifada and
making news for the major TV networks, the Palestinian documentary maker Azza
el-Hassan was filming the people in her street in Ramallah. She shows the impact
the situation has on relationships that go back many years. Relationships between
lovers, families and relatives, neighbours and friends. She follows the children
on her own backyard, children from the refugee camps eager to protest. She takes
an inward look to see how she deals with the reality at hand: through the cameo
stories of the people around her, whether acquaintances or not.
Three Centimetres Less
Azza El-Hassan
60 min., Palestine, 2003
The World Health Organization called the micro-nutritional shortages of the
Palestinian people 'hidden hunger'. It is the price they are paying for two
years of Intifada, with high-security check points, restrictions and curfews.
In the majority of cases the systematic undernourishment is invisible. But not
when you look at statistics that show that nowadays children are three centimetres
shorter than before the Intifada. In this video, Azza el-Hassan reveals the
'hidden hunger' for love and security by two extremely different Palestinian
women. Hagar is a seventy-two year old housewife and something of a legend in
Ramallah. Ra'eda is the daughter of one of the hijackers of a Sabena flight
who was killed by the Israeli army in 1975.
FILMS by STAR 2000 / DAR FILMS
The Inner Tour
Ra'anan Alexandrowicz
97 min., Israel/Palestine 2000
Live from Palestine
Rashid Mashawari
57 min., Palestine, 2001
Number Zero
Saed Andoni
27 min., Palestine, 2002
'A crazy country is a good place to experiment', says Raed Andoni. He is a film
producer and runs Star 2000, the Palestinian production company in Ramallah.
His West Bank passport puts him at the bottom of the ladder as far as freedom
of movement is concerned, but places him at the top for inventiveness. The Star
2000 documentaries show small daily occurrences that make life and filming extremely
problematic and which we will never get to see on mainstream news. In 'Live
from Palestine', Rashid Mashawari reports on a radio station in Gaza during
the latest Intifada. The film pays homage to journalists covering the Palestinian
uprising, not the journalists working for major TV channels, but the ones on
the radio whose effect is like a breath of air for the local residents. In 'Number
Zero', Raed's brother Saed Andoni reports from his favourite barber's shop in
Bethlehem that acts as a live news station during yet another incursion from
the occupying army. 'The Inner Tour' is a report by the Israeli film-maker Ra'anan
Alexandrowicz about a group of Palestinians who travel by bus through Israel.
It is the only way many Palestinians can make a fleeting return to their country
of old.