Forms of Resistance: Screening & Discussion
Saturday, February 10, 2024 | Doors: 6:30 PM / Screening: 7:00 PM | FREE | RSVP
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
Please note: RSVP before Friday, February 9, 2024, at 5:00 PM.
This event pairs an important rarely seen Palestine resistance focused archival film, “RESISTANCE-WHY” (1971, 53:00) by Lebanese filmmaker Christian Ghazi, with Palestinian-English artist Rosalind Nashashibi’s, “Electrical Gaza” (2015, 18:00), a contemporary exquisite, now elegiac view of Gaza before the current destruction.
A presentation by the community-based collective from the river to the sea, made possible in collaboration with Nadi Lekol Nas (Beirut), Center for Comparative Muslim Studies, Institute for the Humanities, and School for the Contemporary Arts.
RESISTANCE-WHY (Dir. Christian Ghazi, 53 min, 1970)
This gem of militant guerilla third cinema was considered to be lost to the ages. In 1988, militias raided the director’s home and burned all of his celluloid to stay warm during Lebanon’s Civil War. But recently, a copy of Resistance-Why was found and restored by the Beirut group Nadi Lekol Nas in 2021. Today, Resistance-Why is a fascinating time capsule of an era of Palestinian resistance and global armed struggle against imperialism that echoes through history. Figures include Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm, Ghassan Kanafani, and Nabil Shaath, as they describe the strikes and protests that took place in Palestine starting during the Ottoman occupation, followed by British colonization and the settlement of the Zionist state in 1948. Resistance-Why calls for justice, the right to self-determination, and for the Palestinian people to fight against occupation, Zionism, and imperialism.
Electrical Gaza (Dir. Rosalind Nashashibi, 18 min, 2015)
In ‘Electrical Gaza’ Rosalind Nashashibi combines her footage of Gaza, and the fixer, drivers and translator who were her constant company, with animated scenes. She presents Gaza as under a spell; isolated, suspended in time, difficult to access and highly charged. She shows us Gaza as she experienced it in the quiet pause before the onslaught of Israeli bombardment in the summer of 2014.