Mustafa Abu Ali
2021ليس لهم وجود
Mustafa Abu Ali
Shooting under extraordinary conditions, the director, who worked with Godard on his "Ici et Ailleurs" ("Here and Elsewhere") - this film was shot on the same 16mm camera - and founded the PLO's film division, covers conditions in Lebanon's refugee camps, the effects of Israeli bombardments, and the lives of guerrillas in training camps. "They Do Not Exist" is a stylistically unique work which explodes at the intersection between the political and the aesthetic.
They Do Not Exist
Tall el Zaatar
Jean Khalil Chamoun, Pino Adriano
In the early summer of 1976, right-wing militias representing a coalition of ultra-nationalist and counter-revolutionary forces laid siege to the refugee camp of Tall al-Zaatar (“Hill of Thyme”) in Beirut. After holding out for months without food, water, or medical supplies, and under heavy artillery and sniper fire, the camp fell to the militias on 12 August. What followed was one of the worst atrocities of the civil war, with over 2,500 civilians massacred and the camp razed to the ground. Produced after the massacre, but featuring footage shot before and during the siege, Tall al-Zaatar remembers the camp and its community, recounting the long months of siege and resistance, and recalling the horrors of the massacre through the testimony of survivors.
Tall el Zaatar
Filastin fi al-Ayn
Mustafa Abu Ali
Palestine in the Eye chronicles the profound impact of Hani Jawharieh’s death for the PLO Film Unit. The film reflects on his life through interviews with family, colleagues, and his own cinematography, including the moment of his death while filming for the Unit in 1976. Although the film has later been attributed to Mustafa Abu Ali, the Unit’s method of work was to describe everyone as a collective of “workers,” and we see this in the film titles, which collectively list the names of all those who participated as a non-hierarchical collective. Through this reflection on Jawharieh, we are offered an understanding of the workings of the Palestine Film Unit and its international connections.
Palestine in the Eye
تلّ الزعتر (١٩٧٧)، ٢٠١٤
Emily Jacir, Pino Adriano
Directed by Mustafa Abu Ali, Pino Adriano and Jean Chamoun, Tel al Zaatar was the only Palestinian and Italian co-production between the Palestinian Cinema Institution and Unitelfilm. The film’s subject is the August 12, 1976 massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese at Tel al Zaatar, a UN-administered refugee camp in northeast Beirut. Tel al Zaatar reconstructs the history of the camp, its destruction and its resistance through the voices of the men, women and children who survived the massacre. In January 2013, Monica Maurer and Emily Jacir dedicated themselves to salvaging the rushes, restoring and digitizing them, in order to make them available to the public and to safeguard them as part of the Palestinian collective memory. Jacir has edited a work from her selection of the collection and created a soundscape to go with it from the original sound.
تلّ الزعتر (١٩٧٧)، ٢٠١٤