São Paulo – Filmmaking in Palestine and how it deals with questions such as the comeback of refugees and life under occupation will be the subjects of the lecture O tempo da espera: o exílio no cinema palestino (Time in waiting: exile in Palestinian cinema) on May 29 in São Paulo. The event will be held by the Edward Said Chair, a joint initiative from the Institute of Arab Culture (Icarabe) and the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp).
“The central topic of the lecture is the question of time. Due to the question of the occupation, of Zionism, of the violence that drove out more than 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, Palestinian art has built a very particular relationship with time,” points out the lecturer Geraldo Adriano Campos. Campos is a professor in Sociology of International Relations at Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM) and the director of Icarabe’s Arab World Film Festival.
Campos underscores the return of refugees as a mainstay in Palestinian art. “Every refugee in the world has the right to return to their homeland, except the Palestinians,” he remarks. According to him, this lends a provisional quality to Palestinians’ notion of time.
The professor also claims that so-called Palestinian cinema is made by filmmakers working under different conditions, including Palestinians who live in the occupied territories, ones who are refugees, and those who live in Israel.
He also points out the relevance of film productions in giving visibility to the Palestinian issue. “For a people who have to deal historically with denial (to the right to land), visual visibility is a very central thing,” he says.
In his lecture Campos will address the work of filmmakers such as Elia Suleiman, Kamal Aljafari and Larissa Sansour. According to the professor, right now, there are Palestinian films made with government funding, with private donations, and co-productions with different countries, especially some Gulf countries such as the UAE and Qatar, as well as Egypt, in North Africa.
Quick facts:
Lecture Time in waiting: exile in Palestinian cinema
May 29, 5 pm
Anfiteatro Leitão da Cunha
Rua Botucatu, 740 – São Paulo – SP
Register free of charge at http://migre.me/wFLlg
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum