Arabic with English subtitles

Shot in 1980-81, the film is composed of interviews with different Palestinian refugees, including children, women, old people and militants from the refugee camps of Sabra, Shatila, Bourj el-Barajneh, Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidieh in Lebanon. In the interviews Mohammad Malas questions them about their dreams at night. The dreams always converge on Palestine: a woman recounts her dreams about winning the war; a fedai of bombardment and martyrdom; and one man tells of a dream where he meets, and is ignored by Gulf emirs. During filming, Malas lived in the camps and conducted interviews with more than 400 people. In 1982 the Sabra and Shatila massacres occurred, taking the lives of several people he had interviewed, and he stopped working on the project. Not until 1986 did he edit the many hours of footage gathered into this film.

Followed by a workshop and reading with Ali Hussein Al-Adawy (in English).

Following the screening, Ali Hussein Al-Adawy will facilitate a session where we will interrogate the practice of “militant film” in the aftermath of the ongoing genocidal war in Palestine and the permanent war in the region. We will think at the intersections between the film and Malas’ diary The Notebook of The Dream in conversation with Elias Khoury’s novel White Faces, reading excerpts and discussing them together.

• Sektion Section: Artist in Focus. Marwa Arsanios
• Programm Programme: Programme 3