The Afterlife of Palestinian Images is a groundbreaking study of how colonial violence alters and changes visual objects - which in turn affects how a society and culture relates to its own images. Based on the practice-based creative methodology of Palestinian filmmaker and researcher Azza El Hassan, this book explores the re-use and re-appropriation of photos, film and media equipment that have survived looting and destruction, objects which become a constant reminder of what was and what has been lost. El Hassan goes beyond using these visual remains as simple evidence, demonstrating how artistic engagement can reconfigure them into new narratives and establish a renewed sense of cultural identity. While previous research has explored why colonial structures practice native archive plundering, as well as into how a culture reckons with the absence of archival records, this book uniquely addresses how plundered cultures relate to the actual remains of their archives. As a scholar and an artist, El Hassan reconciles a problematic past and present in the search for a new visual experience emerging out of the ruins, finding ways to move forward after destruction.
Additional video content for this book is available through the SN More Media App.
The Void Project, uses photos, film and text to deal with the absence or presence of an image in times of war. It traces and finds photos that remain with us today because someone salvaged them after violence has commenced and ended. It restores and exhibits films that have survived looting and destruction by becoming the property of an individual who protected the life of these films. In The Void Project, films are made with the aim to heal film protagonists from a visually recorded event or moment.
The Void Project www.thevoidproject.org
The Void Project holds exhibitions and screening, both online and in the real world.
From the personal photo album of Palestinian photographer and cinematographer, Hani Jawherieh, El Hassan reconstructs the last five minutes of Hani Jawherieh’s life, who was killed while filming in 1976. The last five minutes in Jawherieh’s life which he captured on film were featured in Palestine in the Eye (1977) a film made by the Palestine Film Institute to commemorate the life of one of it’s founders. In A Remake of a Revolutionary Film, these last five minutes in Jawherieh’s life are revisited and reconstructed; forty-two years later, following his death.
WINNER OF THE ALEPH DOCUMENTARY AWARD, 2015
As times harden in the Arab world, people have begun to recall the greatest diva of all time: Asmahan, the Syrian princess who emigrated to Egypt in the twenties and became an entertainer. Today, traces of the Cairo that Asmahan once loved are difficult to find in the blanket of apathy that weighs on the city.
It was in Cairo that Asmahan sang her famous song “Euphoric Nights in Vienna”(1944), in which she manufactured an Arab fantasy for the European city. Today, many Arabs go to Vienna in search of the dream whispered to them by the greatest diva.
But things are not quite that simple. Asmahan is not the angel everyone imagines her to be. Behind her angelic face are dark secrets, and it is time we stopped being manipulated by Asmahan’s unbearable presence.
Second Best Documentary, Beirut International Filmfestival 2015
AUT / QA 2014, 71 min, German/English/Arabic with English subtitles, HD, Dolby Stereo
“Before you were Born”
A Film by: Azza El-Hassan
The dilemmas of a mother trying to raise her child in a world that is torn by war and conflict.
A Documentary Film by: Azza El-Hassan
Azza and Mohammed are busy mapping out the future of their unborn child, and they are not the only ones. The whole society has a say in what the baby should and should not be doing. Soon, Karam is born, and two months after his birth, the Arab Spring erupts, changing all prior plans. Suddenly, there is a high degree of uncertainty about what the future might hold. Azza, a Palestinian filmmaker who has in the past filmed children living under occupation in the West Bank, and who is now a mother, finds herself torn: Could the future of the Arab world hold something even bitterer than what she has witnessed in Palestine? As she searches for an answer, she finds herself making hard decisions on her childʼs behalf.
Who said that enemies do not communicate in times of war? In fact, violence, deception, and fear of the other are the only tools of communication between two struggling sides.
Always Look them in the Eyes is a documentary film that examines Palestinian forms of communication with Israelis. It does so by highlighting a story of an Israeli spy, called the Featherman, who in the seventies roamed the streets of Beirut pretending to be mad. By living among Palestinians and Lebanese, the Featherman broke a major war rule which forbids spoken communication in times of conflict.
Country: Palestine
Production: Nazwa Productions
Year: 2007
Director: -Azza El-Hassan- Tel: +962777966173
Editing: Azza El-Hassan
Cinematography: Azza El-Hassan
Sound: Talal Abu Al-Raghib
Cast: Rafik Kamhawi, Midian Al-Jazera, Mohtasab Araf
DigiBeta – color – 65 min
WINNER Of LUCHINO VISCONTI AWARD - THE SILVER HYDRANGES “MEDITERRANEAN SENSIBILITIES, ITALY 2006
Kings and Extras (2004 - 62')
by Azza El-Hassan
Produced by: WDR, BBC, arte
The films in the PLO Media Unit were supposed to show a self-determined image of Palestinian reality – and they went missing during the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982.
In a « road movie » from Palestine to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, director Azza El-Hassan follows the contradicting and confusing clues as to the whereabouts of the lost archive.
But, in her usual, inimitable way, she keeps finding people and places in the purest documentary style : finding myths, life stories, life lies - collecting the effects of defeat, loss, and pain. She even brings some humour to the tragedy of the situation with which she identifies and, at the same time, rejects.
"ملوك وكومبارس"
كان من المفترض أن تعكس الأفلام الموجودة في وحدة الإعلام في منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية صورة من الواقع الفلسطيني – فقدت هذه الأفلام خلال الإجتياح الإسرائيلي لبيروت عام 1982.
تسافر عزة الحسن من فلسطين إلى الأردن وسوريا ولبنان، لتتبع أدلة متناقضة ومحيرة بالنسبة لمكان وجود الأرشيف الضائع. ولكن، في الطريق، وكالعادة تكتشف أشخاص وأماكن في اسلوب وثائقي مميز فتعثرعلى الخرافات، وقصص الحياة الواقعية والأكاذيب أيضا. تجمع عزة آثار الهزيمة والخسارة والألم كما انها تجلب بعض الفكاهة لمأساة الوضع الذي تصوره وترفضه في الوقت نفسه.
Official Selection Marseilles Documentary Film Festival, 2004
Official Selection Amsterdam Shadow Festival, 2003
Part video diary, part quest for reconciliation, 3 CM LESS tells the parallel stories of two very different Palestinian women who, together with the filmmaker, attempt to heal the rifts in their families while probing their "invisible hunger" for love and security - all within the context of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Hagar, aged 72, is a near-legendary figure in her town of Ramallah. She and her husband Mahmoud left Palestine for Colombia, where he was killed in a robbery. Hagar returned with her ten children and her husband's body, only to find Ramallah under Israeli occupation. Her 11-year battle to return to her property made her a heroine, but also estranged Hagar from her children. Now they want filmmaker Azza El-Hassan to make a film about their mother's life, in the hope that it will foster a family reconciliation.
Like Hagar, Ra'eda lives in Ramallah. Her life has been dominated by the loss of her father, Ali, who was killed in 1975 by Israeli soldiers after he helped hijack a Sabena flight. Ra'eda is desperate to use Azza's camera to connect with her father by meeting people who knew him.
Azza herself is hardly a passive participant. She offers a running commentary that explores her role in the two women's stories and the nature of filmmaking in such an environment. She also provokes events - most strikingly when she hires an actor to meet Ra'eda and pretend that he remembers her father.
3 CM LESS (the title comes from projections that the Palestinian children of today will grow up on average three centimeters shorter than their parents, thanks to the deprivations of occupation) is a complex, highly personal look at the impact decades of war has wreaked on families and friendships.
"Vividly fuses individual tragedy to the collective plight and quietly acknowledges the personal exertions for a just and safe environment. Powerful!"—Al Jadid: A Review & Record of Arab Culture and Arts
"Recommended! Asks important questions about the role of the documentary filmmaker and the impact the Middle East conflict has had upon generations of Palestinians."—Educational Media Reviews Online
60 minutes / color / 2003
Amal and Sana are two Palestinian sisters who were separated during the 1967 war. Amal and her husband became refugees in Lebanon ans Sana and her family went to a refugee camp in Tul Karam. Fourty years later, both sisters have passed away and their children have never met. Using her camera, the filmmaker begins to tell each one of them about the fate of the other.
Duration 30 minutes
Winner of the Grierson Award (BBC) for the Best Newcomer 2003.
Winner of The Jury Special Award, Arab Screen Independent Film Festival, 2002
Nominated for the Ogawa Shinsuke Prize at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, 2002.
At a time of war and conflict, the media portray life in Ramallah in the West Bank to be dominated by death and violence. Azza El-Hassam, a Palestinian filmmaker, finds herself unable to locate a film crew since everybody is occupied in making news. She tries to find normal life that is distant from the war and starts filming a love story blossoming between her landlord and his wife. But when Israeli jets start shelling Ramallah, her subjects flee, and she diverts her attention to the activities of four young boys in her neighborhood who spend their time practicing how to throw stones. As days pass by, News Time becomes a diary for the filmmaker and the boys.
Documentary Film, 59 min (2001).
* The last five short films of the millennium
five Palestinian film makers, commissioned by the Bethlehem 2000 project, embarked on producing the film of their fantasy.
ABOUT THE FILM
In Out of Place, each image and each place conjures up spaces that preoccupy the director Azza Al-Hassan; be it heaven or hell or the earth in between, each space evokes the spirits of the past, present and future, and amalgam history, geography and fantasy into a subjective experience that is uniquely intimate and universally appealing.
A testament on the last century, and a glimpse into the future, five Palestinian film makers, commissioned by the Bethlehem 2000 project, embarked on producing the film of their fantasy for New Year's Eve. Rachid Mashharawi playfully presents a film about Palestinian food, namely about a famous Palestinian meal, "Makloubeh' or "upside down" which is the title of the film. Mai Masri, presents a shor version of her acclaimed documentary "children of Shatilla". Subhi Zbeidi presents a group of children from the Jalazone refugee camp, his home camp, "Ali and his friends" as the heroes of this original documentary. Azza el Hassan's "The Place" brings to this group of films the poeticism of a young Palestinian woman with artistic insight and high ambitions. Elia Suleiman presents a short fiction film of 15 minute, "Cyber Palestine", which plays on the theme of a modern day Josef and Mary living in Gaza.
This Week in Palestine - Film Reviews
Issue no. 24 - April 2000
The Place
* Best Script Award - of Al- Jazeera Film Festival, London 1998.
* Nominated for YIDFF, Asia Competition 1999.
A Palestinian journalist questions the expansion of Israeli settlements and the devastating consequences it brings to long-term Arab villagers. Her investigation leads her to various testimonies by human rights activists and architects, by Israeli townspeople and particularly by suffering Palestinian villagers whose claim to land is supposedly "less ancient" than the Jews.
PALESTINE / 1998 / Arabic, English / Color / Video / 30 min
Director, Script, Photography: Azza El-Hassan
Editing: Sa'ed Andony
Music: Odeh Turjuman
Maysoon & Majida
Two separate stories of two Palestinian women who lead completely different and separate lives. Maysoon, is from Tamoon, a quiet isolated village of farmers who spend six months of the year as Bedouins before they return to their village. Majida, is from the city of Nablus and a woman, who was imprisoned by the Israeli army and gave birth to her boy whom she named Falastine, in prison. Although very different, yet the two women, share many life dilemmas, that are revealed in the film.
THE PLACE (2)
Produced by The Void Project, essay film. 5 minutes, 2019
The personal album of Palestinian photographer, Hani Jawherieh, tells a story of friendship and a world in the city of Jerusalem that was forced into disappearance.
This essay film, is part of a series of short film essays which, Azza El-Hassan began in 2000, and which negotiates her relationship with an imagined land and space.
