a mission to preserve Palestinian cultural memory

The tenth edition of the festival, which opens Thursday in Marseille before passing through Paris and Ivry-sur-Seine, highlights lost archives of Palestinian directors documenting the persistent conflict in the Middle East.

Dedicated to Palestinian cultural heritage, the tenth Ciné-Palestine festival begins Thursday May 30 in Marseille before continuing on June 7 in Paris, then making stops in the Paris region: Fontenay-sous-Bois, Gennevilliers, Saint-Denis, Montreuil and finally Ivry-sur-Seine on June 16, the closing day. It honors lost archives of Palestinian filmmakers documenting the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

If none of the 45 films selected were made after the Hamas attack on October 7 which led to an intensive response by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, the Ciné-Palestine festival nevertheless resonates with current events by denouncing the precarious living conditions of Gazans for decades.

“We delve into the archives but the idea is not to take our eyes off the Gaza Strip,” explained Morgane Ahmar, co-organizer of the event, to AFP, speaking of a “genocide in progress”. “Memory and struggle interact, the idea being to show perpetual Palestinian resistance.”

Several of the short and feature films broadcast disappeared for a long time after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, with many Palestinian films then stored in Beirut. They were recently recovered all over the world by several archivists, and some required significant restoration and subtitling work.

Other, more recent productions are based on family archives such as Bye Bye Tiberias, documentary by Lina Soualem (2023) where, through the stories of three generations of women, filters the pain of exile linked to the forced departure from the Palestinian territories.

Some films combine the comic and the intimate, like Aida’s return by Palestinian-Lebanese director Carol Mansour, a 2023 documentary in which she undertakes to bring back her mother’s ashes to Jaffa, the southern part of Tel Aviv in Israel. “We prioritized films made by Palestinians, with the idea that they can reclaim their own stories. That they are not always seen as fighters,” continues Morgane Ahmar.

One of the exceptions, Trip to Gaza (2024), the documentary directed by the Italian Piero Usberti, criticizes the scourge inflicted on Gazans by the Islamist Hamas regime, classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union and the United States in particular. . This film also highlights the daily difficulties linked to the embargo imposed by Israel.

Several evenings will be dedicated to youth in the Palestinian enclave. “We wanted to show not only the suffering and pain but also the joy and humor that we can encounter on a daily basis, especially children. Because paradoxically, humor often shines through in these productions,” says Mathilde Guitton-Marcon, co-organizer of the festival.

> The program of the Ciné-Palestine festival