Anthology Film Archives

Film Screenings / Programs / Series

POLITICS OF THE IMAGE: COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN THE PALESTINIAN LIBERATION MOVEMENT AND THE TWO GERMANIES

June 13 – June 19

This series sheds light on the little known and rarely explored cooperation in film and TV between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the two Germanies during the last decades of the Cold War. In the 1970s and 80s, the film groups and cultural organizations of the PLO worked closely with film institutions in the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and with filmmakers from the capitalist Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). These collaborations continue to have an impact today, for example in Palestine TV and its partnership with German public television, the foundations of which the PLO established via East- and West-German joint contracts and projects during the 1980s.

As the series demonstrates, the PLO-GDR co-productions and collaborations were characterized by mutual dependency with regard to international political recognition. Moreover, the PLO had hard currencies, which the GDR desperately needed, while the GDR commanded a strong film infrastructure, which the PLO lacked. The PLO’s collaboration with West-German individuals was less formalized and therefore more flexible. The liberation organization could for instance send film crews to shoot inside the Occupied Territories, as LAND DAY (1977) illustrates, or access Western audiences through Western filmmakers and the familiarity of their film-languages. The PLO’s film delegate was based in East Berlin and, as holder of a so-called alien passport, could cross the Berlin Wall whenever he wished.

The PLO functions as a united front externally and as an umbrella organization internally. The different programs within this series reflect this structure. Each evening focuses on different aesthetic, political, and economic questions of the Palestinian-German collaboration. In Program 1, for example, the (back)stories of AWAY FROM HOME (1969) and HEYDA MOURAD, I AM NOT A DREAMER (1982) give insight into the range of GDR-PLO cooperation (which extended beyond the realm of cinema), while the films in Program 3 apply diverging methods to narrate Palestinian history using footage mainly found at the GDR’s film archive, and in doing so reflect the scope of political ideas and the politics of the image within the PLO.

Guest-programmed by Irit Neidhardt (mec film), who wrote the introduction and program descriptions.

Irit Neidhardt and filmmaker Marwan Salamah will be here in person for selected screenings during the opening weekend!

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