Still from The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing
Longing for Palestine الشوق لفلسطين // post-screening conversation with director Theo Panagopoulos
Short films collection | total Running time: 73m | book ticketsPalestine is always in sight, whether it is through the dead sea or on colonial footage; this programme of short films reflects on how love and longing for Palestine cannot be contained by objects or borders.
Jerusalem, The Flower of All Cities القدس، زهرة المدائن
Set to the famous song by Fairouz, Flower of All Cities, a harmonious picture of Palestinian civil life in Jerusalem is disturbed by the Israeli army’s occupation of the city following the 1967 war. A rare example of the work of Hani Jawharieh, one of founding fathers of Palestinian cinema.
director: Ali Siam
Genre: Short, Documentary
Year of Release: 1969
Original Language: Arabic (English subtitles)
Content notes: Themes of displacement, violence, and occupation. Brief graphic depictions of injured children, gun violence, murder and corpses.
Salt
Through the paradox of the Dead Sea – where the excessive salinity rids the environment of life, yet creates a buoyancy that makes it near-impossible to drown – short film Salt considers how strength and perseverance are found amid conflict, drawing parallels with the everyday realities of life in Palestine. Inspired by In The Presence of Absence by poet Mahmoud Darwish, the film uses poetic language to enter a realm caught between a dream state and the tangible world – exploring this unique environment as a mirror of the political landscape that runs alongside it.
director: Mateusz Miszczyński
Genre: Short, Fiction
Year of Release: 2024
Original Language: Arabic (English subtitles)
Content notes: Depicts a knife. Mention of death and murder.Familiar Phantoms أشباح مألوفة
Familiar Phantoms is inspired by anecdotes from Sansour’s own family history and her old childhood in Bethlehem, making it her most personal film to date. Combining scenes filmed in a derelict mansion, Super 8 footage and private photos, the editing mimics the workings of memory, constantly revisiting the same imagery alongside new fragments in search of meaning.
Throughout the film, the mansion serves as the seat of memory. In the rooms, vignettes are played out, adding a theatrical dimension, enlarging and exaggerating the narrative components, just as memory perpetually reworks, reinforces, adds and subtracts. While most scenes are acted out by actors, other scenes turn objects and mementos into sculptural installations, a dark space decorated with dozens of suspended lovebird cages, a group of taxidermy seagulls sitting on the floor or a free-standing sink full to the brim of lemons.
director: Larissa Sansour & Søren Lind
Genre: Experimental, Documentary, Short
Year of Release: 2022
Original Language: Arabic (English subtitles)
Content notes: Themes of Zionist colonialism, war, and violence. Mentions of death, exile and displacement, intergenerational trauma, political prisoners, interrogations, raids, gun violence and murder.The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing الزهور تقف بصمت تشهد
When a Palestinian filmmaker based in Scotland unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wild flowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. This tender essay film questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and land.
director: Theo Panagopoulos
Genre: Short, Archive
Year of Release: 2024
Original Language: English
Age Rating: U
Content notes: Mentions of British colonialism and occupation, displacement and genocide.Events are ticketed but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Please reach out.