2023-11-22 09:36:31
8 pm today, November 22, 2023, “Restoration” (2021) by the Palestinian Rashid Masharawi (“Al-Araby Al-Jadeed”, November 29, 2021), is being shown in the “Al-Safir” newspaper building (Beirut), jointly organized by “Multaka Al-Safir and the Cinema Club – Tripoli Film Festival.
The introduction to it, according to the organizers of the show, says the following: “In the Mediterranean, a lost city, a memory that does not fade away, but rather is preserved from oblivion, generation after generation. Oral sources, archival photographs, and sound make it come alive. It is as if there is a tour through its streets, while attending its first performances. Masharawi’s tour begins in the birthplace of his parents and grandparents, who were forced into exile in 1948. Recovery is a cinematic experience that attempts to obscure the boundaries between time and place, while the tour is photographic, between the years 1930 and 1948, which allows Hanin Masharawi to breathe new life into the static, photographed bodies.
Delving into things from a recent past, and traveling on a journey back to ancient times (starting from the year 1913), they write (invasion and travel) with the camera the biography of an individual, the story of a homeland, and the details of variables, most of which were imposed by the occupation force (the establishment of the Israeli entity in Palestine). The biography is written smoothly and simply, avoiding any cinematic embellishment. The story is more important, and the documentation is more important.
A coincidence provides Rashid Masharawi with visual material (recovery) suitable for making a documentary, enriched with photographs, in black and white, of high and dazzling artistic quality, capturing the pulse of Palestinian life, in its various forms, narrations, and people’s diaries, before an occupation that, despite its war, security, and intimidation machine, was unable to cancel history. A memory, a country, a land, and a people. Pictures taken from several sources: Palestine in Memory, Raed Dizdar, Ahmed Marwat, Nazareth Archive, Ahmed Dari, Jaffa Umm al-Gharib, Palestine Agricultural Memory, Library of Congress, Jerusalem Primary Library, Al-Mahabah Al-Yafia Charitable Society, Khamis Haddad, “Life” magazine; In addition to Palestinian newspapers and magazines published before 1948.
The abundance of images, which complement Taher Al-Qalyoubi’s narrations recorded on videotape, seem to emerge from stories told by the man calmly and enthusiastically at the same time, with a smile that suggests serenity and tranquility, but expresses oppression and pain.
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