Palestinian Cinema

Abstract

Despite the Palestinian society's serious concern with its historical memory, the notion that the post 1948 Palestinian historical narrative has thus far not been told in its entirety, or, at least, that it has yet to find its full artistic expression, is still prevalent among writers and scholars. In this tendency, Palestinian history resembles other histories of exile and displacement, These are histories of trauma. In which past events emerge in the present as if they reoccur perpetually, and time stops. Palestinian cinema, in its attempt to invent, document and crystallize Palestinian history, confronts the trauma of 1948 in several ways. On the one hand, it attempts to construct a historical continuity, leading from the past to the present and the future. On the other hand, it freezes history either in a utopian, idyllic past, or in the events of exile and deportation that disrupted it and are revived as if they were part of the present. Historical processes dictate to a large extent to which side of the equation this cinema would turn. The book Landscape in the Mist encompasses the history of the Palestinian cinema, connecting it to the social and cultural history of the Palestinian people. It examines the different ways in which this cinema copes with the Palestinian historical memory and analyzes how this cinema has shaped the obstructed and deconstructed

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