2024-03-02 13:52:15
At dawn on Saturday, Palestinian filmmaker and writer Walaa Saadeh (1990-2024) was martyred following the occupation bombed the tents of displaced people in the city of Deir al-Balah.
Saada was born in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, and began her career as a screenwriter. Then I started making documentaries and short films, and I also worked in civil society organizations as a coordinator and trainer since 2010.
Perhaps Saadeh’s most famous film is “Silk Threads” (2019), which documents popular stories regarding Palestine through embroidery with silk threads on pieces of cloth to make the Palestinian dress that women held on to as an extension of the stories they lived before the Nakba and displacement.
In the documentary, Saadeh’s camera traced the Palestinian cultural and folkloric heritage, including cities with a mountainous nature, those with a coastal environment, and the Bedouin environment, as well as the nature of the cypress trees, and geographical diversity, the river, the mountain, and the hill, with which brides, generation following generation, adorn themselves in their weddings and occasions.
Throughout the tape, we learn regarding the stories of two Bedouin women in Gaza who began embroidering at a young age, only to later move with them to another place and preserve their memories.
In a previous media interview, Saada said: “In the film, I focused on Faraj’s mother and her daughter Ghalia, as they consider embroidery a part of their lives, and at the same time it expresses their relationship with the land and that it is a family heirloom. Many Palestinians carried the dresses with them from the days of the Nakba as a memory, and it was Umm Faraj is one of them.”
Saadeh always insisted on bringing Gaza into her films. In “Silk Threads,” we follow in a parallel line the story of the embroidery with scenes from the Return Marches (2018), and Saada explains that she wanted to deal with stories that revolve around the life of “Umm Faraj,” and resemble her relationship with the land and her longing for it, which is what the embroidery refers to from the beginning. She said in a comment on recalling these scenes: “Maybe the cinematic connection is not strong, but in the end cinematic works are open to the viewer for criticism and expression however he wants or sees, and I await all opinions and comments with love.”
In an interview in 2019 with the “Arab 48” website, Walaa Saadeh recalled her relationship with cinema, saying: “I have had the dream of making films since my childhood, and I have a great passion for the field of directing, which I knew nothing regarding before, but I began researching this field during my studies of the Arabic language. I worked to develop this passion through online training courses and lectures.”
Saadeh’s films have participated in a number of film festivals in Palestine and abroad.
Before the success of her tape “Silk Threads,” the martyr presented a group of films, which were particularly shown within the Women’s Film Festival “Through Women’s Eyes,” organized by the Center for Women’s Affairs in the Gaza Strip. It specifically touched on the stories of Palestinian women, especially inside the besieged Gaza Strip. In 2017, in the fifth session of the festival, she presented their elephant, entitled “This is a Life for Me.” It is a documentary film that deals with the story of a girl who suffered in her life and childhood, and faced many difficulties and obstacles. She challenged and overcame them all, and redrew her path that was doomed to failure.
As the news of her martyrdom spread, hundreds of Gazans who knew her closely mourned her, and her pictures and clips from her films, especially “Silk Threads,” spread on social networking sites. While many wondered regarding the position of cultural and artistic institutions around the world regarding the ongoing occupation targeting artists and intellectuals in the Gaza Strip, without international bodies taking any action, or taking any step to provide protection for these people in the face of the Israeli killing machine.
The occupation deliberately killed artists and writers in various parts of Palestine, and arrested some of them for artistic works and artistic content. The Palestinian Ministry of Culture recorded the martyrdom of 44 workers in the cultural sector, including creators and writers, during the year 2023.
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