The Sound of Color in Arabic
I'm Gushing Over the Brilliant Films and Stories of Palestine
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A passionate kiss between a humanitarian and a teacher after an impromptu ploy to push an invader out of the house.
Two lovers who only made love in letters, pages torn apart by a false accusation, a framing and double agent resistance.
A young girl torn between her benevolent father and her sense of sovereignty, only to witness tragedy through the cracks.
Cinematic stories giving life to real love and heartache, yeh, I’m a little obsessed. Film, after, all is my first love in storytelling.
And these are powerful stories, Palestinians stories filmed in the middle of occupied spaces and looming horrors on their own families.
They are the films of Watermelon Pictures+.
I have been giving myself the pleasure of foreign film lately. Watermelon was started by two Palestinians, brothers continuing their father’s legacy. Creative Director, Alana Hadid, has helped give the project a face, publicity and a streaming app.
iSwoon.
If we want to understand the Palestinian experience, we must learn the Palestinians’ stories. News doesn’t always focus the story well, I would know, I worked hard against an industry standard to bring color to my own work.
These days, with the advancement of technology, algorithm suppression, we’re consumed by clipped-up Tiktoks and Reels. With that often comes the loop of trauma and without the beauty weaved into and beyond the grief.
The depth film offers is grief and joy alongside one another and it brings a wider understanding of the ones who ask for our solidarity.
Arguably the most powerful scene in a newer and Palestinian woman-directed film, The Teacher,
…comes when a white father, whose son, presumably Jewish by his mother, is being held captive in the Occupied West Bank (based on a true story), pleads with the film’s star, Basem, “Do you know where my son is? Please…I don’t know what to do. So I am here, asking you if you know anything…I know what happened to your own son. and I shouldn’t expect you to help even if you did. But for what it’s worth, as a father, I am truly truly sorry for your loss.”
Basem slowly leans up against the wall and carefully forms his words, namely because that man’s son was hidden in his garden house by resistance fighters and he could not, would not reveal his ties, so he said to him, “They’ll keep him alive as long as it takes.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because they know,” Basem says, “that your people believe your son is worth a thousand of mine.”
The scene is a mic-drop, because there it is, the whole thing. The dehumanization FELT by Palestinian people. It is their pain, their wound, their struggle.
The sin of the west is its racist disregard and therefore, discard of indigenous bodies.
Can white people ever understand? Maybe. I would ask any white woman in particular reading this: are you a survivor? What does your body know of rape, intimate partner or parental violence? Have you begged to matter to someone you’re in connection with?
Then you have an idea.
Now imagine 4 generations, 80 years, and your nervous system moving from fawn and freeze, to fight and flight and back again, watching your children go through it and doing nothing because you’re exhausted, imprisoned or injured. What about those around you who did nothing? Who defended your rapist, your abuser? The courts, laws and other people you trusted once?
You have an idea.
Now think about the system you belong which has held it in place and you participated or stayed silent with another.
Ahh, now you’re the perpetrator. Are you on your knees yet?
You have an idea.
The Teacher’s Director, Farah Nabulsi said in a recent interview, “I see Palestine as the wound that the whole world is bleeding out of right now.”
She’s right. We are. So where do we go from here?
Keep witnessing the stories.
Yes, the channel has incredible documentaries, like The Encampments which should be shown at every university world wide or Where the Olive Trees Weep, which takes on Palestine through the lens of Trauma.
I made my way through From Ground Zero, an incredible project which strings over 20 short films mixed with documentary and pointed storytelling in Gaza, right now, with Gaza’s filmmakers and artists. One that sticks out in the series, called Soft Skin, follows a group of young students making a stop-motion with paper and telling their stories, which then, the film shows us their paper-characters and uses their voices.
At one point, a boy talks about his mother writing his name on his arm, so that if they are hit by bombs, they will find his pieces, and know him. He says, “I don’t want them to collect my pieces.”
A punch to my gut, I had to pause, I was on a train and behind my sunglasses, tears fell, I don’t want them to either, kiddo, I whispered.
Deep breath. These are the stories that will shake you.
And still,
I go back to the carefully scripted “fictional” films which aren’t really at all, they are the enhancement, the color of the truth and yes, mostly in Arabic.
One of the most poetic languages, to listen to their voices, is essential. To learn a few words, for those who do not speak, it is right and worthy to read the captions below, to FEEL their intimate expressionism.
For many of the cast and crew in such films, they are having ongoing experiences with the material they are presenting.
Watching Omar, a film which premiered a decade ago, I couldn’t help but ache that he never got to be with the one he loved. And the film brilliantly plays out the psychological warfare and manipulation by Israeli occupation.
Omar is caught between a deal with Israeli militants, his best friend and being a true fighter for liberation. Is he a traitor? There are times we are lead to believe so, he takes the torture to his body, but he fears they will hurt her…what to do?
And still,
There’s so much softness in Pomegranates and Myrrh. Kamar’s dance is her way out of the prison in her mind while her new husband is held in an Israeli prison, growing more distant and defiant.
She cannot leave his family, she cannot sit still
…so she dances...
The bitter sweetness in each of these films are life, pain, joy and a testament of Palestinian humanity.
The films humanize them while they fight against the world’s dehumanization, as bombs rain down and bullets pierce their bodies and rip apart their insides. But their spirit cannot be broken.
Toni Morrison once said,
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for Despair. No place for self pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak. We write. We do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
The platform is offering fresh air for Palestinians, older movies and newer ones, as a way to testify and resist their burial. Palestinians are leading an indigenous uprising through their art, using language, adding color to their narrative of their pain, and also, yeh, their joy.
We must witness. We must take inspiration. We must carry it with them.
No Other Land won an Oscar. Put Your Soul on Your Hand & Walk made waves at Cannes Film Festival. While they aren’t on Watermelon’s platform yet, they also can’t be the only ones we remember.
They are part of a greater collective of stories, of frames and pans and edit productions which highlight the outcry and the Soul of Palestine’s indigenous people.
I am enthralled with film as it is, and I am grateful for a new window offering me a plethora of inspiration on how to shape and write and see these stories for what they are:
Art defying death, in linguistic color and painted with raw emotions.
Foreign and indie films are a breath and break from the super-heroism of colonized comfort so if there’s anything I could leave you with this weekend, never discount the power a movie night, to watch and be devoured in. Make love and art and stand against the war. Witness and humanize what has been dehumanized.
This is our moment, to be part of beautiful stories and keep sounding the alarm for truth, healing, reconciled love and justice.
Ash Gallagher is a veteran war journalist, a producer, writer and creator. To engage with her work, or connect with her for interview, contact here and find more at ashgallagher.com and email her here
Recommended Links,
Below is an interview with Nabulsi and Actor Saleh Bakri
More Reading from Ash
Fatima
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Fatima Houssana. Her story is still deeply impact on me. It’s probably because I see myself in her. She was 25, ambitious and determined to show the world her truth. She was targeted and killed by Israelis after finding out a film she was in, was picked up for the Cannes Film Festival.
