Friday, May 16, 2008
a short history of middle east in posters: comment to 15th May "Nakba Day"
these days israel is celebrating the nakba day, the foundation of israeli state in palestine.
the posters in a row -seen in saida in lebanon- somehow marks a public view of resistance against israel and occupation.
we all know the lands left to palestinians after oslo agreement is eroding day-by-day.
please watch -if you haven't yet- wonderful documentary by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan titled Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel:
"In the summer of 2002, Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan, a Palestinian and an Israeli, travelled together from the south to the north of their country of birth, traced their trajectory on a map and called it Route 181. This virtual line follows the borders outlined in UN Resolution 181 that was to partition Palestine into two states. As they travel along this route, they encounter men and women, Israeli and Palestinian, young and old, civilians and soldiers, filming them in their everyday lives. Each of these characters has their own way of evoking the frontiers that separate them from their neighbours: concrete, barbed-wire, cynicism, humour, indifference, suspicion, aggression… Frontiers have been built on the hills and in the plains, on mountains and in valleys but above all inside the minds and souls of these two peoples and in the collective unconscious of both societies. With Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel, Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan take us on a disorientating journey across this tiny territory with vast ramifications."
and see yael bartana's beautiful recent work mary kozsmary.
"Until WW II, Poland had the largest Jewish community in the world. In the postwar period, many of the 180,000–240,000 survivors chose to emigrate from communist Poland.
The film is sets in an abandoned stadium in Warsaw, using propaganda films style, calling for three million Jews to return to Poland. The protagonist is Slawomir Sierekowski, a young radical polish leftist who claims for a radical change in his country."