Sometimes you feel out of place, but being in the middle is not a loss. It’s the point from where you can see two worlds, while others see only one. I feel I’m a crescent that doesn’t need to become sun to shine. 

These were the words of Tamara Al Zool, the 23 years old who goes by her art name TÄRA. She has reached millions of Italians through the mainstream TV-program Le Iene in May with a monologue on identity that soon became viral on social media. 

A week later, her debut EP “Zefiro” went out on a date that could not be more important for her: May 15, the day of the Nakba, a day and a history she has always known from her parents and grandparents who lived it. Today, touring Italy and Europe with concerts and events, she is taking on the Italian music scene with a style that, according to Rolling Stone MENA, “Italy has no category for”. 

To learn more about her artistic journey, UntoldMag sat with TÄRA for an exclusive interview. 

 

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Born in Italy to Palestinian parents, TÄRA is making waves with her own genre. She calls it Arab&B, a new type of R&B where she mixes Arabic, English, Italian (and at times also French) in such a natural way that one would not imagine that at one point in her life, she had challenges in feeling her identity.  It would not seem so either when, two years ago, at her very first appearance on TV for the music program X Factor Italia, she made it very clear why she was there: “I came to X-factor to represent, to be a voice”, she said, wearing a keffiyeh as she performed Ariana Grande’s song 7 Rings with some parts reinterpreted in Arabic. 

Palestine – and all that comes with it, from the ongoing genocide to resistance and memory –, the Arabic speaking world, and the Mediterranean as a whole are constant themes in her songs, through which the listener can soon appreciate that TÄRA makes music with universal messages. Like in “Diaspora”, which draws a line between the Palestinians expelled from their land and the Southern Italians who leave their homes behind out of necessity. 

In the “Petra” music video, shot in Tunis, within 3 minutes the music takes the listener through a romantic journey from Maghreb to Mashreq. Not to mention her rendition of Ya Helwa Ciao, her Arabic rendition of Bella Ciao, the song adopted by the Italian Resistance calling for freedom and an end to fascism, so popular among Palestinians (and generally among minorities fighting for their rights). 

Stefano Nanni: Identity is a recurrent topic in your songs. But who is TÄRA before and after becoming the artist, and has that helped in affirming your own identity?

TÄRA: The beauty of all that I’m living is that before, during and after, it’s always me. I can definitely say that my public persona is not a ‘character’ but genuinely who I am, expressing my values without fear. 

It has not always been easy to belong to different worlds at the same time, but I learned with time that being in the middle is an additional perspective rather than a deficiency. And I think I grew in awareness and courage to translate my innate self into art. Being able to represent all these middle lands is certainly not an easy task, but it’s like my whole world is made of many different points of view. 

For example, in the song “Petra” we chose Tunisia as a destination because it perfectly encompasses my multifaceted world, highlighting the beautiful similarities among seemingly different cultures and transcending societal divisions.

SN: Still on identity, in the very powerful music video “Beauty standards”, you seem to affirm something also about the type of aesthetic you want to embrace. 

T: With this EP I am going through a whole journey, including certain beauty standards because it is a theme that I have personally experienced, having felt ‘not beautiful enough’ according to certain norms imposed by society. 

I am sure many other girls have experienced and continue to experience this type of ‘discomfort’ – that’s what I call it. With that video I wanted to represent, through a short monologue, how the beauty you have today, even if it may not conform to mainstream models represented by the media, actually carries history and tradition. 

It is important to acknowledge and remember that the people before you have fought to make you be here, so you have to bring these unique features, with pride, not shame.

SN: Do you feel somehow that your music is able to represent people who often had no one to identify with? And can it contribute to more unity?

T: Let’s say that my goal is precisely to represent those often unrepresented: The too many Italians with foreign roots caught in the middle like me. If in my own small way, my music succeeded in attracting even two or three persons who feel I am doing something positive for them, then I am very happy and I hope it will go even better. 

I don’t want to sound too utopian, but it would be nice to get to a point where we don’t even have to make all these divisions among all of us anymore, and then be able to live in unity simply as human beings. I have a strong desire for my music to foster unity among all people, dreaming a world without such divisions, where cultural beauty is celebrated by all humans. I hope that my art will play a role in all this.

SN: How are you handling success? Did your direct relations with fans change by becoming so popular? 

T: When it comes to my relationship with fans I think it is even improving, as I continue to live the direct connection with them through social media, receiving immense support and love. I think it is a very beautiful way of living this experience. 

At the same time, it is obvious that social media can be a double-edged sword, as the toxicity of certain users brings also a lot of negativity. Sometimes it’s hard to confront that, especially hate speech and comments about Palestine, but I am learning to use indifference as a more effective strategy, because in the end, those who want to hate stick to anything in front of them.

Generally, about success, I think I’m living a fairly quiet relationship with it, actually. I see it as a means, I have the privilege to access a wide audience, to share the messages I want to transmit, especially about Palestine and the genocide we’re still suffering. So why not do it? Indeed, in certain places like on mainstream TV there seem to be certain rules about not talking about certain topics, but I am approaching them, as much as possible, with my naturalness and my identity, without hiding anything. 

SN: On the power to use popularity to take a stance, recently in Italy there were some controversies about the words of Francesco De Gregori, a very popular singer, who said that he “feels embarrassed when an artist takes a political position”. What do you think of that?

T: I have honestly not read what he said, and I don’t want to decontextualize his words, but my opinion is a totally different one: I want my art to give a voice to the voiceless and to minorities. 

As an artist, I believe I have the power and responsibility to educate younger generations and empower those who might otherwise feel silenced. I don’t want to live in a world where somebody grows up fearing that exposing themself is something that leads them to something negative. I don’t want that, I want something different.

The post Giving Italy a Sound It Has No Category For: An Interview with Palestinian-Italian Singer TÄRA appeared first on Untold.

***

Sometime in the 1960s, the famous zajjal (Lebanese folk poet) Zein Shu’ayb (1922 – 2005) from south Lebanon performed with his troupe Zaghloul al-Damour, a poetic duel that was filmed and broadcast on Lebanese television. 

The recording survived and decades later, like many of Zein’s performances, it resurfaced on YouTube and was remixed on hip-hop and rap beats, circulating again in new videos. Listening to it today, the rhythm feels familiar to us, almost like a rap song, with its fast delivery, verbal challenge and repeated lines. Yet Zein Shu’ayb’s words echo a much older poetic tradition, which was performed in village gatherings before large mass audiences. 

In these various remixes, vernacular poetry that existed for centuries circulate easily on digital media, showing how public storytelling changes form without disappearing. Before hashtags and social media, history in the Arab world was already performed, debated and shared in public through voices like these.

History does not live in archives or behind campus walls. It is a public good — accessible, open and shared. It is an active and living force involving personal and communal practices that extend beyond researchers and university professors. This is the essence of “public history,” which brings the past into our streets and digital spaces.

Today, the accessibility and circulation of information define our age. It lives in coffee shops and museums, on theatre stages and YouTube channels, in family albums and neighbourhood archives. A growing popular interest in the past has given rise to thousands of podcasts and social media channels each year. As digital technologies make it easier to share interpretations of history, it becomes increasingly important to reflect on how historical knowledge is produced and communicated to wider audiences.

In the Arabic speaking world, these practices long predate the term “public history.” Moving between contemporary examples and older traditions, from the Hakawati to Zajal and Qawl, communities have transmitted memory, identity and political commentary through public performance for centuries. What is today described as “public history” is, in many ways, a continuation of these older traditions — now unfolding in digital and institutional spaces as well revealing how deeply rooted these practices are in the region.

Making History (More) Public 

The term “public history” emerged in the United States in the 1970s, when Robert (Bob) Kelley, a historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, used it to describe a new training programme aimed at expanding career opportunities beyond formal education. Over time, the term came to refer more broadly to historical activities conducted outside universities, including curated exhibitions, walking tours and other forms of engagement.

Although initially connected to Western networks in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe, public history has become increasingly international and diverse. The popularisation of the term in the Western world does not mean that the practice originated there. Communities across the Global South have long engaged in forms of public history. More recently, these practices have been formalised through national associations such as the Rede Brasileira de História Pública (2012), the Italian Association for Public History (2017) and the Japanese Association of Public History (2018).

Defining public history is not straightforward. It can take different meanings in different contexts. At its core, however, it seeks to make historical narratives and heritage more accessible while encouraging communities to participate in shaping them through family archives, local initiatives and collective practices.

History in the Public Space 

Initially understood as history produced outside academia, public history often takes place in cultural institutions such as libraries and museums. When these institutions focus on historical topics, their outreach and engagement activities become forms of public history.

History museums have long been part of the cultural fabric of the Arab world. The Egyptian Museum (founded in 1858) and the National Museum in Lebanon (founded in 1942) can be seen as early institutional examples of public history through their public programming.

More recent initiatives are also accessible online, including the Women and Memory Forum in Egypt (since 1995) and the Palestinian Museum (since 2018). Public history can also be displayed and performed in theatres, on walls and in streets through guided tours and festivals. In its diverse forms, it creates spaces that connect society with material culture and heritage.

Communicating with the Public 

Making history public means communicating it beyond specialist audiences, reaching those who may not engage with academic books or research.

Public history employs a wide range of media, including exhibitions, documentary films, guided tours, board games, comics, graphic novels, websites and newspapers. With the rise of digital technologies, it has expanded into social media, podcasts and online collections.

In the Arab world, examples include the Qatar National Library’s podcast series and the community archiving initiative Keys to Palestine. Individual initiatives also contribute to this landscape, such as Charles Al Hayek’s Heritage and Roots channel and his LBCI television programme “بقصة لبنان” (“Lebanon in a Story”), now in its fifth season with co-presenter Yazbek Wehbe.

YouTube channels and podcasts have become particularly prominent platforms. The Al Jazeera+ series Al Jahbaz features content creator Bisher Najjar re-enacting moments from the history of the Greater Syria region through performance and satire, with references listed in each video description.

As with cultural and media institutions more broadly, political agendas can influence which historical narratives are curated and how they are presented to the public.

Public Participation 

Public history is by definition a collective process. Exhibitions, digital platforms and archives require time, skills and collaboration among curators, designers, educators and media professionals.

Some initiatives extend participation further through “co-creation,” involving members of the public in collecting and preserving objects, photographs and oral testimonies. Citizen committees may design and lead projects about their neighbourhoods or specific events.

In this way, public history can help restore agency and power to people. Rather than relying solely on national discourses constructed by states and authorities — which often marginalise certain communities — it may begin with smaller stories that complicate larger narratives.

One recent initiative in the Arab world is Shubra’s archive, developed in Cairo’s Shubra neighbourhood to document and share local history with its residents.

Many participatory initiatives rely on oral history. The American University of Beirut’s Ras Beirut project documents the history of a neighbourhood through residents’ voices. Other initiatives have recorded the social history of Palestine, including the Al Rowat storytelling platform, Nakba through oral history, and accounts of leading female figures, persecuted queer figures and political exiles. Some participatory projects operate “under the radar” to avoid external scrutiny or surveillance.

Oral history is often seen as a means of empowering marginalised and under-represented communities to influence and enrich official narratives. It also fosters critical engagement with contemporary social and political issues rooted in the past. The early Arab Nationalist Movement used the term tathqif to describe engagement with the public that combined education with political awareness.

An Ancient Practice 

Public history practices in Lebanon and the Levant can be traced back centuries, including mediaeval traditions and earlier Jahiliyya poetry that recorded and performed history within communities and at larger gatherings.

Three examples are particularly illustrative: the Hakawati, al-Zajal and al-Qawl.

The Hakawati is a storyteller who recounts tales from Arab heritage in coffee shops or open-air settings using vernacular Arabic. While traditionally male, women such as Shalabieh al Hakawatieh (Sally Shalabi) now also practise this art.

Similar traditions exist across the Arab world under different names, including Nabaṭī poetry in the Arabian Peninsula, Humayni poetry in Yemen, Malhūn in Morocco and Dubeit in Sudan. These traditions share features such as vernacular language, collective participation, historical transmission and public performance.

Al-Zajal, a Lebanese vernacular poetry tradition inscribed on UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, is another example. One early documented case is attributed to Sulayman al-Ashluhi, a Christian monk from Akkar, who composed verses after the fall of Tripoli in 1289, recording the capture of the County of Tripoli (1102-1289), one of the Crusader states, by the Mamluks. In doing so, it recorded historical events in a form accessible to local audiences.

While al-Zajal refers specifically to the Lebanese folk poetry tradition, al-Qawl encompasses spoken word practices more broadly across the Arab world. Both traditions share several defining principles.

First is the use of vernacular language. Qawl is rarely written in classical, standardised Arabic, as its aim is to reach broad audiences, particularly in rural areas. It expresses local traditions and dialects, in contrast to the formal literacy often associated with urban centres. This gives Qawl a popular dimension and facilitates the transmission of knowledge in forms that resonate culturally and socially.

Second is the use of rhythmic stanzas and rhyme. All documented examples of Qawl employ this technique. As a means of publicly delivering knowledge, Qawl adopts strategies attentive to emotion and collective experience. Its musicality enhances memorability and echoes earlier literary traditions such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, Homeric poetry and Ugaritic texts, where rhythm supported oral transmission.

Closely connected to this is the central role of historical knowledge. History is a defining component of Qawl. Even when idealised, evocations of the past express identity, pride, community cohesion and socio-political satire. By embedding history in vernacular poetry, communities create local methods of transmitting memory from one generation to the next through public performance. Qawl has been used to record events, mark turbulent periods and commemorate political celebrations.

Finally, Qawl is defined by its public manifestation. Individuals or collectives perform as a troupe before large audiences, often in the form of poetic challenges accompanied by musical instruments. The practice promotes dialogue and acknowledges differences. Its verses may evoke tolerance and shared identity, but can also recount coercion and violence. Spontaneous, informal and emotionally charged, Qawl enables historical knowledge to be experienced collectively and retained across generations.

Through these vernacular traditions, history remains a shared and embodied practice — performed, contested and transmitted in public long before it was named as such.

Public History in Arabic 

Translating “public history” into Arabic is not straightforward. The term may be rendered as Tarikh Aam, but alternatives such as Mahali (local), Ahli (people’s) or Mujtama’i (community) capture different nuances.

The English expression combines both making history accessible and engaging in history with the public. Arabic allows more subtle distinctions between these dimensions. The verb تأريخ (to historicise) differs from the noun تاريخ (history) only by the addition of a hamza, reflecting the tension between history as inheritance and history as an active process.

If one wants to play with the Arabic language when translating the expression “public history” to reflect both its active and passive dimensions, one can simply add parentheses to the hamza, to show the possibility of both active historicization and the sharing of history in one word: 

تا)ء(ريخ 

As for the term “public” in Arabic, in the linguistic heritage of colloquial Levantine and broader Arabic-speaking lands, the term Ya ‘Ammi (literally “Oh kinsman”) is used to denote a sense of community. This also has common roots with the West Semitic “M” or “Am” (Canaanite, Hebrew, Phoenician), which denotes the idea of a group or people. As such, this mirrors some meanings associated with the term “public” in English. 

For other Arabic-speaking practitioners, the terms Ahli/Mahali (people’s/local) or Mujtama’i (community) feel more grounded in people’s everyday lives, in contrast with Āmm, which can also mean “general” and is not as commonly used in the Egyptian dialect and context, for instance. Ultimately, whether one opts for the more formal translation Tarikh Aam or decides to be more playful with the Arabic language, this article hopes to inspire more public conversations and discussions across Arabic-speaking communities. 

Why Public History? 

Many practices in the Arab world correspond to what is now termed “public history,” some dating back centuries. Using the term can help support and empower those engaged in these practices.

Public history reconnects scholars, archivists, curators, designers, podcasters, tour guides, heritage specialists and community groups who may otherwise remain separated by geography, discipline or institution. Rather than distinguishing between academic and non-academic, professional and amateur, it encourages collaboration to produce richer and more inclusive histories.

Finally, instead of distinguishing between academic and non-academic, professional and amateur, public history encourages universities, scholars and researchers to connect with local groups, communities and practitioners to produce a richer and more inclusive history.

It reminds us that history is not confined to the archive. It is shaped, performed and shared in public.

The post From Hakawati to Hashtags: Making History Public in the Arab World appeared first on Untold.

Known for its motto, “a radio open to all the sounds, colours, and vibrations of the universe,” Açık Radyo has been on air since 1995 and has long been a pillar of freedom of thought and speech in Turkey, producing thousands of programs across journalism, culture, science, and the arts.

The story of Açık Radyo exemplifies how, over thirty years of activity, independent journalism has consistently challenged dominant nationalist and state-centric narratives, providing a space for emancipation from various forms of oppression. Throughout these uninterrupted decades of broadcasting, Açık Radyo has documented Turkey’s sociopolitical transformations, internal and geopolitical transitions, and the rise of government repression—which, on 11 October 2024, led to the revocation of its FM broadcast license by RTÜK (Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council), the state media regulator, and the beginning of a still-ongoing legal process.

The reason one of Turkey’s most important independent radio stations was shut down was its use of the word genocide in a program about the Ottoman-era discussing the events affecting the Armenian population in 1915. This incident highlights how censorship against independent media outlets has intensified in recent years in Turkey; how history is often instrumentalized in contemporary politics; and how, even in the most repressive historical periods, censorship has never fully succeeded in silencing voices of dissent.

In fact, soon after the revocation, Açık Radyo transitioned to streaming, renaming itself Apaçık Radyo (“Wide Open Radio”).

Thirty Years of Programming

Conceived by Ömer Madra, a well-known intellectual in Turkey, Açık Radyo was founded in 1995 as a private company by 92 shareholders. The intellectual formation and professional careers of its founders often followed similar paths. Most had started their academic careers in the universities of Istanbul or Ankara during times when campuses were central to student politicization. After witnessing the violent suppression of revolutionary leftist ideology following the 1980s coup, many of these individuals began to embrace a new culture of denouncing threats to democratic principles and supporting emerging social movements.

The ban on all political activities following the harsh repression of the coup forced many intellectuals—some formerly affiliated with political organizations—to rethink their strategies for collective action. Publishing, civil activism, demonstrations and petitions allowed a different model of critical culture to emerge. Thanks to numerous initiatives that grew increasingly popular in subsequent years, a different experience of political engagement became possible—one that questioned Turkey’s state-centric apparatus in favour of promoting a pluralistic society.

The founding of Açık Radyo is a sign of this transition to a new phase of collective political engagement, structured within the logic of cultural and associative public outreach projects. Following the end of the state monopoly on broadcasting in the 1990s and the legalization of private stations, the idea was to create a space that went beyond information—serving as a channel for cultural dissemination and as a forum for expression and dialogue among various local and international associations and initiatives.

In the 1990s, Açık Radyo was the first station to support emerging LGBTQ+ movements. It monitored and denounced rapid urban transformation, real estate speculation, and the severe socio-environmental consequences of the mega-projects launched during the AKP (Justice and Development Party)’s 23-year rule. It also served as a coordination hub for aid and information from earthquake-affected regions, both during the Marmara earthquake in 1999 and during the more recent 2023 earthquakes in Maraş (which also impacted northern Syria).

With a constant focus on public protests—from environmental movements to Pride marches, from feminist struggles to the well-known 2013 Gezi Park protests— Açık Radyo has hosted vibrant debates that, while often limited to specific metropolitan circles, consistently condemned arrests, police brutality, and growing repression against dissent.

“Açık Radyo was not just a radio station. It was—and still is—a commons. A place where the world and Turkey could speak to each other through poetry, dissent, music, mourning, resistance, and care,” İlksen Mavituna, the current editor-in-chief of the radio, explains. 

Similarly, Sevilay Çelenk, Member of Parliament for Diyarbakır told the Grand National Assembly: “Açık Radyo continued to broadcast with a public service ethos in a radio landscape that had lost its power and importance in the face of new media. It did so with very rich content and set an example of radio broadcasting on a global scale, inspiring the world”.

Its 30 years of broadcasting have produced an alternative historical archive of Turkey—one that has consistently promoted dialogue, respect, and collective and individual dignity, both locally and internationally. This material reveals the vitality of grassroots initiatives and everyday acts of resistance that depict a far more dynamic society than the one often represented abroad through purely institutional lenses.

License Revocation

It is no coincidence that Açık Radyo was targeted over a historically charged topic. This is one of many examples of how history is increasingly weaponized to promote nationalist narratives and policies. Nor is it coincidental that the revocation occurred during a peak of repression against media, social networks, publishing, and independent journalism.

Those involved in these sectors in Turkey are acutely aware of the power of words—every phrase or rhetorical choice can be used by censors to justify prosecution. Even drawings or cartoons addressing sensitive issues—especially related to religion or nationalism—can trigger hate campaigns. Moreover, these repressive conditions foster self-censorship, further shrinking spaces for criticism.

There is no manual for learning how to defend against censorship; only experience teaches this. But when repression intensifies, even experience may not be enough. What becomes essential for independent journalism in such contexts is to be represented by highly competent lawyers, to have a strong structure and to have sustained public support.

Over 30 years, Açık Radyo has built such a foundation. Around 1,400 people—aged between 8 and 88, from various social backgrounds—have produced more than 1,200 radio programs. Broadcasting 24/7, the structure of Açık Radyo is entirely volunteer-based, with its programming renewed every four months around core columns on information and culture. Beyond its listeners, the figures achieved by this radio station reflect a community that actively makes radio—thus producing its content.

This large community also ensures the project’s financial independence—not only from the state but also from corporate holdings that dominate Turkey’s media sector and facilitate political interference. To remain independent, Açık Radyo developed a model based primarily on sponsorships, advertising, and especially listener support, which in recent years has covered 70% of annual expenses. This represents an unprecedented model of grassroots sustainability in Turkish broadcasting history.

Following the revocation announcement, this community rallied in support. In the six months after the FM interruption, Açık Radyo has received numerous awards and was featured in hundreds of print publications and TV programs, and thousands of online articles both domestically and internationally. Public statements outside the station drew large crowds, while thousands joined the #açıkradyoaçıkkalmalı (“Açık Radyo must remain open”) campaign.

And so it remained: after the FM ban, the station—renamed Apaçık Radyo (“Wide Open Radio”)—continues its programming via streaming. With the same motto, “open to all sounds, colours and vibrations of the universe,” Apaçık Radyo preserved its structure and spirit while transitioning to digital broadcasting. Thus, it continues to represent a network and a space for its community of listeners even though it can no longer be heard on the radio.

However, moving online required new technical and financial strategies, already challenged by the government’s ongoing legal actions. Securing long-term sponsors becomes difficult when facing state censorship, as few wish to fund projects in political dispute with authorities. Açık Radyo’s open support for Palestine has further deterred some private funding. In these situations, defending against direct censorship is not enough; one must also anticipate the broader economic consequences—both micro and macro—affecting sustainability and open support.

More than a year after the FM license ban, as media attention fades, the long-term challenges remain. Açık Radyo continues to face trial for allegedly violating laws against “inciting hatred and hostility” or “creating feelings of hate” based on race, language, religion, gender, class, region, or religious order. We know well the historical and political weight of words like genocide—not only in Turkey but globally. Yet we must also reflect on the words of accusation, the words of censorship, the words of repression. When these words lose connection with reality—when, as in this case, they are applied beyond their semantic boundaries—they become arbitrary, and dangerous.

The post The Story of Açık Radio and the Sound of Dissent in Turkey appeared first on Untold.

***

It is a cold, rainy day, and I am hurrying over to a bus station next to the university campus where I teach to reach Berlin’s Central Train Station on time. Luckily, the bus station is close by, and after two minutes of walking, I arrive. Suddenly, a vehicle stops abruptly in front of the station.

It appears as if the van is out of fuel; it is not the city bus, but a private cleaning company service van. A man steps out in a hurry. It is unusual for a vehicle to park at a bus stop. Its unusualness and unexpectedness caught those waiting for the bus off guard, including me. The driver sharply diagnoses the station’s glass panes, turns his head up towards the time screen, and then adjusts his neck and head posture to check the ceiling as if he is looking for someone or something specific dangling from it.

It turns out that he is looking for pro-Palestinian stickers and posters. The unexpected action made me wonder why someone would want to make sure to remove Palestinian posters and erase their traces.

Graffiti writing and stickering as a game of (in)visibility

Authorities’ removing graffiti, stickers and other related forms of self- and collective expression is no exception in street art politics. It is a game, as graffiti writers and muralists describe it, where what is written, pasted or stencilled on the wall is ephemeral. If not the authorities, then ‘ordinary people’ would tear their opponents’ stickers off or cover their graffiti writings by spraying or splashing paint or stickering over them, crossing them out, adding a word or a symbol to alter the meaning to their favour.

For instance, many Israel supporters add “from Hamas” to “Free Palestine” [Fig. 3], or draw a ‘triangle’ on top of an already painted ‘flipped triangle’ to form the Star of David instead of Hamas’ inverted red triangle (IRT) icon.

Palestine supporters might also put a stickered watermelon over the word “Fuck”, leaving only “Hamas,” or merging the Star of David into the Swastika to create a parallel between Zionism and Nazism – a design of the Lebanese typographer Pascal Zoghbi.

Zoghbi’s design is widely seen in Germany through the murals of Musa La Rage . This process of removal, covering, editing, and commenting on each other—especially on the Palestinian side, whose voice is contested in Germany—reflects broader issues of visibility and grievability. These scriptural and visual acts serve as crucial diaries for understanding resistance and solidarity at a time when pro-Palestinian voices are not only underrepresented in German and Western European media and art galleries, but also suppressed on social media by pro-Israel actors. This includes Instagram “civil watch” accounts dedicated to pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian graffiti in Berlin, whose users even tag Interpol in the comment sections of Palestinian posts.

These practices take particularity in Germany, especially in Berlin, where we see that street forms of solidarity with Palestine are not only removed by pro-Israel supporters but also by the German police, whose brutality goes beyond the dimensions of legality.

How can we understand this act of contracting a worker to “clean the station”? How does this “cleaning process” relate to Germany’s stance on Palestinian solidarity against the Israeli occupation?

Since 2008, Germany has declared unconditional support for Israel as part of its Staatsräson (the Reason of State). This political philosophy is based on the promise of “Nie Wieder” (Never Again) to address and honour the cultural memory of the six million European Jews who were killed during the Holocaust by the Nazis.

Accordingly, any debate about Jewish people, Israel and Zionism must go through this canon.

Resisting the guilt and extending griveability

Nevertheless, Palestinian street solidarity resists this reasoning. Aesthetically, the place chosen for stickers, graffiti writing, and painting is not solely a matter of visibility – a spot visible to people as they stand (bus station), enter (public toilet) or walk from one point to another, and preferably higher so that Israel supporters and the police do not remove it– but also of meaningfulness [Fig. 4].

For instance, many posters were hung on the East Side Gallery Wall from the river’s side (home to a few graffiti pieces and white canvases), while the names (and stickers) of Gaza and Palestine are displayed on the other side of the wall, facing the street (home to commissioned murals exhibited for tourists). Graffiti of “Free Gaza” can also be seen on the Berliner Mauer at Bernauer Straße, where parts of the separating wall are still standing with memorials, notices, looped short videos of patrolling soldiers, and pictures of the people who were killed by GDR guards while escaping from East to West Germany.

These official walls are for ‘learning’ about a dark part of German history as well as grieving the bodies and souls of those who passed away by seeing their pictures, reading their names and watching videos of East German Wall guards patrolling [Fig. 5].

Spraying Palestine or Gaza on the Berlin Wall challenges the scholarship that (Western) history has ended with the fall of the German wall, and it places Palestine alongside Germany’s own history of separation, remembrance and guilt.

History continues in Palestine. The graffiti of Palestine on the Wall memorial shows a parallel present-day Palestinian reality, which tourists would neither find informative signs on nor see in the various museums dedicated to human suffering and wall separation. Similar writing can also be found on parts of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamerplatz, where someone wrote “Palästina” twice below the metal sign of information, entitled “Dennkmal Mauer – The Wall as a Monument,” making the wall not solely a historical landmark of the past, but also a symbol of the actual wall of apartheid built by Israel in Palestine [Fig. 6].

These graffiti on the Wall of Berlin, and memorial sites extend “grievability” to Palestinians at a time when Israel has made trauma a weapon of war and while coverage of the Palestinian genocide in mainstream Western media coverage has been tightly policed and increasingly racialised.

The police as the new church

Pro-Palestinian expressions are often interpreted as antisemitic, pro-Hamas and terrorist, or at least aggressive. Germany’s practice of accusing Palestine supporters of antisemitism is a political move. Germany has long tried to de-Nazify its image to the world by organising the World Cup of 2006 and introducing the Erinnerungskultur (Culture of Remembrance) to address the Holocaust and the inhumane and unjustifiable killing of the Jewish population.

This culture of remembrance and political policy to acknowledge what the Nazis did to the Jews translates into the state’s reason as a guarantor of Jewish safety in Occupied Palestine (and elsewhere). This policy of guilt and remembrance has implicitly made the Palestinian statehood and right to return for refugees against the guilty German project of self-cleansing.

This double standard does not solely appear in the brutal police intervention, defamatory anti-Muslim and anti-Arab speech in newspapers (labelling pro-Palestinian students “Jewish haters” (Juden-Hasser), cancelling artists and the removal of solidarity aesthetics, but also shows in the reinterpretation of solidarity expressions in order to whitewash their Nazi legacy.

As an example, the debate on the use of the inverted red triangle by Palestinian supporters was triggered by local media and politicians, referring to the symbol as a “Nazi reference.” Also, a doctoral student who was holding a poster reading “NEVER AGAIN” was arrested by thirteen police officers and had their poster confiscated, accusing the student of another “Again,” a reference to Nazi-camps and the “extermination” of Jewish people [Fig. 7].

Another colleague had notified the student that the police might have a Nazi-focused interpretation based on reading the Palestinian Question through anti-Semitic German history. To avoid that, the student added “never again for everyone” in the margin of the poster. However, the police refused to accept any interpretation other than their own.

Policing aesthetics and criminalising symbols

What role do aesthetics play in a German context characterised by official support to Israel, its Staatsräson and Nie Wieder? How do the aesthetic forms of solidarity with Palestine interplay with Germany’s history and denounce its complicity with genocide? In other words, how does ‘wall washing’ relate to ‘self-cleansing’ and ‘whitewashing’?

Most police “interpretation” of pro-Palestinian signs do not happen on site, for it is already based on a textbook against anti-Semitic symbols and signs, titled “Leitfaden Zum Erkennen Antisemitischer Straftaten” (Guide to recognising antisemitic crimes) [1]. Among the many Palestinian signs, the textbook considers anti-Semitic, the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), Handhala (signifier of Palestinian personhood, displacement and exiled childhood), the key (the right to return), and Palestinian visual symbols of solidarity and resistance are put in a booklet next to fascist and Nazi signs.

Each symbol has a small text ideologically changing its meaning to make it “anti-Jew.” For instance, for Handhala, the textbook reads that this icon is “a comic book character meant to symbolise the supposedly defenceless Palestinians. [Instead,] The comics advocate violent action against Israel.”

In reality, Handhala was originally designed by Palestinian caricaturist Naji al-Ali (1938-1987), whom Israel assassinated in London, which the textbook does not mention. As for “Intifada until victory,” it reads that “the first (1987) and second (2000) Intifada were violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel. The slogan heard at anti-Israel demonstrations implies the annihilation of the State of Israel.”

This booklet was published in December 2021, and its captions are the same as those of the police, showing how ideological interpretations are supported and enacted by law against others.

Colourful rage

The Guide to Recognizing Antisemitic Crimes was published in 2021 and does not include the watermelon or the inverted red triangle, which are also treated as antisemitic by German police. Its symbolism, however, was born out of colonial artistic censorship.

Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour (b. 1947) explains that the idea of watermelon came from Israeli soldiers, who, in 1981, interrogated Mansour and two of his colleagues about why they were doing political art instead of painting ‘nice women,’ ‘nude figures,’ and ‘nice flowers,’ which they would buy from them, the police added.

“The flag was forbidden, and so were the colours, which is why we, as artists, were not allowed to use these colours. One of our friends, Issam, started arguing with the authority person, asking him what he would do if he made a flower but with those colours. The soldier became angry, saying that ‘even if it is a watermelon, we will take it and confiscate it. Do not do anything in these [red, black and green] colours.’”

On the one hand, the watermelon sign offers a new language of solidarity—one charged with joy rather than with the sorrow of the Nakba and other classical symbols that embody affective sadness. This fruit symbol reflects the spirit of resilience that has accompanied solidarity protests, offering, at the same time, new possibilities to express support in places where the icon of Handhala is considered antisemitic [Fig. 8].

This builds on the existing presence of the watermelon as a summer decorative motif—seen on ice creams, umbrellas, earrings, and many other objects—thereby challenging German censorship of solidarity with Palestine and embodying resistance itself.

On the other hand, the adoption of the inverted red triangle in protests and graffiti around the world, including in Germany, can be interpreted in two different ways.

First, the red triangle serves as a symbol of empowerment and a reclaimed emblem for most Palestinian supporters, who use such symbols to express solidarity and to symbolically challenge Israeli genocide and Western complicity.

Second, when a red triangle is painted on the walls of campuses or newspaper buildings, the authorities experience it as if it were written on their own bodies—turning graffiti into a physical act. If the (German) state uses law and policing to inscribe its power onto pro-Palestinians, by prohibiting some protests, banning the use of Arabic language in demonstrations and using violence against protestors, for example, then marking a “place of meaning” (memorial wall) or “place of authority” (police station)—even by simply writing a word (Free Palestine) or symbol (inverted triangle) of defiance on its walls—becomes, in turn, a way of writing back onto the body of that authority [Fig. 9].

In his book The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge, Frank Stern explains how “Germany — striving for sovereignty and integration into the West — was able to instrumentalise philosemitism in its domestic and foreign policy as well as a moral stance against local, deeply rooted antisemitic rightwing extremism.”

On the one hand, Palestinian solidarity bothers Germany because it always makes the state feel guilty twice; Palestinians are paying for what the Germans did to the Jewish people. On the other hand, the visibility of the Palestinian struggle and the existence of the Palestinian people with their claim to land make the post-Holocaust Jewish success incomplete. Therefore, being genocidal and complicit with the extermination of the Palestinians seems to be a ‘moral salvation’ for Israel and Germany.

The elimination of the Palestinian people would make the former’s guilt vanish (or evaporate) and make the Zionist project successful as a story of survival.

In this sense, Sami Khatib reminds us that the pseudo-question “Do you condemn Hamas?” becomes equivalent to “do you support the Western world order, its ruling ideology (Human Rights Discourse), and do you condemn the entire spectrum of Palestinian resistance, from peaceful boycotts to the Hamas attacks of October 7?” In other words, “Palestinians should accept their colonial subjugation, should not resist, and should, ideally, disappear and with them the annoyance of the Palestinian question.”

The aesthetics and writing of remembrance and solidarity of Palestine in Germany demonstrate the limits and double standards of German remembrance culture and solidarity. It shows how condemning genocide and the killing of civilians is manufactured in accordance with ideological motivations to justify one’s own history, where some humans and bodies are seen as not worthy of life because one decides to.

The post Palestine on Berlin’s Walls: Street Art, Censorship, and the Politics of Solidarity in Germany appeared first on Untold.

Developed as part of the European Research Council–funded PalREAD project, the platform brings together archival material, podcasts, network visualizations, and thematic narratives to document a literature created under conditions of exile, occupation, and censorship. It offers a critical intervention against erasure—especially vital in a moment of genocidal violence against Palestinians and the systematic suppression of their voices.

In this interview, Refqa Abu‑Remaileh reflects on the origins and goals of the project, the challenges of building a literary history from fragments, and the urgency of documenting Palestinian cultural production in the face of historical and ongoing destruction. Through her work, she not only tells the story of Palestinian literature but also how we can learn from this rich creative history of defiance, resistance, and survival.

Walid El Houri: How would you describe this massive project? What made you decide to do it, and who do you believe it is for?

Refqa Abu‑Remaileh: One of the main reasons I started this project was to answer my own questions. I was struggling to understand how to read, write about, and make sense of Palestinian literature. There are many anomalies in this field—disconnections, gaps, scattered histories—and I kept hitting a ceiling. Even though the existing work was incredibly important, it felt like we couldn’t see the bigger picture: how everything connects, how the diaspora relates to the homeland, and how we make sense of a history shaped by fragmentation.

At some point, I became disillusioned with the limits of traditional literary analysis. It no longer felt sufficient to analyze texts in isolation. I felt the need for unconventional approaches to make sense of what is, in many ways, an unconventional literature.

I’m also a visual learner, so I wanted to create something that was visual and interactive. Simple facts, like whether Mahmoud Darwish and Ghassan Kanafani ever met were unclear. The canon of Palestinian literature has been reduced to a few major names, but even those figures lived in entirely different cities, cultural spheres, and political realities. We often treat them as though they belonged to a single, unified literary scene—which they didn’t. So, I wanted to build something that would allow us to explore these disconnections and interconnections more clearly.

This is how the idea of an atlas emerged—something that could show the motion of literature across geographies, a “literature in motion.” I realized that the best way to represent that was through a digital platform that allowed for textual, visual, and audio components. It had to be non-linear and participatory—something more democratic, that could reflect the fragmented and scattered nature of Palestinian literary history. I didn’t want to write a conventional, linear literary history.

The digital realm became essential not only for hosting the project but as a conceptual space—a virtual meeting ground for dispersed data and fragmented narratives. It helped me see Palestinian literature as a story of movement, elasticity, and rupture. I didn’t know all of this when I began, but the drive to answer these questions and see the bigger picture is what propelled the project forward.

WH: What defines Palestinian literature and what makes it special or particular? How is it different from other national literatures?

RA: This was one of the biggest challenges I faced—trying to define what is and isn’t part of Palestinian literature. Early on, I decided to adopt an inclusive approach inspired by the spirit of the Palestinian revolution, particularly the Beirut years. Many people I spoke to, including in our podcast interviews, emphasized that Palestinian identity—at least in the context of literature and culture—wasn’t strictly about nationality or ethnicity, but about belonging to a cause.

So, I made a conscious decision to include non-Palestinians in the project—writers, editors, thinkers—anyone who made a major contribution to Palestinian literature, regardless of their background. This wasn’t about gatekeeping based on origin but about contribution and connection. That inclusiveness felt essential to reflecting the spirit of the literature itself.

At the same time, I had to confront a recurring question: Is Palestinian literature really that different from other Arabic literatures? I remember meeting Salma Khadra Jayyusi, an incredibly important but underrecognized Palestinian poet and literary critic, who was already in her 90s when I interviewed her. She looked at me skeptically and said, “Why do you need a separate project for Palestinian literature? It’s no different from Arabic literature. It has the same genres, styles, movements.”

And she was right—on the level of the literary texts themselves, Palestinian literature is very much part of modern Arabic literature. It shares its genres—novels, short stories, poetry, plays—and it’s shaped by the same regional trends and intellectual currents. These writers were writing in, and part of, the broader Arab world.

But what makes Palestinian literature different is the context of its production and circulation. It’s a national literature without a nation-state—a literature that is unhoused, fragmented, scattered across geographies. Its writers, critics, readers, publishers, and archives are not located within a centralized, territorial state. This affects everything: how the literature is written, read, archived, and remembered.

Most national literatures emerge from relatively stable territorial entities. Palestinian literature doesn’t. Its very conditions of existence are shaped by displacement, exile, censorship, imprisonment, and erasure. These are not just background facts; they define the literature. There’s also a kind of latent transnationalism that has always been there, but we’ve tended to overlook it—perhaps because of a desire to normalize Palestinian literature within national literary frameworks.

So, we end up analyzing the canonical figures—Kanafani in Beirut, Emile Habibi in Haifa, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra in Baghdad—as though they were part of a unified literary tradition. But they were living in completely different political and cultural environments, and rarely, if ever, interacting directly. Ignoring that reality means ignoring what actually makes Palestinian literature distinct.

It’s also a literature that has been systematically targeted—through censorship, imprisonment, exile, and erasure—in ways that go beyond what’s typical in other Arab literatures. All of this contributes to its particularity: a decentralized, transnational, and constantly disrupted literary tradition that still manages to cohere around a sense of collective memory and struggle.

WH: Does Palestinian literature need to be in Arabic, or do you consider it a multilingual literature? Which other languages have you encountered and documented?

RA: Yes, Palestinian literature is multilingual. During the research, I encountered material in many languages—Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, German, English, French, among others. However, for the purposes of this project, I made the decision to focus primarily on Arabic-language sources. That wasn’t because the other languages aren’t important—they are—but because the vast majority of literary production, especially in the 20th century, has been in Arabic.

This sometimes frustrates people, but we can’t deny that Arabic is the dominant language of Palestinian literary expression. And the Arabic corpus is enormous—much of it still unexplored. I realized we’ve barely scratched the surface. When people think of literature, they often focus only on the major literary texts, but there’s so much more: criticism, editorials, letters, essays, manifestos, cultural commentary. All of this exists in Arabic, scattered across newspapers, magazines, private archives, and oral histories.

That said, the multilingual dimension is real, especially when we look at the diaspora—Latin America in particular. One of the surprises in my research was discovering just how much Arabic-language publishing was taking place there, starting in the early 20th century. Many of these publications eventually became bilingual—Arabic-Spanish or Arabic-Portuguese—and then fully Spanish or Portuguese. This history is often overshadowed by the emphasis on Arab migration to the United States, but in fact, Latin America has a rich and largely untapped archive of Palestinian and broader Arab cultural production.

I think we’ll see more work emerge around this in the coming years, and I hope others take up that research. My project doesn’t deny the multilingual nature of Palestinian literature—it simply focuses on Arabic because that’s where the core of the historical production is, and because it remains a massive field requiring further excavation.

WH: What is the importance of this type of documentation amid the genocidal destruction of all things Palestinian—communities, history, heritage, places, and more?

RA: This project was actually completed before the current genocide began—it just happened to be published a few days after October 7. At first, I couldn’t make sense of that timing. But slowly, everything started to click into place. The patterns I had traced over nearly a century of literary history—the erasures, the silences, the censorship, the imprisonments, the massacres—they all pointed toward what we’re witnessing now. This eruption of violence didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s a culmination.

Through the project, it became clear to me that there have been two forms of genocide at play: a slow, grinding genocide that has unfolded over decades, and a fast, spectacular one we are now witnessing. But both follow the same logic: erasure of Palestinian presence on the land, culture, memory, and people.

I didn’t expect to find what I found. When you write literary history, you don’t usually think you’ll be documenting prisons, massacres, and mass censorship. But these elements kept appearing in the sources—so often and so forcefully that I couldn’t ignore them. So I began highlighting them as themes in the project. These include imprisonment, censorship, and massacres—tools of suppression that have shaped the conditions of Palestinian literary production for over a century.

The sheer number of writers who were imprisoned, exiled, banned, or silenced is staggering—and unprecedented. These weren’t isolated incidents. They formed a pattern, and this pattern maps directly onto the political project of erasing Palestinian identity and culture.

And yet, even in times of catastrophe, people wrote. One example I highlight is a magazine published in East Jerusalem after 1948, where the editor, Amin Shunnar, proposed a new literary genre: “Adab al-Nakba”—the literature of catastrophe, or the literature of the Nakba. He believed Palestinians could contribute something unique to the Arab literary tradition by reflecting on how to write from the ruins—not just about destruction, but also about survival, hope, and the future.

This kind of resilience is threaded through the entire history of Palestinian literature. Despite the attempts to destroy and silence, people kept writing, thinking, and imagining. There are precedents to draw on. There is a legacy of resistance—creative, intellectual, cultural—that didn’t emerge out of nowhere in the present moment. It’s been built over generations. This project is one attempt to document and preserve that legacy—not only for memory, but also as a resource for the present and future.

WH: At a time when there is violent erasure and suppression of Palestinian voices, what can the history of Palestinian literature and literary figures teach us about the present moment?

RA: One of the central themes I traced in this project is censorship—not just of Palestinians, but of anyone speaking about Palestine. What surprised me was how early this began. For example, I found Arabic newspapers published in Santiago, Chile, as early as 1920 reporting on events in Palestine, like the Nabi Musa uprising. These papers received Palestinian newspapers from the homeland, but they arrived heavily censored—entire sections blacked out. And the editors in Chile understood this as a systematic attempt to silence Palestinian voices and to decimate their political and cultural leadership.

That was under British colonial rule. What’s striking is how seamlessly the Israeli state inherited these tools—prison, censorship, bans—and expanded them. Palestinians themselves understood this continuity. The poet Tawfiq Zayyad, for example, explicitly said that his struggle inside Israel after 1948 was a direct continuation of the struggle of poets like Ibrahim Touqan under British colonialism. The colonial conditions hadn’t changed—only the rulers had.

This suppression wasn’t limited to literary production. The writers I researched weren’t just writers—they were also teachers, journalists, organizers, activists. Their work spanned cultural and political spheres, and because of that, they were seen as threats. One powerful example is the Al-Ard movement, an anti-Zionist political group inside Israel after 1948. It was quickly banned, and when its members tried to publish a bulletin, they had to use a legal loophole from the British Mandate period that allowed for one-off publications without a license. They issued a series of underground bulletins, each under a different name, editor, and location—but always with “Al-Ard” in the title. It was a brilliant act of resistance using colonial legal mechanisms against the colonial state.

That example reminds me of what we see today with social media. Palestinian journalists and activists create multiple Instagram or Twitter accounts because once one gets taken down, they open another. This pattern of silencing and persistence goes all the way back to the early 20th century. Palestinians have had to fight media blackouts, censorship, and suppression for generations.

What this history teaches us is that Palestinians have always resisted erasure—and they’ve done so with incredible creativity and resilience. The erasure isn’t new, but neither is the resistance. What’s crucial now is to recover those histories—not just to honor them, but to learn from them. They remind us that we’re not starting from scratch. There is a long archive of creative defiance that can guide us through this moment.

WH: In your project to document this rich literature, what were the biggest challenges? And what were the biggest discoveries?

RA: The challenges were many—legal, logistical, emotional, conceptual. First, I had to accept that this project would never be comprehensive. Palestinian literary history is full of ruptures, silences, and missing pieces. I wasn’t dealing with a cohesive, well-preserved archive; I was working with fragments. That required a shift in mindset. I had to be okay with documenting what I could, knowing it would remain partial, interrupted, and unfinished.

There were also major logistical obstacles—accessing sources across geographies, finding rare materials, dealing with COVID travel restrictions. Much of the archive doesn’t exist in national libraries or formal institutions. It’s in people’s homes—private libraries, boxes in garages, basements, old community centers. You have to look in unexpected places.

As a literary scholar, I wasn’t trained in archival research or oral history. But I had to embrace those methods, because often there were no written records. Oral interviews became essential for filling the gaps—especially for capturing lived experiences and connecting dots that the written archive couldn’t provide.

Then there was the digital side. This was a team-based project, and it couldn’t have been done alone. We worked with researchers across the region—in Gaza, the West Bank, inside Israel, in Cairo, Beirut, Kuwait—and coordinated a small team in Berlin. Creating the project’s database  was hugely labor-intensive. There are no pre-existing datasets for Palestinian literature. Everything had to be manually collected, coded, and entered—biographical data, periodical metadata, geographic information, thematic connections.

And because the digital infrastructure is geared toward Latin-script, left-to-right languages, we faced constant hurdles with Arabic—OCR (optical character recognition) is still inaccurate, right-to-left formatting is often buggy, and nothing could be automatically generated. Every node and connection you see in the platform had to be mapped manually in Word docs and Excel sheets.

Conceptually, one of the most difficult questions was: how do I represent a fragmented, non-linear story in visual and textual form? Edward Said’s idea of “counterpoint” was key here—multiple narratives happening simultaneously, often in tension with each other. That’s why I created a timeline with overlapping geographies—showing events in the homeland and in the diaspora at the same time. Palestinian literature has never existed outside occupation. Whether in the homeland or abroad, it’s always responding to colonial pressure. Representing that contrapuntal history was a major challenge, but also one of the most meaningful parts of the work.

WH: What journey do you want the reader to take when navigating the site?

RA: This isn’t a conventional book. You don’t have to read it from beginning to end. The idea was to create multiple entry points so that readers—depending on their interests and background—could navigate the project in a non-linear, intuitive way.

The heart of the project is the timeline, which is also the landing page. It doesn’t follow a single narrative but offers seven overlapping historical periods, each with its own geographic and political context. As you scroll through the timeline, you can literally see the geographies shift—dots move across the map to reflect changing centers of literary production. The idea is to make the fragmentation and movement of Palestinian literature visible.

If you click into any period, you’ll find a narrative that includes highlighted elements. These highlights are color-coded: blue for literary figures, green for periodicals, and red for themes like censorship or exile. There are 94 highlighted figures, 35 periodicals, and 12 themes, all cross-referenced and pre-mapped to show how they connect.

From there, readers can jump to the network view—a meta-perspective that shows the relationships between periods, people, periodicals, and themes across different periods. This was especially helpful for me while writing. I’m a visual thinker, and I often needed to draw connections by hand just to make sense of the data. The network view automates that, allowing readers to hover over nodes, follow links, and see unexpected connections emerge.

There’s also a visualization gallery, which serves as a standalone knowledge source. These graphs and charts are embedded in each chapter but are also available on their own because they contain far more data than I could write about in the text. For instance, someone might discover that a writer based in Tunis was publishing in a periodical in Paris—things I couldn’t always explore in depth, but the data is there for others to pursue.

Finally, we have the audio interviews, which became a podcast. These are also standalone, and they add personal and historical depth to the project. Many of the voices you hear there reflect on periods, people, and publications that are documented in the text or visualizations, but from lived experience.

So, the journey is really up to the reader. You can enter through the timeline, the network, the visualizations, or the audio. You can follow a theme, a writer, a periodical—whatever interests you. The goal was to create an experience that is interactive, non-linear, and generative, where readers can follow their curiosity and find their own path through the story.

WH: What’s next for the project? How do you see it—or wish it—to live on?

RA: The current version of the project is static. That was one of the conditions of publishing with the digital arm of Stanford University Press. I can’t add to or update it, but the upside is that they’ve committed to maintaining the infrastructure over time—keeping the site online, updating it as needed, and ensuring its longevity. That was really important to me. I didn’t want to build something this labor-intensive only for it to disappear once the funding ran out.

That said, I see this project as a foundation for future work—my own and hopefully others’. It was also a way for me to document everything I wished I had time to explore in more depth. I plan to return to many of these threads, starting with the Mahjar period, which is incredibly rich but still under-researched. There are several figures, texts, and publications I want to dive into further. The data I gathered points to so many pathways—Palestine and the Maghreb, Palestine and Latin America, Palestine and Europe—each deserving much more detailed study.

This atlas is also a map for my future research—articles, books, maybe even new collaborations. And I hope it will be the same for others. I wrote the texts in accessible language, without academic jargon, and it’s all open access. That was intentional. I wanted to break through the academic paywalls and make this resource usable for people outside the university—students, educators, cultural workers, or anyone interested in Palestinian literary history.

I’m also developing teaching tools based on the platform. During the project, I didn’t have time to build them, but I’ve started working with collaborators to create digital teaching modules—courses that can be used in schools, universities, or workshops. I’d like to expand that work further, especially with cultural centers and museums, so people can engage with this material outside of academic settings.

Some colleagues are already using the platform in their teaching, which is great to hear. I want to do the same with my students. The idea is for this to be more than a static archive—it’s meant to be a living, generative space where people can learn, research, and pursue their own questions. I hope others will take it in directions I haven’t imagined yet.

The post A Country of Words: Mapping Memory, Resistance, and Exile in Palestinian Literary History appeared first on Untold.

Vicente Campos Rubira is a 54-year-old palmerero, a centuries-old craft involving the cleaning, cultivation, and harvesting of dates. Campos Rubira lives in the rural outskirts of Elche, a small town on Spain’s Costa Blanca. It is home to Europe’s largest palm grove, founded between the 8th and 10th centuries CE during the Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. 

Since 2000, the urban area of the palm grove has been recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, in order to protect it and the traditional irrigation system it relies on from urban expansion and the consequent risk of disappearance. However, this recognition excluded the traditional occupations linked to the Palmeral, such as that of the palmerero. 

Today, this typical profession of Elche is threatened by the European safety regulations, which no longer allow palm trees to be climbed using traditional methods. In response, palmereros are now claiming a new UNESCO designation: to recognise Elche’s city as a World Heritage Site in order to preserve the Palmeral in its entirety, including its traditional crafts and techniques.

On a break from work, Campos Rubira welcomes us into his home, hidden among shrubs and palm trees—a dwelling that blends Gaudí-inspired modernism with eco-architecture. It seems to emerge from the very ground it stands on. The details give it a fairytale charm: a beige wall embedded with pebbles held together by mortar, rounded contours, a chimney reminiscent of a honey dripper, and a column crafted from a palm trunk. 

We step inside and gather around a well-worn wooden table in the kitchen. Holding a terracotta cup in his hands, Campos Rubira tells us his story: “When I started out, most palmereros believed the trade was destined to disappear. It was grueling work, and hardly any sons wanted to follow in their fathers’ footsteps. The tradition was breaking, and there was a widespread belief that a new generation wouldn’t emerge.”

Campos Rubira began the profession at the age of 20, after completing a workshop-school program in the Palmereria, the first course of its kind where he learned the fundamentals. For generations, the palmerero trade was passed down from father to son. For him, who lacked any ancestral ties to the profession, gaining acceptance was an uphill battle. “In their minds, if you didn’t come from a family of palmereros, you couldn’t become one,” he recalls. “For every person who supported you, ten more would rather see you fail. It was as if they wanted to watch you sink, just to see if you had the courage to rise again.”

Ultimately, he endured. Campos Rubira carried on the craft, and even became a prominent voice in the broader fight for its legal recognition. Today, he serves as secretary of the Asociación de Palmereros de Elche (Apelx), an organization founded in 2008 to bring together palm cultivators and advocates for protecting their traditional techniques.

A History of the Palm Grove

Luis Pablo Martínez Sanmartín is a historian, anthropologist, and Cultural Heritage Inspector for the Generalitat Valenciana. It was his commitment that allowed Elche’s first UNESCO recognition in 2000. Martínez Sanmartín recalls that the path to UNESCO status began with a simple question: How old is the Palmeral? Among competing theories, he was able to demonstrate that this sophisticated feat of hydraulic engineering dates back to the 8th–10th centuries CE. Drawing on aerial photography, archival images recovered from the Museo de Puçol—which documents rural life in Elche—and historical records, he concluded: “The palm grove is contemporaneous with the founding of the Medina of Elche.”

He highlights that the Acequia Mayor—the main irrigation canal—irrigates the Palmeral via numerous secondary channels, runs directly beneath the Muslim medina, even passing under the foundations of what was once the residence of the Muslim wali, the Alcázar de la Vila Murada.

The Arabs who arrived from North Africa, under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus, quickly figured out the limitations of the Vinalopó River—its average flow barely reached 0.3 cubic meters per second—and the salinity of its waters. This prompted them to rationalize the use of the available water resources, distributing them for both agricultural and domestic purposes, while also selecting plants and trees capable of thriving under saline conditions. Among these were date palms, pomegranates—one of the iconic symbols of Elche—and alfalfa. “A collective intelligence conceived how to make productive use of lands that, until then, had remained unirrigated,” remarks the historian.

The result was a fortified agricultural city structured around an advanced irrigation system known as the Palmeral of Elche. UNESCO acknowledgment covers only urban huertos (orchards). These consist of some 45,000 date palms spread over 144 hectares. Yet, including the rural palm groves, the number rises to nearly 200,000 palm trees. Although the largest palm grove in Europe has earned international accolades and recognition, threats to its survival are always lurking.

By the late 19th century, a railway line bisected the urban Palmeral. While this development paved the way for Elche’s rise as Europe’s leading footwear manufacturing hub, the urban expansion it triggered—particularly from the 1960s onward—put immense pressure on the palm grove. Homes, schools, and entire neighborhoods were built on land that once formed part of the huertos of the Palmeral. In response, the Law for the Protection of the Palmeral was passed in 1986, followed by the General Urban Plan of 1997, after earlier legal frameworks had proven insufficient. Still, urban sprawl continued unabated.

A Way of Life

The palmerero craft itself has also undergone remarkable changes over the past 30 to 40 years, recalls Antonio García Soto, a 53-year-old palmerero and member of Apelx: “We used to climb using esparto ropes, barefoot or wearing esparteñas—shoes made from plant fiber. A strip of cloth was all we had to protect our kidneys. Then came nylon ropes with thin steel cables inside.” 

García Soto inherited the craft from his ancestors and is now passing it on to his two sons, Alejandro (24) and Toni (20), who work by his side. “In the countryside, agriculture was always practiced hand in hand with the palm trees and all the customs that came with them. It’s always been more than work—it’s a way of life,” he notes.    

Such customs are what gave birth to the tradition of the palma blanca (white palm): each year, between late June and early July, palmereros select healthy trees and clean the base of their central shoot—the heart of the palm. They then wrap the top in an opaque sheath to block out sunlight and halt photosynthesis. Within 30 to 45 days, the leaves lose their chlorophyll and turn white. The palmereros harvest them between August and September, handing them over to artisans who transform them into intricate creations for sale or display during Palm Sunday celebrations.

Every participant in this process embodies an irreplaceable craft in the cultural fabric of Elche, and a living testament to the deep bond between these trades and the city’s palm grove.  

In the past, palmereros had no safety equipment to protect them from the serious risk of falling. Climbing and pruning tall palms was inherently dangerous. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that safety measures—borrowed from mountaineering—were introduced: harnesses, rope anchors, and climbing boots with hooks.

While these systems proved effective, European legislation added extremely stringent safety standards: Directives 2006/42 and 2009/104 of the European Parliament and Council, along with harmonised standards EN 280 and EN 280-2, constitute the legal-technical framework regulating high-altitude pruning. Under this regime, the use of aerial work platforms (AWPs) is mandatory. 

The problem is that AWPs do not always allow reaching the same heights that can be achieved through rope climbing. As a result, the palmereros no longer feel free to perform their work as they used to. This impacts not only the traditional technique of the palmereros, which should be preserved, but also the effectiveness of palm tree maintenance.

According to García Soto’s view, the legal framework is fundamentally incompatible with their practice: “Regulations designed for tree pruning have been applied wholesale to the work we do with palm trees. We’re caught in a legal vacuum,” he explains. “Our trade has a distinct identity here in Elche.”

Regulations vs. Tradition

The European directives—transposed into Spanish national law through Royal Decree 1644/2008 and other regulations, have effectively pushed the profession into a legal grey area. This is because the European directives implemented by the Spanish state include exceptions—that is, it would be possible to climb palm trees using traditional methods where mechanical means cannot be used. However, the law does not clearly define these exceptions. 

Moreover, the European directives directly clash with Law 6/2021, which seeks to protect and promote Elche’s palm grove, and explicitly recognizes the palmerero as an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC, “Bien de Interés Cultural”). This law should, in theory, safeguard traditional techniques. Yet, a specific protection plan (Plan Especial de Protección) that would give the law concrete implementation has been languishing for years, with its approval repeatedly delayed by Elche’s municipal council.

“The city council itself is dismantling our craft,” denounces Campos Rubira sharply. “If the law declares us a BIC, and the administration is supposed to protect us as such, then it’s obvious they don’t understand what ‘protection’ actually means.”

Meanwhile, José Antonio Román Benticuaga, the Partido Popular (PP) city councillor for the environment, acknowledges the impasse: “We’re in a kind of no man’s land. I’m well aware of the palmereros’ demands, but this is national legislation—it’s not within the City’s jurisdiction. We’re trying to establish contact with the Ministry to find a way forward.”

As they await institutional change, the palmereros have begun taking matters into their own hands. They are now campaigning for Elche to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, hoping to include their traditional know-how among the cultural practices deemed worthy of preservation. “With such status, we could go to the European authorities and push for a revision of the legislation—so that platforms are no longer mandatory. Not to eliminate them entirely, but to leave room for alternatives,” Campos Rubira explains, laying out a pragmatic vision.

If successful, this would mark the fifth such recognition for the Valencian town, after those already granted for the Palmeral of Elche, the double Mystery Play of Elche, and the Museo Escolar Agrícola in Puçol.

Grassroots Resistance

Compounding these issues, in 2006, the red palm weevil epidemic—originating in Southeast Asia—struck Elche as well. Between the civic awareness that emerged in the wake of the UNESCO designation and the urgency brought by the invasive beetle, various grassroots organizations sprang up, including Volem Palmerar. 

Founded by Asunción “Susi” Gomez in 2008, the association fights for the tangible protection of the palm grove. “Many people see it,” says Gomez, 65, “but they don’t really understand it. They don’t grasp why it’s so important.” A retired biologist, Gomez recalls how, during the outbreak of the insect pest, the municipal authorities mishandled the situation: “They had thought that cutting down trees in large numbers would have been enough to stop the pest from spreading. They acted without any scientific advice whatsoever.”

Fortunately, that experience never reached a level that could destroy the palm grove—on the contrary, it remains vigorous and still holds its primacy. Today, Gomez advocates for the restoration of the Palmeral to its original role: a productive agricultural zone where all the traditional knowledge it embodies is actively protected. It’s a vision shared by the palmereros themselves, like Miguel Ángel Sánchez Martínez, 45. Specializing in date cultivation,  Sánchez founded Apelx and later the Association of Date Producers.

On his extensive estate, he cultivates the local Confitera variety in a plot separate from the Medjoul, interspersing them with orange, pomegranate, and almond trees. In the context of Israel’s ongoing tragic genocide of the Palestinian people, Sánchez shares: “I now have a client with over 100 stores across Spain who used to buy Medjoul dates from Israel. As part of a boycott, they now source their dates from us—and have become our largest customer.” Busy with countless tasks, when asked about the political commitment to the Palmeral, he reflects: “To me, it seems no one truly loves the palm trees the way they should. Palms are the icon of Elche.”

For Antonio García Soto, “Politicians use the palm grove and the palmereros for their election campaigns. They showcase the city’s values, the traditional trades with big banners. But a month later, nothing remains.” Still, the future climbs alongside him. Imagining what it’s like to be atop a palm tree like a palmerero, as the city awaits recognition of its UNESCO designation, his son Toni, shares his feelings: “I like working up high. It makes me feel calm—it gives me peace.”

The post A Fight for Survival: Elche’s Ancient Palm Tree Climbers Seek UNESCO Protection appeared first on Untold.

Giulia Crisci together with Emmanuelle Bouhours have interviewed the Algerian feminist filmmaker on her cinematography for the Sicilia Queer filmfest in Palermo (Italy), which dedicated the Eterotopia section to Algerian cinema in 2023.

Giulia Crisci: The context from which we speak is always significant. Can you tell us where you are speaking, observing, and writing from??

Habiba Djahnine: I came to cinema as a young girl through film clubs, out of cinephilia, let’s say. With a very strong desire to discover not only Algerian cinema, but also world cinema, which I did thanks to the Algerian Cinémathèque. We were fortunate to have this Cinémathèque that strongly supported Algerian and world cinema; while other cinemas in Algeria were distributing blockbusters and films for the general public, the Cinémathèque held its line to bring art-house cinema to life. 

At the same time, poetry and literature occupied our lives. I started writing poetry and collaborating with a few magazines and poetry events at the Béjaïa theatre. Up until my thirties, I had never thought about making a film, I was more focused on publishing my texts. However, I still had a very cinephile attitude, I was thinking of distributing films and organising festivals. A cultural activist’s spirit, in short. 

In 1994, together with my sister Nabila Djahnine we organized a festival called Images and Imaginaries of Women in Algerian Cinema, organised by the association Thighri n‘’mettouth (Cry of Woman), of which Nabila was president, in Tizi-Ouzou (a city in Kabylia 100 km from Algiers). 

These events allowed us not only to discover cinema but also to cultivate an encounter with the audience. In fact, I think an audience is built, it does not exist per se. I put a lot of energy into creating film clubs, even in completely isolated places, in the mountains of Kabylia, for example, or in some villages in southern Algeria, even in difficult situations, with very few means. 

The aim has always been to engage an audience and to learn to debate, to discuss, to confront different ways of thinking. We started with women’s film clubs because women did not have access to cinema and cultural spaces in our hometown of Béjaïa. Later, we opened them up to everyone so that we could also discuss political and social issues, in addition to discovering films. This is where I come from. 

GC: How did you decide to go behind the camera?

HD: I don’t like to constrain myself  into categories or labels.  However, I can say that poetry has always accompanied me since I was a little girl: it provides a strong way of looking at the world and of taking care of very complex things. Poetry allows us to create a distance with things while allowing us to speak honestly about our own depths, about what touches us deep inside. 

It was the desert that helped me find my way back to poetry. When I was 25, I took my backpack and went to live in the Algerian desert. I encountered other ways of thinking and began my work of deconstruction. 

The only station I have never left is that of feminism. Since then, I have spent my life deconstructing the chains, the cages, the ones they put us in, but also the ones we are responsible for.. From there I began to reflect on the medium I wanted to use to speak, and then cinema and more specifically the creative documentary came to the fore. What really interests me is to draw from reality to turn it into something  and thus offer a personal and subjective view, a bit like it was for poetry.

I also started writing my first film: Lettre à ma sœur (2006) at the beginning of my training while attending important documentary film festivals). 

At the time, I was working in France,  in exile. I devoted  myself to the creative documentary, I began to learn and find a true form, an experience that transformed and shook me, because I was in a real confrontation with the others. It was together with these other protagonists that I wrote my first film. 

Of course there was, as always, preliminary writing work and intentions, but in fact the film is made in the field, with people. That is, with all the components of reality, with its difficulties, misunderstandings, subtleties. From the experience of Lettre à ma sœur, I met so many people who were reflecting on the importance of the image, on how it can transform our gaze and thus construct it. Expressing things in duality, in dialectics, in complexity… It is about reappropriating the self-image as a strategy of disalienation. That’s how I got the idea to start giving workshops in Algeria.  

GC: So this is where your educational work starts?

HD: Starting with my first film and all the meetings I had, I decided to work in broadcasting and educating people who wanted to try their hand at documentary filmmaking. It was interesting because we were in a daze, we had just come out of the 1990s civil war without really being out of it. 

It’s always like that when you think you’re coming out of a war and you’re never really out of it. There are always things that remain, that are there and you don’t really know what to do with them. We found each other in the cinema, in the analysis of the films, able to reflect on what had happened, and it was of great help. I created a space of freedom where we could experiment in our own way, while at the same time leaving room for discovery, a real workshop. 

Very interesting things came out of it, as these film objects were totally imbued with freedom. I started with these workshops in 2007, even though I had already been working on image education since 2003 and, immediately afterwards, we organised an annual workshop on the creation of documentary films. 

The methodological axes that I follow are always linked to the idea of freedom, of not belonging to any institution, always questioning the constraints imposed, deconstructing the way of creating images by proposing some others, although often clumsily and taking a long time. Sometimes also with a lot of suffering, because traumas and buried histories are faced. Despite everything, they remain intense and very strong experiences, every time.

Emmanuelle Bouhours: To stay with the topic of workshops, you felt the need to think about how to represent the world and, as you said, ‘take off your straitjackets’. But wasn’t it also about the need to rethink ways of producing cinema? Collectives in cinema have always existed, what you propose in the workshops is also a collaborative and horizontal approach.

HD: We couldn’t organise the workshops without resorting to a new production model. Participatory workshops have always existed. There are very famous ones, the Medvedkine group, the Varan ateliers, the feminist groups in France in the 1970s, many experiences in Latin America, in Iran, and in Arab countries. I was inspired by all these methods. 

I did a lot of reading, even attending workshops. Of course, then we created our own recipe. The Algerian context is complicated and we still had to adapt production models. We experiment with a participative model where everyone provides their own means, even if it is the Cinéma Mémoire collective that provides most of the resources, materials, work spaces and invites people to intervene, etc. 

Materials are managed collectively, they circulate freely, without a central unit that collects them and where people come to find them. On the contrary, this material circulates because films are made in several cities. In the workshops, some people come from Oran, some from Kabylia, some from Constantine, some from Sétif.. So we had to find a system that would allow not only the circulation of means, but also mutual help. 

How can we support each other in making films? Each time and over all these years, the outgoing group helps the incoming one. Even today, many people work together. This creates an interesting group and production dynamic.

I also wanted to show that films can be made even with very small means. When we film misery, the most complicated and violent situations, it is unseemly to have large resources, as is the asymmetry between what we have and what we are filming. We have to create a balance between who we are and what we are filming. It is what I call the depth of the gaze, your positioning, where you stand.

EB: You have talked about feminist perspectives in your workshops and in relation to current struggles. What is your relationship with feminism?

HD: Feminism has always been part of my life. Since I was 14 or 15 years old, I have considered myself a feminist. I discovered feminism as a form of thinking and with my sisters we developed our knowledge and practices primarily among ourselves. 

We talked a lot about feminist ideas and literature. We were very committed. Over time, with the murder of my sister and my exile, feminism somehow became part of my DNA, something completely natural. I often forget to say that in all my work there is a strong feminist dimension. It is a contradiction and I realised it later. It is so integrated that I don’t feel the need to say it. 

Later, when I met young feminists, I realised that no, it is not obvious. Things have to be reaffirmed. Everything I do is imbued with feminism. It is not just a way of thinking, in fact I cannot imagine the world otherwise. It constitutes who I am. 

People and the media often presented me first and foremost as a feminist-filmmaker. It was their gaze that made me aware of it. For 20 years I didn’t say it, not verbally, even when I made Lettre à ma Sœur, even though it was a deeply feminist film. And in all my films there is a feminist dimension that takes precedence over everything else. The issue is much broader than just a woman’s gaze.

GC: The entry of women into Algerian cinema is often linked to films such as Leila et les autres by Sid Ali Mazif (1978), about women workers in Algeria, or La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua (1977) by Assia Djebar. Your cinema is also strongly linked to feminist commitment. It began with Lettre à ma Sœur and continues by giving space to the feminisms of other generations, which is the case of the authors you welcome in your workshops. Do you recognise yourself in this genealogy?

HD: As I said before, in 1994 with my sister we created the festival Images et Imaginaires de femmes dans le cinéma algérien. We could only do one edition, because the following year my sister was assassinated. 

Only after a while do I realise that it was no accident that this first festival was focused on feminist thought. We were already questioning the discriminatory representations of women in our societies. The only film that I found really powerfully feminist was the one by Assia Djebar. La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua was the first film directed by a woman director in Algeria, in 1977. 

It is impressive that this film poses not only the question of women’s place but also their experience during the war of liberation. The character of the journalist and teacher who can ask questions immediately positions herself as a leader, a woman in the vanguard. 

The limit is pushed even further, because this woman’s partner has a motor disability. To a certain extent, she is thinking of the world of men as a world with a disability. Assia not only makes the first film by a woman in Algeria, but the first feminist film and, even more, she creates something totally new in terms of form. A formal freedom. 

This provoked the anger of filmmakers who attacked the film for not corresponding to the usual format of the time. To answer your question, yes I do recognise myself in this genealogy, but not only in this one, as I do not like categories I feel that my influences also come from elsewhere. Algeria is not the only reference in my journey.

We asked Habiba Djahnine for a filmography that tracks her most significant works:

Tahia ya Didou (1971), Mohamed Zinet

La Nouba des femmes du Mont de Chenoua (1977), Assia Djebar

La Zerda ou le chant de l’oubli (1979), Assia Djebar

Une boite dans le désert (1978), Brahim Tsaki

La moitié du ciel d’Allah (1995), Djamila Sahraoui

Combien je vous aime (1985), Azzedine Meddour

Roma Wala N’touma (2006), Tariq Teguia

Je suis mort (2015), Yassine Benalhadj

Bîr d’eau a Walkmovie (2011), Djamil Beloucif

El Atlal (2016), Djamel Kerkar

Dans ma tête un rond point (2015), Hassen Ferhani

Abou Leila (2019), Amine Sidi-Boumédiène

Films she has collaborated on or produced include:

Harguine Harguine (2008), Meriem Achour Bouakkaz

EL Berrani (l’étranger) (2011), Bouba

La grande Prison (2014), Razik Oumeziane 

Nnuba (2019), Sonia Kessi

Hey Djamila, si je meurs comment feras-tu ? (2019), Leila Saadna

Kouchet el Djir (Four à Chaux) (2014), Boukraa Moussa

Retour vers un point d’équilibre (2009), Nadia Chouieb

Bnet el Djeblia (Les filles de la montagnarde) (2019), Wiame Awres

El Sitar (Le rideau) (2019), Kahina Zina

J’ai habité l’absence deux fois (2011), Drifa Mezenner

Fi Rayha (Selon elle) (2019), Kamila Ould Larbi

The post The Depth of the Gaze: A Conversation with Habiba Djahnine on Algerian Feminist Cinema appeared first on Untold.

Davide Oberto: Kamal, can you tell us how you encountered cinema and how you started to make films?

Kamal Aljafari: When I was a Palestinian student in Jerusalem, I wasn’t really interested in art and cinema – in the sense that it wasn’t something that I aspired to pursue. 

At that time, I was mostly an activist at the university, a member of a left-wing student group.

Within that context, I began working with the (editorial) team of a magazine, where I learned how to investigate the different issues I wanted to write about.

At that point, almost by chance, I started going to the cinemathéque in Jerusalem – mainly  because everybody seemed to be going there. You could get a membership and then watch films. And I really enjoyed watching films!

But the idea of studying and making films only came later, when I started thinking about creating something to express things that I couldn’t articulate in other ways.

This desire coincided with my growing urge to leave the country. I was involved in a kind of Marxist group – it was almost like a sect – and it was really difficult to break away. So for me, making art and wanting to express myself differently and artistically became a way to escape that situation and eventually to leave the country.

I ended up going to Germany because someone told me about the school in Cologne and offered to let me stay at their place.

I was 26 when I left. That was already many years ago – my God!

I think things often happen by coincidence. In the end, I could have ended up doing something completely different, not necessarily filmmaking. 

D.: What about your first films?

K.: Well, the first film I made was at film school – the one I did in Geneva- Visit Iraq (2003, 25’). I’m not sure if I’ve already told you this: recently I wanted to digitize some old miniDV tapes of my earlier films like The Roof (2006, 61’) and others. While going through the tapes, I found three labeled “Gaza”. I had no idea what they were, I didn’t even remember ever filming in Gaza. Really, I had no recollection.

I watched the tapes, and they turned out to be footage from a visit that I made to Gaza when I was 28. At that time, I was already living in Germany. I had taken a camera from my school, returned to Palestine, and filmed for three days. And incredibly, I never watched the material.  I never digitized those tapes, so I never saw them until now. I am even in the footage myself because I had asked someone to film me while I was talking to people.

This might be  the first thing I ever filmed. You know, it just happened after my first year at film school. I had learned a bit how to use the camera, and then I went to film that. My idea back then was to make a film about my experience in prison. I was looking for someone in Gaza who was imprisoned with me. I didn’t find him, but I filmed that search, and then never watched the material. I’ve carried it with me for almost 25 years. Now that I’ve discovered it, I’m making a film from it called With Hasan in Gaza.

D.: When were you in prison?

K.: When I was 17. I talked a bit about that experience in The Roof.

D.: Have you already finished With Hasan in Gaza?

K.: (laughing) Not yet, not that fast! 

What is interesting is that there’s a lot of great material in the footage, especially the people. I filmed many people, their faces…But what is also fascinating is that I had completely forgotten all of it.

D.: In fact I’m wondering how you will work with this material, with this footage… Since you forgot you even shot it, it could function for you almost like an archive.

K.: Exactly-like an archive!!

I could only remember because I watched the footage. Otherwise, the fact that I had gone there, that I had slept at that person’s place, was completely erased from my memory. It was around the year 2000. There were bombings around the house. And Hasan, the person who hosted me, said “Yeah…don’t worry, let’s watch TV. There is a basketball game”. So he turned on the TV and he started watching the basketball game, and I filmed that. Sometimes I would look and film out of the window, checking what was happening outside. But he kept saying: “Don’t worry, don’t worry. Just come and sit next to me”.

This time I want to approach the filmmaking process differently, because this footage brought back so many memories – about Gaza, about my time in prison. I’ve written the narration, and I’ll start working on it when I’m in Paris (Kamal received a one-year fellowship at The Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Columbia University in Paris).

With Hasan in Gaza is actually the first thing I ever shot, and it’s become a kind of archival footage. It’s crazy, because it has only now come to light. I carried it with me all these years, never watched it – and it’s really strange how things happen. That’s why I say: it’s not always about what we decide to do. It’s about what life brings us, how life carries us to places.

I could have ended up being a writer, instead of making films. I don’t want to say that I was born to make films. Sometimes, we start something, we enjoy it, we stay with it. We live, and life leads us.

 D: Maybe cinema turned out to be the perfect language for expressing a necessity…

 K.: In a way, yes.

I started by writing for the political magazine, doing reportages, but not only. I also expressed more poetic feelings, and I started taking photos for the magazine, too.

I think that filmmaking, in a way, was an accident – a good accident, but still an accident.

It could have completely failed. I went to study in Cologne, and it could have happened that I didn’t enjoy it. But in the end, I stayed, and I’m still making films. It might sound really crazy, but most of the people I studied with don’t make films anymore. No one! At some point, you start a family…I don’t know…You have to work…It becomes too hard to be a filmmaker…

It’s strange, because I didn’t plan it this way. I didn’t intend to make films with archival footage, and now even though there is a fiction film I want to make I find myself working in an archive again.

This time, it’s my own archive, but it really is an archive. I can watch myself at 28 years old. I still had a lot of hair, and I was very attentive and curious.

D: I think cinema, in your case – especially considering your early films like The Roof, Balconies (2007, 7’), Port of Memory (2009, 62’) – is a remarkable opportunity , or perhaps a serendipitous accident, to combine space and time. You went to this film school in Cologne, then returned to Ramleh (Kamal Aljafari’s hometown, Editor’s note) where you began  intertwining  the space around you with the personal (hi)story and the time of your family…

K.: For me, it was something natural and instinctive – to fill the environment I came from with meaning.

 I grew up in a house where the second floor was left unfinished. So, for me, the sense of belonging to a certain sense of history was always there.

When I returned,  I made my first feature-length film, The Roof, in 2004.

I was immediately attracted by this landscape, which was part of my story, part of what I wanted to express. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do without relating to that.

D.: Maybe you can tell us where your family lives.

K.: On my mother’s side, the family came from Jaffa; on my father’s side, from Ramleh. Both families were internally displaced, meaning they lost their homes, and were resettled to houses that belonged to other Palestinians. They couldn’t return to their original houses, because their neighborhoods were destroyed. After 1948, the Israeli army created ghettos for the Palestinians who remained in Israel. 

In Jaffa, out of 120,000, only a tiny minority, about 2000, stayed. The same happened in Ramleh, only 100 remained out of around 30,000. The house where I was born had previously belonged to another Palestinian family. It was “given” to my family because this area had been designated as the area where all the Palestinians who stayed after 1948 were gathered. The house was unfinished – the second floor was never completed – and they lived there. It has remained the same ever since, because the municipality doesn’t give permission to build further. It’s been frozen in time for 76 years.

So, naturally, this space became part of my films. And this space is, of course, also intertwined with time. Generation after generation, you inherit a special sense of time. I think I tried to explain this spacetime idea in The Roof, where I said that my parents live on the ground floor, and the past lives above them, on the second floor.

D.: And then you move on to using archival material or, rather, creating your own archive.

K.: I wanted to tell the story of where my mother came from and of the neighborhood where  her family came from. It was a fisherman’s neighborhood, now part of Tel Aviv. By chance, I discovered that some Israeli films from the 60s had captured this place before it was completely destroyed. And that’s how I came up with the idea of making a film. Initially, I just wanted to collect images of the backgrounds from those Israeli films. But then, I found that there are many films shot in Jaffa in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. I began a photographic project, taking snapshots of these backgrounds. I would project the films and focus on the details appearing in the background: houses, people and fragments of everyday life. At first, I didn’t intend to make a film, it was just mostly about collecting images. I was so thrilled to see and discover these places in the background of Israeli films.

That led to my decision to make Recollection (2015, 70’), a film about memory and the act of recollecting or remembering. I made it precisely because those places no longer exist physically: they survive only virtually, in images. And, as I mentioned earlier, one project leads to another.

D.: in Recollection and in An Unusual Summer (2020, 80’) you are no longer working with the footage you shot yourself. Especially in Recollection, you did something incredibly powerful politically too. You used these Israeli films shot in Jaffa and you deliberately erased  the actors…

K.: I’ve always reworked the images to make them my own. I didn’t just take the archival footage as it is. I reworked these images and, by doing so, I created a different ownership. Altering these images is both an artistic and political act. In a way, by changing them, you liberate them and they become your own images.

D.: This might be the difference between a document and a documentary.

K.: I never think in terms of  style or genre, like “Now I’m making a documentary…” . I just try to find the right way to express myself. I don’t set boundaries. I use whatever tools I think are necessary.

For example, in A Fidai film (2024, 78’) I also used some Israeli fiction films scenes, because they helped me express myself and show something. What I’m doing is, in a way, free-form art.

D.: In fact we can say that in A Fidai Film, your most recent work, you express your freedom to the fullest. Can you tell us about the genesis of the film? How did you discover the material?

K.: I’ve been collecting images for a long time, from many different places. During the  COVID pandemic, the Israeli Cinema Archives began uploading a large amount of material online, and I’ve been watching these videos from the very beginning. I was particularly interested in what they had  on Jaffa and Ramleh, and I started recording images that I found interesting. 

Then, by chance, a friend sent me an article about what happened in 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when the Israeli army looted and destroyed the Palestinian Research Center in Beirut. That  article sparked the idea of making a film – one where I would sabotage the material coming from Israeli archives. I came up with the title, A Fidai Film, because “Fidayin” refers to the Palestinian fighters who, in the early years, crossed the border and made actions not to harm people but to sabotage the Zionist project, such as planting a bomb in a factory. 

In Hebrew, they were called “saboteurs”, a term still used today to describe Palestinian fighters. There is actually a very funny interview with Edward Said where he talks about this word. He recounts an incident from 1982, when the Israeli Army had captured a Palestinian fighter in Beirut. During the interrogation, they asked if he was a saboteur. Thinking to save his own life, he answered: “Yes, I’m a saboteur”. Then the interview took a surreal and absurd turn. They asked him what exactly he did as a saboteur and he answered: “I wake up in the morning and I think about sabotaging things”. 

In some way, when I came up with this title, everything fell into place. I began downloading and capturing video materials online with the intention of ‘sabotaging’ the images.

In many of the Israeli films that I captured, both documentary and fiction, Palestinian places and landscapes are used as visual backdrops during the opening and end credits. That was always deeply disturbing to me, and I felt the need to sabotage it, to literally scratch over the names of the titles. That’s how I started. Then I discovered footage taken by the Israeli army from the Palestinian Research Center, and I did the same to what they had written over the images at the beginning of each clip. So, sabotage by sabotage, the film came to life. The process itself became the film and that’s what makes the Fidai project so unusual and interesting.

The starting point is what happened in 1982, but the material comes from many different sources. I sabotage, I intervene, I disrupt, I remove people, I erase texts, I create a new meaning.

D.: I love the fiction scene with the two lovers on the beach. It feels like a French film from the ‘60s. You can almost imagine a Serge Gainsbourg song playing in the background. You can recognize the style, the period, and yet the effect you create feels so uncomfortable, so unheimlich, so unpleasant.

 K.: That film actually screened in Cannes, as a short, sometime around 1965.

When I watched it, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The dialog, in all its banality, reflects  exactly what they are doing to Palestine.

The man says: “I’m gonna go on and on like this. I can’t stop it”, and the woman replies: “It’s terrible, but we can’t stop it”. The scene, to me, captures the essence of the Zionist project: the recognition of the harm and yet an unwillingness or refusal to stop.

By covering their faces and sabotaging the image, you create this new meaning. Otherwise, it’s just a couple on the beach. Once you put on this mask, they become someone else. The scene becomes something else. It’s no longer about them. It becomes a metaphor for  something much larger.

D.: How did you decide to include the text (Letter from Gaza, 1956) by Ghassan Kanafani? (Ghassan Kanafani was a Palestinian journalist, politician, and author. He developed the notion of “resistance literature”. Born in 1936 in Acre, he was assassinated by the Mossad along with his niece on 8th July 1972. A/N)

K.: I felt it was necessary to find references that convey  a sense of history through personal stories. Kanafani always wrote about the stories of individuals.

When I was a teenager, my history teacher asked us to record some oral history. I interviewed an elderly neighbour who told me a story that, years later, I found  again in Letter from Gaza. He spoke about the possibility of going to California and about a boy who had lost his leg.

It’s very likely that  Kanafani had heard a similar story from someone in a refugee camp in Lebanon or in Jordan. I don’t know exactly where. In Letter from Gaza, he recounts a story from 1956, during the first major Israeli military attack on Gaza. He writes about the 13-year-old Nadia who has lost her leg during the attack.

Reading that text today,  it becomes clear just how long this suffering has been going on. Including Letter from Gaza in the film could be seen as a response to what’s happening today, but it isn’t. I’m talking about 1956. And yet, it is about today,  just on a different scale.

People watching the film now often think it’s a reaction to what happened in October. In reality, the film was finished between July and August 2023 – the final edit even earlier. 

But it’s true that the film reveals the background of what is happening today.

D.: That’s probably why those in  power always try to destroy archives.

The footage of the destruction of the Palestinian Research Center in 1983 is incredibly powerful and scary.

K.: Yes, those in  power always try to erase evidence.

The story of the Center is both symbolic and, frankly, quite surreal. First, they tried to assassinate Anis Sayigh, the director of the Center. They sent him an envelope bomb, which exploded in his face. He nearly died, and lived the rest of his life with severe hearing damage and a constant, painful noise in his ears. 

But he survived, and continued his work directing the Center. Later, the Israeli army looted the place. After the army withdrew from Beirut to South Lebanon, some of the Center’s staff came back to rebuild the library. But the army had planted a powerful bomb. Many people were killed, the street was completely destroyed, cars were incinerated. 

The goal was clear: to put an end, once and for all, to the efforts of documenting Palestine. To permanently erase the archive. To destroy any attempt at building a historical record, a collective memory.   

D.: What are your projects after With Hasan in Gaza? You mentioned working on a fiction film…

K.: Yes. I’ve written the script, but I don’t think I will shoot it in Palestine as I originally planned. I want to find a different way of doing it, to continue this tradition of working with something more virtual.

I’m still figuring it out. There are so many possibilities today with 3D technology: you can create anything. Of course, filming remains important to me, but I think I want to use the material differently. I want to create something that isn’t realistic, even in terms of place or setting. That’s the direction I want to pursue, but first, I want to finish the Gaza film.

D.: What you are saying about the impossibility of shooting in Palestine and the necessity to imagine and to build a virtual reality reminds me of a scene from Film Socialisme by Jean-Luc Godard. When the cruise ship arrives in front of Palestine, we don’t see the land itself. 

Instead, we just see a Palestinian postcard with the words “défense d’entrer” (forbidden entry) written across it.

K.: Working with archives is directly tied to this feeling of inaccessibility. In theory, I could go there, but the place is inaccessible because it was destroyed. So I turned to archival films- images captured by others – because these destroyed places continue to exist only through these images.

But the inaccessibility is also deeply psychological. Today, I find it very difficult to imagine myself going back. I can’t picture myself landing there. It’s become such a psychological barrier, and that in itself forces me to rethink how I can make films.

I can’t just make a normal film now. The idea of simply going there and shooting, I can’t imagine myself doing that.

Avoiding that direct return has become a way to protect myself. I know it would be emotionally challenging. So I try to work differently, with distance and with layers. For this fiction film, I’ll probably return to archives again. Over the years, I have collected so much material, thousands of hours, stored in many hard-drives. Some of it I shot myself. I want to find a way to use all this material.

I have to work with limitations. Limitations force you to create something unexpected, which sometimes results in a much more powerful film.

Imagine this: I want to make a fiction film, but I can’t shoot it in the place where the story is set. Maybe, I’ll shoot it in a similar location, not pretending that it is Palestine. Perhaps in Palermo or in Lisbon.  There is something of Jaffa in Palermo for sure. I might insert some shots from there and it will be clear that it is Palermo and not Jaffa, but it doesn’t matter to me. Palermo is also part of my history. 

Ultimately, I’m speaking about a country that we have lost, a homeland that we have lost and I’m not trying to escape from that loss. Every film I’ve made -and every film I will make-, starts  from that condition, from trying to find a way to relate to it.

D.: One last question about the beginning of A Fidai Film. The film opens with a giant red sun: a striking image. It reminds me of the postnuclear films from the 80s…Why did you choose to start the film with such a symbolic image?

K.: This idea came from the feeling that colonialism and the Zionist project want to block out  the sun, and of course this image gives the sensation that a disaster is looming. But you can’t cover the sun forever, you can try, as I did in the film, but it won’t work. The sun always  comes back, even after a disaster. 

The post Accidents, Archives, and Acts of Sabotage: A Conversation with Palestinian Film Director Kamal Aljafari appeared first on Untold.

Frau Hoffmann was a tall woman. Short grey curls, bags puffy under her eyes – the nights grew shorter with age. She had a long, lined face and a slightly stooped back, though not because of the pressures of school routine or the attendant stress. Most of the students were small, arrayed before her on their chairs. It was not her habit to talk down to them. Aras must have thanked her a hundred times, and she had asked him to call her by her first name. But it was too soon, and in Aras’s head she was still his German teacher, someone owed respect. ‘Of course, I’m happy to!’ Frau Hoffmann said.

His mother stood next to them, clutching a folder stuffed with papers. Frau Hoffmann turned to Nadia: ‘I don’t know if Aras mentioned this to you, but I’ve actually been to Aleppo. I went on holiday there with my family. A remarkably beautiful city, a gorgeous city.’ Nadia inclined her head and asked, ‘Did you visit the castle?’
‘Citadel,’ corrected Aras.
‘Yes, of course. I heard it was destroyed.’
‘Just the back of it,’ Aras said.
‘Just the back of it,’ Nadia nodded.

As a boy, Aras used to go in and get lost there, the citadel, always on the hunt for a new stage. Once, with one of his cousins, he had gone looking for the hill where Abraham was said to have milked a cow – the reason why the city where they lived was called Halab: white, like the milk. Getting lost in the citadel was a kind of ritual. Inside, time was blurred. There was always something new to find. Once, with another cousin, he discovered the tomb of Salah al-Din’s third son. Another time they clambered down into the dungeons, where people had once poured acid. Their search led them eventually to the throne room, one of two spaces preserved in their original condition, although nobody really believed the interiors were original. Still, the patterns, the geometry – Aras had sat down and tried to count the squares, the triangles, the sequences, but they seemed to never end. The citadel was a vast labyrinth, an adventure playground. In it he would never go astray. Other visitors, used to seeing children without parents, would drop him off at the main entrance, where he would wait with the guards, picturing the battles in which the citadel had never been taken – the moat was simply too deep – until at last his family emerged and he re-joined them. Back then they didn’t know the citadel’s afflictions would persist, or that the increasing damage to the city would come to seem like an inverse prediction of the past, when Aleppo’s nickname al-Shaba’ – the white mingled with the black – had once referred to marble. Now, it meant ash and rubble.

The ground offered its solid, uneven foundation to other people who stood nearby, their eyes glued to wristwatches, to phones. Nervous glances. Cigarettes appeared in the corners of several mouths, while other people chatted with their companions. Only a very few had come alone, and those were the ones who looked around. It would take nerves of steel to be here by yourself, thought Aras, smiling at them. They hadn’t rolled out the appointments system yet, when phones would put each person in a queue, sorted alphabetically.

The doors opened. Anybody standing directly in front of them, the metal doors, was swallowed up. If you wanted to be first through the mill you were first to arrive, because the mill ground slowly. Frau Hoffmann, Aras and Nadia passed through the entryway. Their pace was slow, a pace not rushed, not hasty, not reluctant, not without purpose, but with confidence low. The floor reflected back their steps, tiled; a reception desk was directly opposite the entrance. A corridor on the right led to the Citizens’ Registration Office. Their path took them left, up the stairs. The silicone on the banister was red, worn. The door now facing them was mint green, silver-handled, ring-scuffed. Five people were gathered around it. No obvious order. Aras memorised the faces, hoping that they – and perhaps the door as well – would memorise his own, so that when the sixth face came they’d know whose turn it was.

The last time Aras had taken leave of the place was four years earlier, and he’d believed it really was the last time. A fond farewell. Not that he was a credulous person. But when, verdict by verdict, more dead were added to the chants each Friday; when cities were cut off from electricity, water and all forms of communication, when there followed more and more arrests, more and more disappearances; when the dictator, who described his own people as too ill-educated for reforms, decided to smother the revolution beneath a sky thick with hails of bullets – Assad or we’ll burn the country to the ground, said the walls, Assad for all eternity, they said and said again; when soldiers who didn’t want to fire on their brothers and sisters, on their girlfriends, neighbours and relatives, joined the Free Syrian Army; while Nadia alternately sat in front of the computer screen or stood out on the street, outside embassies, local government buildings or the Reichstag, hoping to hear the one piece of news that would end it all; Aras had realised then that it wouldn’t be long before he saw this building once again, and now, after two years, he had. Goodbyes aren’t forever.

So while the European Union debated on that very day, a day like today, whether to supply the Syrian rebels with weapons – Germany didn’t think it was a good idea, because it would just mean the opposing side would arm themselves still further – the banister opposite the mint-coloured door provided Aras with some small support. The tiles at his feet worried him. They captured his attention. Black, cracked in certain places, split. Somebody had fought against their power, perhaps, tried furiously to bring the place down with their feet, over and over, others following, a pathetic attempt. Were the cracks evidence that the police had made a pact with the floor, offering it different faces, and the floor, in return, had exercised the harshness of state power? Aras’s vision went red.

Nadia and Frau Hoffmann were chatting beside him.
‘Can you translate?’ his mother asked.
‘A man was on trial, and the three judges sentenced him to death,’ Aras translated. ‘He was offered a last wish, as is often the case. Normally, most people ask to see their mother again, or they ask for food, that sort of thing. But this man thought he was clever, so he asked to learn German.’ Nadia was building up towards the punchline. ‘The first judge said, “No, we can’t grant that wish.” The second judge agreed: “It would take far too long. We’ll never get round to carrying out the sentence.”’ Realising he knew the joke already, Aras braced himself for Frau Hoffmann’s reaction. ‘The third judge said, “We should grant him his wish. He’ll carry out the sentence himself.”’ The others by the door, whom Aras had almost forgotten were there, joined in with Frau Hoffmann’s laughter. ‘I’ll have to tell my students that one,’ she chuckled. ‘Priceless.’

[…]

There Were Days (original German title, “Da waren Tage”) is Luna Ali’s debut novel, written and published in German by S. Fischer in 2024. 

Aras, the protagonist, observes the Syrian revolution from a distance. Born in Aleppo but raised in Germany, he was in his first semester of law school in 2011 when the revolution began. As violence in Syria escalates, the conflict increasingly permeates his life in Germany. From lecture halls to immigration offices, during an internship in Jordan, or as a guest on a political talk show, Aras relives the anniversary of the revolution each year as a merging of reality and imagination. Thus, the novel There Were Days asks how the desire for freedom—and the repression of that desire—shapes the life, actions, and language of the protagonist in the diaspora. 

The excerpt is from the third chapter. It addresses the most direct impact of the Syrian revolution’s repression on Aras: his family’s desire to escape the war. The chapter is set in March 15th, 2013, at the Foreigners’ Office (Ausländerbehörde), where Aras, his mother Nadia, and his former German teacher attempt to submit a Verpflichtungserklärung (declaration of commitment) to secure family reunification—the only safe passage between Syria and Germany at the time. To achieve this, they depend on Frau Hoffmann, whose income qualifies her to provide a guarantee (Bürgschaft). The chapter explores the dehumanizing bureaucracy of the Foreigners’ Office, which reduces individuals to subordinates, while also unravelling the intricate web of politics, (post-)colonialism, and kinship, ultimately fostering solidarity.

This text was written prior to February 2025 and is part of the dossier “Eternity Unwoven,” curated by Veronica Ferreri and Inana Othman.

The dossier is a collaboration of Archivwar with Untoldmag and Arabpop. Its Italian version is available in Arabpop Vol. 8 “Cose” (Arabpop logo)

Graphic project: Greg Olla

The publisher remains available to rights holders regarding any images for which it was not possible to identify or contact the owners.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Resarch and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101064513 “ARCHIVWAR – Archives in Times of War: Scattered Families and Vanishing Past in Contemporary Syria.” 

Funded by the European Union. Views and options expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Execute Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

The post 2013 – Getting the process going appeared first on Untold.

It is fitting then that Peter Wollen’s Friendship’s Death (1987), the one film that Swinton chose from her extensive filmography to be shown at Berlinale this year – a film centered on the very idea of boycott’s political efficacy and its ethical, humanistic urgency – was screened in the film program of On Strike Berlin, an alternative programme running parallel to Berlinale in various venues across the city. 

Indeed,the program was organized collectively by On Strike: screenings & talks striking Berlinale to answer a call by Strike Germany and Film Workers for Palestine to boycott this year’s Berlin Film Festival. On Strike cites numerous reasons on its website for joining the boycott. Among them the German state’s foreign policies pertaining to Israel’s assault on Gaza, German politicians’ backlash against expressions of solidarity with Palestine, and the events that took place at the 2024 Berlinale, including the recriminations in Germany against the Israeli documentary filmmaker Yuval Abraham and the Palestinian filmmaker and activist Basel Adra, the co-creators (alongside Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor) of the searing documentary No Other Land (2023), documenting the displacement and destruction of Palestinian homes by the Israeli army in Masafer Yatta, in the occupied West Bank. 

The film won Berlinale’s Best Documentary award and subsequently the Best Documentary award from the American Film Academy at the Oscars, yet faces censorship and reprisals as it screens globally. 

To counter this climate of silencing voices speaking against the decimation of the Gazan population, the illegality of forced displacements, and against Israel’s assaults, as well as to create a richer climate of discussion about the ongoing occupation of Palestine, the screening of Friendship’s Death featured special guests: British film scholar Nicolas Helm-Grovas (presently writing a book titled Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen: Towards Counter-Cinema) and Palestinian editor and educator Hazem Jamjoum, moderated by filmmaker Philip Rizk, to contextualize the film’s socio-political and historical context, and its present relevance.

The emergence of a political consciousness

Wollen’s Friendship’s Death tells the story of an extraterrestrial android called Friendship, sent to Earth on a peace mission. Friendship originally is meant to address the United Nations in New York, hoping to persuade humans to abandon their bellicose ways and their annihilation of all life forms. Much of Friendship’s journey to Earth is enclosed within the larger philosophical consideration of her quest for autonomy: A sophisticated robot – a futuristic AI – uploaded with advanced data and facts about Earth by her extraterrestrial creators, she nevertheless originally lacks the sense of  self-determination. Not cognizant of having a choice to decide her own fate, she will only come to it slowly. 

This aspect of self-determination and autonomy, mingled with Friendship’s undying fascination with and compassion for humanity, serves as the basis for Wollen’s launch into historical and political debates running throughout the film. In this sense, Wollen’s film is particularly urgent today, because its underlying theme is the emergence of a political consciousness, and the contrast between passivity and commitment, with Friendship’s android mind serving as a cognitive tabula rasa, in which this consciousness emerges.

The film’s historical backdrop is “Black September” of 1970; the action takes place in a hotel in Amman, Jordan, where Friendship lands, after her spaceship crashes mid-flight. Friendship loses her documents, suddenly becoming a non-entity: As an android, she’s trapped in the human shell, essentially undocumented, and stateless – a fact that immediately aligns her with all the Earth’s political outcasts, as all people denied their dignity, and their civic and political rights. This position gradually pushes Friendship from her original impartiality and wish to complete her mission to her alignment with the oppressed and the dispossessed; a stance that leads her to abandon her diplomatic mission and join the Palestinian cause.

Questions of solidarity 

Friendship has only one close contact at the hotel: Sullivan, a British journalist who is covering the Middle East conflict, and is sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle. Friendship and Sullivan are stranded at the hotel, in the midst of Jordan’s civil war. This aspect of the film, in particular, gained much from the Q & A discussion, during which speakers framed it within international solidarity and the 1960s’ revolutionary movements. 

Solidarity is indeed a motif running through the entire film. There are the limits of Sullivan’s solidarity, in the sense that his job is to report on the conflict, yet he doesn’t see the possibility of an immediate positive outcome, and, by the end of his stay sounds defeatist (Wollen’s critique of Sullivan aligns with the criticism that Adra makes in No Other Land of journalists expecting immediate resolution to a conflict spanning decades). 

There is the clear theme of Friendship’s solidarity with humanity – her concern about its self-destructiveness, which makes her empathize with both the Palestinian and Israeli victims; an empathy which doesn’t preclude her recognizing that her peacemaking mission is bound to fail; she is more likely to be captured, and used by the US industrial complex to manufacture weapons of destruction, than she is to convince militaristic societies to abandon their quest for power. In this sense, while Friendship’s boycott of her mission is undershot by pessimism similar to Sullivan’s, it is uniquely linked to her acknowledging that she isn’t an innocent bystander; as a robot, she is part of the techno-military complex that perpetuates wars. Wollen clearly also means to say that we are all implicated in the foreign policies and territorial grabs of our governments.

The equally pertinent question of solidarity on which Wollen touches, explained in detail by Hazem Jamjoum during the film’s Q & A, lies with the Middle East: Friendship’s Death records a critical moment in Middle East history, when, after Jordan hosted Palestinians in the wake of the Arab defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War against Israel, the idea of Pan-Arab solidarity that had mobilized the region in the early ‘60s, giving rise to the idea that the Arab countries would liberate Palestine, comes to an end, as Jordan attacks Palestinian resistance fighters: “A crushing moment for the notion of the Arab revolution.” 

Jamjoum also stressed in the Q & A that the student movements aligned with Palestinians, some formed into militant factions, were anti-authoritarian and anti-monarchist, which put them at odds with regressive Arab regimes. One might add that, in Europe, solidarity with Palestine was inscribed in an anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, anticapitalist ideal, which also died in the 1970s.

Friendship’s answer to this collapse of solidarity is manifold. When questioned about her position on the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacking planes, she commiserates with both the fear and suffering of the kidnapped, and the anger and desperation of the hijackers. 

In a crucial conversation with Sullivan, Friendship relates how she ventured outside the hotel, to Jerash, a city in the North of Jordan, and was picked up and interrogated by the Jordanian Army Patrol, alongside her PLO escort. Friendship repeatedly confides her helplessness trying to ensure her escort’s safety; she fails as they are separated – a traumatic episode, which, not incidentally, coincides with Friendship identifying the hotel in Amman as “home” for the first time. 

Similarly, in No Other Land, Abraham tries to safeguard Adra and others as the Israeli army bulldozes Palestinian homes, yet Adra’s cousin dies of a bullet wound after being shot by an Israeli soldier. Like Abraham’s, Friendship’s political consciousness evolves out of a profound sense of helplessness, and a growing awareness that the efficacy of her civilian actions is limited. 

Can cinema forge a vision of solidarity, dignity and justice?

Both Sullivan and Friendship face choices with political implications: Sullivan returns to England; Friendship stays in Amman. Wollen shows her wearing a militant uniform, and in the voiceover, she is heard reading a note, hidden in her pocket, to her future killer. The film ends with Sullivan reminiscing about Friendship years later, in London, trying to watch a film she left behind, finally decoded with a more advanced technology. Yet Friendship’s file is an abstract puzzle of signs, in a way suggesting that humans still lack the wisdom to receive her message. 

Lacking a coda, what remains of Friendship’s legacy is her choice to bear witness and her sacrifice – Wollen gives Friendship the most searing lines in the film, in which she expresses her desire for her existence to have meaning, looping back to the film’s ethical resonance. Friendship chooses to resist, but it is Sullivan who tells her tale, and his daughter who decodes Friendship’s film. In the end, Wollen’s film expresses a hope that cinema can forge a vision of solidarity, dignity and justice; or, to quote Swinton’s Berlinale speech, to be a vehicle for inclusion, making us consider “what sovereignty means to humans” – one of the most pressing questions of our time.

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