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Cinema Palestine

October 10, 2014
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CINEMA PALESTINE is poetic a documentary which explores the life and work of multiple generations of Palestinian filmmakers and media artists. Based on in-depth interviews with a wide range of Palestinian artists living in the Middle East as well as North American and Europe, the film documents the emergence of a Palestinian narrative through film, the relevance of film to the Palestinian national struggle and the relationship between art, personal experience and politics in one of the most contested landscapes in the world.

CINEMA PALESTINE grew out of a December 2005 screening of director Tim Schwab’s earlier film Being Osama at the Dubai International Film Festival. While attending the festival Schwab met and talked with pioneering Gaza filmmaker Rashid Masharawi (Haifa, Ticket to Jerusalem) and West Bank filmmaker Hany Abu Assad, whose feature film Paradise Now was the festival’s opening night film. Remarkably, later that week Paradise Now became the first film by a Palestinian filmmaker to win the Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Language film, with the country of origin designated for the first time as “Palestine”. Schwab subsequently had the opportunity to meet and interview Israel-based Palestinian actor and director Mohammed Bakri  in Montréal. His experience meeting and talking with these filmmakers, and the quality of work they have created under the most difficult financial and security conditions, inspired his intense interest in and passion for making a documentary about the work being created by Palestinian filmmakers in historic Palestine, in the Palestinian territories, and in the Palestinian diaspora.




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