Palestine through Film + Q&A with director Razan AlSalah 

This special installment of the Palestine through Film series presents three short films directed by Palestinian filmmaker, artist, and teacher Razan AlSalah, who will join us for a post-screening Q&A.

YOUR FATHER WAS BORN 100 YEARS OLD, AND SO WAS THE NAKBA (2017, 7 min.)
Oum Ameen, a Palestinian grandmother, returns to her hometown Haifa through Google Street View, the only way she can see Palestine today. In this experimental short film, Razan AlSalah channels glitch aesthetics and digital erasure in a subversion of the physical borders and checkpoints imposed by the Israeli occupation.

A STONE’S THROW (2024, 40 min.)
Amine, a Palestinian elder, is exiled twice from his land and labor. Displaced from his birthplace of Haifa, he first seeks refuge in Beirut, and then on Zirku Island, for work on an offshore oil platform and work camp in the Arabian Gulf. A STONE’S THROW trespasses borders to reveal an emotional and material proximity between the extraction of oil and labor in the region and the colonization of Palestine. The film rehearses a history of the Palestinian resistance when the oil laborers of Haifa blew up the Kirkuk-Haifa pipeline in 1936.

CANADA PARK (2020, 8 min.)
Surreal imagery from Google Maps, Wikipedia, and twentieth-century colonial photography are combined in this experimental film essay on the erasure of Palestinian history and presence. CANADA PARK uncovers the territory of Imwas, which was razed by the Israeli Defense Forces during the Six Days War and replaced by Canada Park. Razan AlSalah writes: “I walk on snow to fall unto the desert. I find myself on unceded indigenous territory in so-called Canada, an exile unable to return to Palestine. I trespass the colonial border as a digital specter floating through Ayalon-Canada Park, transplanted over three Palestinian villages razed by the Israeli Occupation Forces in 1967.”

All films in Arabic with English subtitles

Palestine through Film chronicles key moments in Palestinian history—from the Nakba of 1948 to the present occupation. These weekly screenings of documentaries, historical dramas, and shorts open a window onto the mosaic of life in Palestine.

Cosponsored by History of Art, Film and Media Studies, Yale MacMillan Center Council Middle East Studies, and Whitney Humanities Center