Screening and Panel Discussion: 

LYD

JUNE 18, 6:00 PM

LABATT AUDITORIUM | SFU HARBOUR CENTRE

On June 18, CCMS hosted a screening of LYD, “A story of a city that once connected Palestine to the world – what it once was, what it is now, and what it could have become.” This screening was followed by a discussion with Sarah Shamash, Dana Qaddah, and Sobhi Zobaidi, moderated by Adel Iskandar.

This feature-length, sci-fi documentary shares multiple pasts, presents, and futures of the city of Lyd in Palestine/Israel. From the perspective of the city herself, voiced by Palestinian actress Maisa Abd Elhadi, the viewer is guided through the lifespan of a five-thousand-year-old city and its residents. Lyd was once a thriving Palestinian city with a rich history. In 636AD, It was even considered the first capital of Palestine. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, Lyd became an Israeli city, and in the process, hundreds of Lyd’s Palestinian residents were massacred by Israeli forces, and most of the city’s 50,000 Palestinian residents were exiled. Today, the city has a Jewish Israeli majority and a Palestinian minority and is disinvested and divided by racism and violence. For Palestinians, Lyd’s story is a painful and tragic fall from grace, which is why our film dares to ask the question: what would the city be like had the Israeli occupation of Lyd never happened?

Using never-before-seen archival footage of the Israeli soldiers who carried out the massacre and expulsion, the city explains that these events were so devastating that they fractured her reality, and now there are two Lyds –– one occupied and one free. As the film unfolds, documentary portions follow a chorus of characters through their daily lives, creating a tapestry of the Palestinian experience of this city, and vivid animations use the language of speculative fiction to envision an alternate reality where the same documentary characters live free from the trauma of the past and the violence of the present. As the film cuts between fantastical and documentary realities, it ultimately leaves the viewer questioning which future should prevail.

The panel discussion featured Sarah Shamash, an Assistant Professor of Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University; Dana Qaddah (b. Beirut, Lebanon), an interdisciplinary artist and independent curator based between Turtle Island (Canada) and Lebanon; and Sobhi Al-Zobaidi, independent Palestinian filmmaker, artist and scholar, who has made a number of award-winning documentaries, short fiction, art videos and multi-media installations, and since 1998, he has been an active member of the new and independent film movement in occupied Palestine. The discussion featured Adel Iskandar, an Associate Professor of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver/Burnaby, Canada and CCMS Director.

This event was co-sponsored by the Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies, from the river to the sea collective, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU School of Communications, and SFU School of International Studies