Introduction: Modalities of Solidarity

Abstract

In the wake of the Second, or, Al-Aqsa, Intifada (2000–2004), an unprecedented wave of Palestine solidarity filmmaking found inspiration in Western countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and France, where films regarding the Palestinian–Israeli struggle have never been prolific, much less widely circulated and reviewed, due to a pervasive, tacitly ascribed censorship of the issue in nearly all aspects of the film and media industry, not to mention society at large. This is especially true in the U.S. That new wave is the subject of Chapter 1. As interest in Palestinian cinema increased in both film studies and the public sphere, my own attention to Palestine solidarity films issuing from the West extended to an earlier period, when the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and annexation of the Syrian/Golan Heights by Israel in 1967 inspired numerous Palestine solidarity films of decidedly Leftist, often militant orientation—the subject of Chapter 2. In the course of that extended investigation, I found that Palestine solidarity filmmaking in the Arab and Muslim world, which has always existed and been much more adventurous than its Western counterpart while perhaps having been inspired by it in recent years, has experienced a contemporary re-emergence on the international art/festival circuit, notwithstanding the obstacles facing it which are perhaps as formidable as those in the West, if not more so. At the same time, Israeli reaction in the form of hasbara (“public relations,” “propaganda”) cinema developed and took on a global dimension. The relationship between these two developments is the subject of Chapter 3.