Cinema of Palestine

Following this documentary, Sirhan joined Jamal al-Asphar to produce a 45-minute film called The Realized Dreams, aiming to "promote the orphans' cause".

Sirhan and al-Asphar also produced a documentary about Ahmad Hilmi Pasha, a member of the Higher Arab Commission.

Cinematic endeavours, requiring infrastructure, professional crews, and finance, nearly ceased for two decades.

Only one dramatic movie was made during the period, namely Return to Haifa in 1982, an adaptation of a short novel by Ghassan Kanafani.

In 1982, when the PLO was forced out of Beirut, the archive was put into storage (in the Red Crescenty Hospital), from where it "disappeared" under circumstances which are still unclear.

[20] Notable film directors of this period include[21] Michel Khleifi, Rashid Masharawi, Ali Nassar and Elia Suleiman.

[23] Currently in the Gaza Strip, all film projects must be approved by Hamas' Culture Ministry before they can be screened in public.

Independent filmmakers have claimed that the Culture Ministry cracks down on content not conforming to Hamas edicts.

[25] In contrast to the way some other locations with associations to film industry are named in casual parlance, the term Pallywood has only derogatory acceptions.

Villagers of Halhul waiting for an open-air film show, around 1940
In the 1960s, there was a small group of people that started filming the Palestinian Revolution. [ 9 ] The PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) helped tremendously with allowing people such as Arab filmmakers start up their films. In the late 60s, these films that were being made, around 100 or more, focused mostly on themes such as collective resistance, exile, and refugees with Palestinians being displaced by Israel at this time. These films were being screened in refugee camps, military bases, villages and towns, and sometimes even gained international recognition. [ 9 ] The distribution of these films was not controlled by the filmmakers but regardless, cinema allowed them to tell their own stories. The Alhambra Cinema in Jaffa , 1937, bombed December 1947 [ 10 ]
Emad Burnat is a Palestinian farmer and filmmaker.
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