Palestine Days at SFU is an exploration into the history, politics, and inevitable liberation of Palestine. Join us on June 1-3 for free lectures, workshops, film screenings on the Palestinian region and its peoples.
Wednesday, June 1
KPU Surrey - Cedar Conference Room (1205) | Doors open 5:30pm, event at 6pm
Lecture
A Sky with no Stars: Palestinian leadership and resistance under the Mandate
The birth of the British Mandate saw the emergence of Palestine's urban notables as the representatives of Palestine and the leaders of the Palestinian national movement. The Nakba, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland, brought the era of notables to a decisive end. Separated from their property and dislodged from their positions of power, the notables' unceremonious fall from grace was punctuated by an almost universal charge of incompetence. In the court of Palestinian public opinion, as well as within the pages of history, Palestine's urban notables have been indicted for the crime of losing Palestine.
This talk seeks to explore how it came to be that a social class which rose to such great heights in the Ottoman era came to perform so poorly on the biggest stage in Palestine's anti-colonial fight for survival.
Speaker Bio
Bassam Abun-Nadi is an educator, researcher, and community activist with over 7 years of experience creating and delivering learning content. He is the Director of RECLAIM, a grassroots organization that works with schools, school districts, post-secondary institutions, and student groups to address and combat manifestations of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry at the curricular and pedagogical levels. RECLAIM deploys narrative identity as a tool for the deconstruction of the Muslim experience, with the end goal of transforming Muslims into the protagonists of their own stories (rather than the antagonists or peripheral extras in somebody else’s story). He has a B.A in Political Science from SFU and completed his MEd at UBC in 2017, where he specialized in the impact of globalization on education reforms in the Middle East.
He is also the host of the podcast PreOccupation: A Not-So-Brief History of Palestine. The podcast is a deep dive into the social, economic, and political histories of Palestine (and the post-Ottoman mashriq as a whole).
He the son of Palestinian parents, and a father to Palestinian children.
Thursday, June 2
SFSS Ballroom (Student Union Building @ Burnaby campus) | Doors at 4:30pm, event at 5:00pm
Night of Celebration; Student and Community Organizing for Palestine
Join us as we bring together student organizers, and community endorsers to discuss and recognize the unanimously passed SFSS Palestinian Liberation Issues Policy just last month, April 2022.
In community, Student Organizers from the SFSS and SFU SJP will take us through the coalition movement and hold an appreciation ceremony. This will be a night of celebration to recognize all the labour and love that was put into this Issues policy and enjoy with Palestinian Food from Tamam, Tea, A recognition ceremony of local Palestinian organizers, an international Palestinian Journalist, and a film showing with Q&A with directors from the Toronto Palestine Film Festival.
Screenings
from where to where - لوين وين من - d’où vers où
Nada El-Omari
In the pieces I store and carry along my many different roads, my dialects may be signs of bruises but reclaimed they form the skin and voice I live in. Experiences of the where, from where, to where; a narrative amongst others. And as the words finally trickle through the needles, fingers seeping with tints trace the outline of whirling fields where I hang a jasmine branch on suspended necks and in the in-betweens, language soothes, swans mend, and the daily brings calm. We are the comfort of our multiples.
Brown Bread & Apricots
Serene Husni
When he was 13, Hammoudeh was presented with a crucial test of character. Instead of being punished for skipping school, he was entrusted with managing the family allowance for two weeks. To feed his three siblings, he resorted to something he always knew: in a Palestinian house, the pantry is never bare. Borrowing from classic elements of Palestinian storytelling—namely repetition, trickery, and an obsession with food—Brown Bread & Apricots is a story about a family in exile and an unruly teenage boy.
Rumaan
Leila Almawy
Rumaan follows the story of a pomegranate tree that was planted in Canada, grown from seeds that were transported from Haifa, Palestine by Mamdouh El-Kassem when he and his young family were forced to flee the Nakba in 1948. Mamdouh's son Zaki El-Kassem speaks about his decades-long attempts to preserve the tree and its seeds.
Friday, June 3
Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema @ SFU Goldcorps Centre for The Arts | Doors at 5pm, event at 5:30pm
Telling the Stories of Palestine
Join us for an evening of discussion and film screenings in recognition of the history, politics and liberation of Palestine. We will be screening two films created by participants in the Toronto Palestine Film Festival Residency Program, as well as a short film by Vancouver filmmaker Sobhi Al-Zobaidi. This will be followed by remarks by Dena Takruri, Sherine Tadros and Sobhi Al-Zobaidi.
Screenings
The Beautiful Room Is Empty
Kalil Haddad
As her childhood home is emptied for sale, Marie wanders through spaces both concrete and virtual as she attempts to navigate the ghosts of her past.
Something from there
Rana Nazzal
Something from there is a reflection on the substance of our original lands. How does connection to land change after uprooting and in diaspora? How does matter come to embody our memories and defy official histories? This film is a personal reflection on the complicated implications of wanting a piece of land after displacement.
My Very Private Map
Sobhi Zobaidi
Description: Sobhi Zobaidi's first and - as the title indicates - very personal film was made in memory of the foundation of the state of Israel, an event with a heritage that weighed heavy on life in the Palestinian refugee camps. Following in the tracks of the map of the title, fragments are brought together by fragile, precious links: an old ceramic pot, a fading letter. Slow-motion historic black & white pictures are accompanied by spiritual songs by American Indians. In interviews the Intifada is defended and the speakers do not shirk from confronting the narrator with their frank opinions. But sitting with a few stoic old men, the narrator is brought back down to earth. My Very Private Map is a lyrical ode to Palestine; not a film that puts tears in your eyes, but one that reminds you of your ability to cry.
