“Of Land and Bread,” B’Tselem and Ehab Tarabieh, 2019, 92 min; “Home Movies Gaza,” Basma Alsharif, 2013, 24 minutes, France/Palestine.
Of Land and Bread and Home Movies Gaza are streaming for FREE from May 17 to May 23.
In acknowledgement of the continued occupation of Palestine, the displacement and killing of its people, and the daily horrors imposed on them by the apartheid state of Israel, Maysles Documentary Center presents two films depicting first-person accounts of Palestinian life. Of Land and Bread, produced by Israeli activist organization B’Tselem and co-presented by The Video Project, strings together a series of direct, dehumanizing encounters with agents of state violence, while Basma Alsharif’s Home Movies Gaza, co-presented by Video Data Bank, proves the impossibility of eluding this violence even in the quietest, most ordinary scenes of daily life. Both films are available to watch for free.
Home Movies Gaza introduces us to the Gaza Strip as a mircrocosm for the failure of civilization. In an attempt to describe the everyday of a place that struggles for the most basic of human rights, this video claims a perspective from within the domestic spaces of a territory that is complicated, derelict, and altogether impossible to separate from its political identity.
Of Land and Bread is a series of vignettes about the daily life of Palestinians in the West Bank. It is a story of constant vulnerability where one's life is lived under the specter of state violence and the whims of settlers, and a camera is one's only defense.
In 2005, human rights organization B'Tselem established a video department, seeking to amplify the impact and power of their written reports on human rights violations in the Occupied Territories with visual documentation. Two years later, they launched the Camera Project, providing video cameras and training to Palestinian volunteers in the West Bank to document their own lives under Israeli occupation. Since the project launched, the real-time images taken by these amateur photographers have become a staple of B’Tselem’s reporting. Raw material captured by staff and volunteers over the past decade have been carefully catalogued into an extensively unique video archive. Of Land and Bread consists entirely of footage from this archive, showing first hand the lived experiences of Palestinians.
The film shows the regular injustices enacted upon Palestinians under occupation from uniformed soldiers and police, as well as from Israeli settlers who are acting under their protection. The Palestinians have neither political rights nor the right to protest, and lie on the receiving end of a project of dispossession of land, resources, and culture. Of Land and Bread challenges prevailing narratives regarding settlements and offers an opportunity for expression and empathy.
