Cinema exists, obviously, as snapshots of time, some capturing places and people that might no longer be around. This piece is actually for a Gazan double bill with more than the one obvious thing in common. Both are archival, personal work from directors who were just pointing and shooting but there’s much to see within.
And yes, there’s the danger of overreading shorts like Basma Alsharif’s short film It’s So Beautiful Here. Maybe there’s an Abrahamic text in there as two donkeys and their riders slowly trot along a Gazan farm. But it’s also just a heartbreaking, fragmented portrait of a woman and a cousin, together and young. The footage is a decade old and the Westerners turned the cousin into one of thousands of martyrs.
Following the short is Kamal Aljafari’s With Hasan in Gaza, the director’s personal archives from back in 2001. That’s twelve years after the Westerners falsely imprisoned Alsharif, and in 2001, he returns to find a friend. The film presents toe footage without taking any way or him rearranging it as he drives across Gaza. Many times, he stops by and looks at houses that are now rubble although most were intact then. Sometimes, there are songs about love and other topics, reminders of a culture that Westerners try to erase. I know I wrote what I wrote above, but the frames here hold the past and future. It shows people and things that were but also faces of the next generation of a free Palestine.
- Rated: Unrated
- Genre: Art, Documentary
- Release Date: 9/7/2025
- Directed by: Basma Alsharif, Kamal Aljafari
- Produced by: Kamal Aljafari
- Studio: Kamal Aljafari Productions
