Since December 2023, the Prague-based collective Kino Palestine has hosted a series of film screenings and discussions across different venues in the Czech capital. The events aim to platform Palestinian voices “unapologetically”, amplify Palestinian narratives, and strengthen cultural solidarity with Palestinians and Palestinian artists.
The initiative began as a two-month program of screenings, in collaboration with Prague’s Garage Gallery, but met with such enthusiasm that it has now expanded into 17 events, and enlisted the involvement of prestigious Palestinian filmmakers, including Mai Masri, Raed Andoni, Abdallah Al-Khatib, and actor and director Mohammed Bakri.
Future events include an upcoming seminar at the Ji.hlava film festival on Monday 28 October, following a screening of Kamal Aljafari’s A Fidai Film, which draws on re-edited footage recovered from looted Palestinian archives. The group will also be participating in Palestine Cinema Days on 2 November – an event which, since last year, has seen the screenings of hundreds of Palestinian films across the world, in solidarity with festival organisers now unable to host the event in Palestine.
Speaking to Brno Daily, two representatives of Kino Palestine, who preferred to remain unnamed, explained the reasons behind setting up the group, the importance of platforming Palestinian filmmakers amidst ongoing dehumanisation of Palestinian and Arab victims of the conflict, as well as the role played by Palestinian cinema.
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Could you begin with a brief description of Kino Palestine and the motivation for its establishment?
Kino Palestine holds ongoing screenings of Palestinian films in Prague (but not only), which are meant to showcase the work of Palestinian artists and filmmakers at a time when it is most needed, we believe. And at a time when Palestinians are being silenced and sidelined, especially in the Czech Republic. There was a need to counter that and to bring into the city – into spaces where people can meet and hear and talk and discuss – to bring these films and these narratives from Palestine and from Palestinians. Not only from Palestine, because Palestinians are very diverse: there are people who are in exile in other countries, in Europe or Lebanon, and people from the West Bank or Gaza, so it was important for us, as motivation, to showcase this diversity, also at a time when Palestinians are made to be just as one colour or one bloc, reduced to numbers and certain dehumanising narratives.
We wanted to counter that and bring these people back into the cultural sphere of the city. Because we started doing this in December of last year, the original idea was to move around different cultural and arts spaces in the city, not to do it in just one venue, partly also because these spaces have traditionally shown support for liberation and freedom of speech and different progressive causes around the world. When it came to Palestinians however, they somehow aligned with the overwhelming state-sanctioned position, which had a lot of censorship and dehumanisation of Palestinians, so we also wanted to push these places, at least in Prague, to stay aligned with their own stated values.
Can you tell me about the choices behind which films have been screened?
We had a variety of films: features, documentaries, and short films as well. We also had discussions with the directors of the films themselves, which we moderated.
We choose the films in a way that, first of all, keeps it diverse in terms of which stories we’re telling and where they are coming from. At the same time, these are films that help us put out a different image of Palestine, or the region in general, coming straight from Palestinian voices: a society with centuries-old traditions, culture, and with diverse stories of love, joy and pain, and hope as well as a struggle for freedom. It’s a message we want to put out for Czech audiences and for people in Prague, where people might be less familiar with these films.
These are films that have been screened at international film festivals, that have critical acclaim, and in some cases lesser known films which we think are important to show as well. Documentaries are a big part of it as well, because Palestinians make a lot of documentaries, for obvious reasons.
I want to ask about the response, if any, from Czech authorities, as well as the wider public. Have there been any difficulties? Have you encountered any reluctance from institutions in participating?
I have to say, overall, that the response was mostly positive, we didn’t have any incidents or backlash. But our screenings have stayed limited in size and reach; even though it grew at a certain point, we are not so mainstream that we get exposed to hate messages or whatnot. It’s been a positive response, and in the spaces that we participated in, even though there was reluctance at the beginning, when this ongoing war had just started, and feelings were still fresh around the topic, so there was some reluctance and hesitation. We heard that this was a ‘radical’ event, or could be perceived as such. But once we started and people could see the films – that they were films just like from any other place – and the topics in some ways are universal as well, so they were not something that was scary to screen or to watch, and the people that were coming were not part of some radical group. So once that happened, it was easier to get into different places.
Although we have had, so far, two rejections in the whole year from spaces that did not want to participate. One of them is a publicly owned, state owned, institution. So even though the people working there were very supportive and did want us to have an event there, the decision from the top came saying that this would not be possible. The other, I think, is a privately owned institution, and it was kind of out of fear to not have us. I think if we had pushed, we could have got it, but there is also the question of whether it is worth it, whether we negotiate, or if we move on to places that are already very accommodating and would want us to come back.
I have to say – about this second space, which is maybe good to note – that they also had other events. They told us no on the grounds that this is an inherently political event. But they also hosted political events on the same topic, from the same perspective as ours, but just not Arabs who were doing the event, and not a Palestinian film that was screened. It was an American film. And this is what makes me believe that our way of going with only showcasing Palestinian films is the right one, because the problem is still: even though you might be okay showing a voice critical of Israel, or pro-Palestinian, it remains problematic to have a Palestinian author or a film made by a Palestinian, who is unapologetically being presented as a Palestinian author – this is more problematic than the criticism of Israel on its own.
I also think our name as Kino Palestine sometimes is a bit scary – when I say scary, I’m being very reductive – but I think it is easier for them to say no, because it has Palestine in the name. It seems silly, to me, to think that these spaces will never show a Palestinian film, because Palestinian cinema has won a lot of awards and received a lot of recognition worldwide, and it would be obviously a loss for the space. Last year alone we had films from Palestine making it in Berlinale, in Venice. Are these people going to say no to these films? I doubt it. It’s just about also presenting it as unapologetically Palestinian film.
We’re speaking as Israel continues its bombardment of Lebanon, where over a quarter of the population are now displaced, under forced evacuation notices. The violence inflicted on Gaza continues, is in fact intensifying, and the occupation in the West Bank continues. How do you see organisations like Kino Palestine playing a part in resisting the violence, but also the dehumanisation of Palestinian and Arab life in Czech political, academic, and media discourses?
The role we are playing is very small, we are very few people. We’re doing stuff in a big part, I think, for ourselves to have a space and an outlet for what we’re going through. I think at the core of the problem for me right now, is that this is all possible because of years of dehumanisation. Decades of dehumanisation, not only against Palestinians, but against Arabs in general, in which it is normal for Arabs to die; it is normal for them to suffer more than anyone else. It is not called into question so much, especially in this country. The content that we see online, in the media, and by Czech politicians, as well as internet comments and trolls, you can see – even in the more liberal spheres of how we talk about this – it’s still very normal for Arabs to die, and to have to take it. And this is due to the fact that we have had these reductive images of Palestinians and Arabs widely accepted.
At the core of it is the imbalance of power in telling the stories. How someone’s word is valued much more than someone else’s. An Arab or Palestinian who is speaking out in general is deemed less worthy of reporting, or of believing even, than an Israeli, or another white European person. This is not a new problem. This is a problem that has been going on, more so in the West, since the sixties, seventies, eighties, and obviously it has its roots in the colonialism of the region by European powers, but today it continues in the media and by politicians.
This is why, for us, it’s important to showcase films by Palestinian authors in this context, just to resist in some way this dehumanisation and the judging of Palestinians as liars before they even speak, so we don’t give them a platform, don’t let them say anything, although these are the people who are first-hand suffering and experiencing this injustice, and so should be the one telling us their stories. So, for me, their side of the story and their narrative is much more valuable than anyone else’s.
We’ve spoken about the importance of Kino Palestine in platforming Palestinian voices. Can you tell me about the role of Palestinian cinema and its part in the history of resistance?
So, initially, Palestinians didn’t record much, especially before 1948. It was mostly a society that had a lot of oral traditions, a lot of oral history passed on. At the same time, whoever actually tried to actually document and record stuff – there is a long history of oppression and censorship against Palestinians in Palestine. It started out with the British Mandate, where anything from that era that was recorded by Palestinians themselves is not accessible, we don’t have it, it was destroyed, seized, it’s not available. And that continued with the creation of the state of Israel, where Palestinians, even Palestinian citizens of Israel who stayed after Nakba were also living under military rule for about 20 years, and then after 1967 there was the occupation – so there was a long period where there was no productions from Palestine at all, from ‘48 to ‘67, until a group of Palestinian refugees who were living in Amman in Jordan decided to start a Palestine film institute, as part of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
They started to realise the importance of telling their own stories, so they started producing this cinema, which was mostly militant cinema, its goal is to promote the national narrative of Palestinians, and fight the Zionist narrative, or the dehumanisation. But even that was heavily suppressed by Israelis, so at each point that the Israelis could, they would seize the archives that the Palestinians were creating to tell their stories and so the Palestinians had to start from scratch every time. A lot of the archives that were seized in Beirut in 1982, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the larger part of them are still lost to this day, and we only realised a few years ago that they are actually in the possession of the Israeli army – put into the archives as a state secret – so no one can have access to them.
It goes to show how much also Israel fears the Palestinian narrative, and that the attack on Palestinians is not only in lives and land and property, but also in culture and the arts. There has always been a systematic looting and seizing of even Palestinians’ personal archives, of photos, of books and whatnot, but also, on the national level, any production that happens from the Palestinian side. Today, it’s a little different with the internet and digitization, but Palestinians still struggle to get their story out, especially in this part of the world.
More information about Kino Palestine can be found on the group’s Facebook and Instagram pages, including information about upcoming events and discussions.
