Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts

A film screening of 10 works in support of Palestine, curated and organised by Irmgard Emmelhainz and Nora Adwan.

As the occupation of the Palestinian territories reaches over 75 years, the assault against Gaza continues. The genocide has claimed more than 47,000 confirmed victims, a large number of them children, and has led to 1.7 million people displaced, uncountable wounded and the total destruction of the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure. The attacks are spreading through the region with thousands of victims in Lebanon, while the genocide, urbicide and ecocide continues to be livestreamed on our phones. We must keep talking about Palestine.

In Gaza, people are dying of intentional starvation as governments close their ears to screams for ceasefire. Amplifying the voices of Palestinians is an absolute necessity. In screening this programme of video art from and about Palestine we ask: How can we speak of the ongoing atrocities? How do we offer an image beyond sensationalism? How do we continue resistance and establish solidarity with those suffering the unthinkable?

PROGRAMME

The films will be screened successively in Hordaland Kunstsenter’s gallery space. There will be several short breaks where you can get refreshments in the café, as well as one longer lunch break where a warm meal will be served.

The programme will end with a conversation between Irmgard Emmelhainz and Samira Makki – Irmgard will be present at HKS, while Samira joins through video call from Beirut. 

From 13:00:

Children Without Childhood (1972), Khadijeh Habashneh, 21’
The film revolves around the life of orphans of Tall Azaatar Martyrs. Through the lives of these children, the film shows the sufferings that Palestinian children endure in diaspora camps and under the Israeli occupation.

Electrical Gaza (2015), Rosalind Nashashibi, 18’
Nashashibi presents Gaza under a spell; isolated, suspended in time, difficult to access and highly charged.

Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza (1973), Mustafa Abu Ali, 14’
A rare film by the legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the founders of the Palestine Film Unit, the first filmic arm of the Palestinian revolution.

A Different Imagination (2023), Dua Omari, 7’  

About the impossibility of rebuilding inhabitable spaces due to scarcity; the misery and precarity in which the inhabitants of Gaza find themselves is hidden through an attempt to use the imagination to create a lost home.

When Things Occur, (2016), Oraib Toukan, 28’
The film is based on Skype conversations with Gaza inhabitants who were behind the images that were transmitted from screen to screen in the summer of 2014. It asks how the gaze gets channelled within the digital realm, and how empathy travels.

15:00: Lunch break and conversations

From 16.00:

I Signed the Petition (2019), Mahdi Fleifel, 10’
A conversation between two friends about the effectiveness and implications of publicly supporting the cultural boycott of Israel, offering a glimpse of what it is to be Palestinian in today’s world. 

Canada Park (2020), Razan AlSalah, 8’
An experimental video poem exploring the politics of dis/appearance of Palestine as narrativised, mapped and imaged in Google Streetview and early 20th-century colonial landscape photography of the ‘Holy Land’.

We Would Be Freer (2023), Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, 9’
A short film reflecting on the relationship between native plants and colonised peoples. Through story and knowledge sharing, the film looks at the sumac plant as a medicine, a spice, a dye and more.

Ecocide in Gaza (2024), Forensic Architecture, 7’25’’
An investigation of Land Day in Palestine, examining the systematic targeting of orchards and greenhouses by Israeli forces since October 2023.

Vibrations from Gaza (2023), Rehab Nazzal, 16’
A glimpse into the experience of Deaf children in the colonised and confined coastal territory of Gaza.

17:00: Conversation between Irmgard Emmelheinz and Samira Makki

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS AND CONTRIBUTORS 

Irmgard Emmelhainz is a global scholar, writer and professor based in Anahuac Valley (Mexico City). Her work about film, the Palestine question, art, culture and neoliberalism has been translated into over a dozen languages and she has presented it at an array of international venues including the Universidad Distrital in Bogotá, SVA in New York, University of California in San Diego and the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Porto.

Nora Adwan is an artist who lives and works in Bergen. She often works in close collaboration with other practitioners, in visual art, performing arts, social sciences and music. Her works have been shown at Astrup Fearnley Museet (Oslo), SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), e-flux Video Platform, Lydgalleriet (Bergen), Hordaland Kunstsenter (Bergen) and elsewhere.

Samira Makki is a PhD student in Film Studies at the department of Art and Media Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She is interested in the notion of the militant image, the depictions of belonging in film, and the rapport between politics and aesthetics. Her writings appear in Frames Cinema Journal; The Reservoir; Radical Film, Art and Digital Media for Societies in Turmoil; and Film-Philosophy.

This event is a collaboration between Hordaland Kunstsenter, UKS (Unge Kunstneres Samfunn) and Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (BEK). It is supported by Oslo Municipality, Fritt Ord, and Bergen Municipality.

IMAGE: Still from Vibrations from Gaza (2023) by Rehab Nazzal