With Anaïs Farine (Beirut) and Irit Neidhardt (Berlin)
(in English)

Since the first generation of Palestinian filmmakers started working prior to the Nakba in 1948, the images they made were subject to systematic destruction and looting. Yet this has not been the only reason for the relative invisibility of Palestinian experiences and narratives. The recirculation of militant films from the 1970s in the global film festival circuit risks the cloaking of political concerns still unresolved behind a fascination for a historical radical aesthetic. Simultaneously, the countless contemporary films bearing witness to Palestinian suffering and resistance do not seem to make any difference either. What is the significance of these records if the knowledges they convey do not translate into political action? Anaïs Farine and Irit Neidhardt look at the shifting contexts of images and sounds from and about Palestine. They examine how solidarity with the Palestinian cause institutionalised through cinema has largely disappeared in present-day Germany, and identify current artistic and curatorial interventions in a field where technologies of making visible easily tend to have obverse effects. The conversation is accompanied by a wide range of audiovisual materials –from films made by West German film crews, commissioned by the PLO, to recent experimental films utilising found footage from colonised Palestine in the early 20th century, and the 2024 short film compilation made in Gaza, From Ground Zero.

• Programm Programme: Technologies