The Unbearable Presence of Asmahan

A Palestinian journalist questions the expansion of Israeli settlements and the devastating consequences it brings to long-term Arab villagers. Her investigation leads her to various testimonies - by human rights activists and architects, by Israeli townspeople and particularly by suffering Palestinian villagers whose claim to land is supposedly "less ancient" than the Jews.

Azza El-Hassan's film portrayal of her neighbourhood of Ramallah, a town under fire in the current Middle East conflict. With the threat of violence severely limiting locals' activities, filming becomes the main event, especially for a group of children.

The films in the PLO Media Unit were supposed to show a self-determined image of Palestinian reality – and they went missing during the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. In a « road movie » from Palestine to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, director Azza El-Hassan follows the contradicting and confusing clues as to the whereabouts of the lost archive.

From the personal photo album of Palestinian photographer and cinematographer, Hani Jawherieh, El Hassan reconstructs the last five minutes of Hani Jawherieh’s life, who was killed while filming in the mountains in Lebanon. The five minutes were featured in Palestine in the Eye (1977) a film made by the Palestine Film Institute to commemorate the life of one of it’s founders. Yet, forty-two years later, what motivates these images takes on a different turn in A Remake of a Revolutionary Film.

3 CM LESS (the title comes from projections that the Palestinian children of today will grow up on average three centimeters shorter than their parents, thanks to the deprivations of occupation) is a complex, highly personal look at the impact decades of war has wreaked on families and friendships.