By JAMES MARKIN
Annemarie Jacir’s new film, Palestine’s submission to the Academy Awards, is worth a watch, even though it likely will not be coming to a theater near you. “Palestine 36” skillfully incorporates stunningly authentic period-piece cinema as well as real archival footage to tell the story of the 1936 Arab Revolt against British rule in Palestine. This is the same revolt chronicled in Ghassan Kanafani’s classic text, The Revolution of 1936 – 1939 in Palestine. Jacir’s camera shows both the moments that lead to a national strike and uprising against colonialism and the brutal details of British colonial reprisals against rural communities.
The film doesn’t just tell a Palestinian story but also, in showing the human cost of colonial policing, puts images to film that resonate with the atrocities of all colonial wars—from the U.S. in Afghanistan to the current Israeli genocide in Gaza.
The film focuses on a group of characters with a connection to the village of al-Bassa, based on a real village of the same name, although set much closer to Jerusalem. The film tells the story of the lead-up to the very real 1938 Al-Bassa massacre carried out by the British. Despite this rural setting, several of the main characters have connections to the goings-on in the big city of Jerusalem. This includes Yusuf, who works for the wealthy, modern, and politically connected Atef family. Despite being less than a day’s walk from al-Bassa, the world of the Atefs’ Jerusalem feels a universe away, as the family hobnobs with British officials and the urban elite.
Amir Atef edits an important Jerusalem newspaper, while his wife Khouloud Atef writes fiery nationalist columns for it under a male pseudonym. Another al-Bassa resident with ties to Jerusalem is the young boy Karim, who travels back and forth from the big city with his father, the town’s priest, shining shoes on the streets of Jerusalem to make money. Then there are the other al-Bassa residents, including the valiant widow Rabab, her young daughter, and her quietly nationalistic elderly parents.
As the Zionist movement accelerates its acquisition of rural land for kibbutzim (agricultural collectives), the whole of the British Mandate of Palestine begins to move into a crisis, upending both the quiet rural life of the Al-Bassa residents and the comfortable urban existence of the Atefs. Yusuf joins the rebels after his father is killed in a failed peace mission to the local kibbutz, the only time that a Jewish settler character has a speaking role in the whole movie.
Following this, Jacir takes us on a rare break from the characters in Al-Bassa and Jerusalem, showing the beginning of the Arab revolt as dockworkers in the busy port of Jaffa go on strike to protest their substandard working conditions and pay in comparison to Jewish workers.
As the conflict in Palestine continues to accelerate, Amir Atef’s comfortable world collapses. His expectations that the British will deal fairly with the both the Palestinians and the Jewish settlers turn to ash when the much-anticipated Peel Commission report calls for a partition. Even worse, Khouloud Atef discovers that both Amir’s newspaper and his political organization have been acting as fronts for the Zionists, who wish to create an anti-revolt Palestinian alternative to the Arab Higher Committee. This leads to her leaving him at the end of the film.
Another poignant thread in the film is the story of the priest’s son, Karim. Seeing the brutality and gangsterism of the British troops in Palestine, Karim comes to his father as he prepares for mass and questions him how he could continue. The priest then explains to Karim that everything is a question of endurance, showing him with a demonstration involving biting each other’s fingers that the winner is the one who can hold out through the pain long enough.
In the end Karim becomes a tragic figure, following the climactic moment of the film, the Al-Bassa massacre. After rebels bomb a British tank in the area of Al-Bassa, the terrifically evil British Captain Wingate orders the men of the village, including Karim’s father, to be loaded on a bus which is then driven over a landmine, killing them. In the end, Karim cannot merely endure this loss; he goes to Jerusalem, where he shoots a British soldier on guard duty.
In the context of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, Jacir’s movie is an important piece of art, showing the origins of Palestinian resistance to colonialism. While some of the movie is concerned with a rather basic Palestinian nationalist narrative, in the current climate it is important to tell this story. Indeed, much of the movie goes beyond this more basic nationalist narrative and speaks to more complex dynamics of liberation and revolution.
One highlight is the short sequence focusing on the Jaffa dockworkers, which speaks to the power of organized workers and their ability to lead resistance to colonialism, even without traditional unions. This is significant, given that the dockworkers kickstarted the uprising even when the traditional bourgeois anti-colonial leaders, such as the Arab Higher Committee, would not act. Similarly, a scene in which dashing mustachioed Syrian rebels on horseback give a speech about pan-Arab resistance to the assembled denizens of Al-Bassa speaks to the potential of national resistance to unify beyond narrow nationalist borders and create an international challenge to imperialism. The flip side of this is also shown in scenes where British colonial officials talk about how to use lessons learned in policing India to crush the revolt, a grim reminder of how imperialism develops colonial systems internationally as well.
Then there is the contemporary resonance of “Palestine 36.” Nothing demonstrates the importance of the movie more than the ordeal that Jacir went through to film much of it in Palestine. According to Jacir, much of the set of the fictionalized al-Bassa was filmed in a real historic village near Nablus; however, filming there had to be eventually abandoned because of attacks from nearby Israeli settlements. In this context, how can the successful release of a movie of this caliber not be seen as a triumph of Palestinian will in the face of Israeli oppression?
The contemporary importance of “Palestine 36” is also reflected in issues to deal with its distribution. Despite winning awards, such as the top prize at the Tokyo Grand Prix, “Palestine 36” has not yet been able to find a major partner for distribution rights in the U.S., paralleling the case of movies like “No Other Land.”
The situation is even more egregious for “Palestine 36” than it was for “No Other Land,” which was a documentary—not exactly the kind of movie that wins at the box office in the United States. “Palestine 36,” on the other hand, clearly has commercial appeal, with dramatic action scenes, detailed historical costumes, and big-name actors like Jeremy Irons. What the two movies have in common is daring to speak to the plight of the Palestinian people at a time when the American ruling class wants to deflect scrutiny for its support of the genocide in Palestine.
This kind of corporate blacklist of Palestinian movies by the U.S. film distribution system must be seen for what it is: an attempt by the U.S. capitalist class to prevent the population from being exposed to anti-Israel art. The difficulties faced by movies like “No Other Land” pushed two Palestinian-American brothers, Hamza and Badi Ali, to form Watermelon Pictures, which will now distribute “Palestine 36.” Anyone who has the opportunity to see “Palestine 36” should take advantage of it and see the film.
Photo: A shot from the film “Palestine 36.”