Here and Elsewhere
Reflecting on Israel-Palestine in the Essay Film
March 13 to 20, 2025
From the start, the Israel-Palestine conflict, which has experienced a tragic climax since Hamas' savage attack on October 7, 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza with its exorbitant suffering for the Palestinian civilian population, has also been a conflict of images. For generations, this issue in the Middle East has occupied its place in the global media arena as an emotionally-charged, complex object of perception. In his 2021 book Hier und Anderswo: Palästina-Israel im essayistischen Film (1960-2010), Peter Grabher addresses the question: What can essay films do in this situation? How have avant-garde filmmakers applied the subjective, transgressive, constructivist, and hybrid strategies of the essay film to this Middle Eastern conflict? How do their works react to hegemonic media representations? Faced with traumatizing realities, what is the potential for an essayistic cinema to keep spaces open for contemplation, dialogue, and a politics of friendship.
The program presents a small selection of key essayistic works dealing with the context of Israel-Palestine which are analyzed in detail in Grabher's book. It makes no claim to completeness, but instead seeks to create opportunities for reflection. Starting from Chris Marker's emblematic Description of a Struggle (1960), it is an invitation to (re-)see films by French/Swiss (Godard/Miéville), Israeli (Geva, Aloni), and Palestinian (Tabari, Yagchi) filmmakers, who all tried in a moment of crisis and in very individual ways to transform cinema into a mode of thinking. (Peter Grabher, Gerald Weber / Translation: Ted Fendt)
With introductions by Peter Grabher and Gerald Weber
A collaboration with sixpackfilm
From the start, the Israel-Palestine conflict, which has experienced a tragic climax since Hamas' savage attack on October 7, 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza with its exorbitant suffering for the Palestinian civilian population, has also been a conflict of images. For generations, this issue in the Middle East has occupied its place in the global media arena as an emotionally-charged, complex object of perception. In his 2021 book Hier und Anderswo: Palästina-Israel im essayistischen Film (1960-2010), Peter Grabher addresses the question: What can essay films do in this situation? How have avant-garde filmmakers applied the subjective, transgressive, constructivist, and hybrid strategies of the essay film to this Middle Eastern conflict? How do their works react to hegemonic media representations? Faced with traumatizing realities, what is the potential for an essayistic cinema to keep spaces open for contemplation, dialogue, and a politics of friendship.
The program presents a small selection of key essayistic works dealing with the context of Israel-Palestine which are analyzed in detail in Grabher's book. It makes no claim to completeness, but instead seeks to create opportunities for reflection. Starting from Chris Marker's emblematic Description of a Struggle (1960), it is an invitation to (re-)see films by French/Swiss (Godard/Miéville), Israeli (Geva, Aloni), and Palestinian (Tabari, Yagchi) filmmakers, who all tried in a moment of crisis and in very individual ways to transform cinema into a mode of thinking. (Peter Grabher, Gerald Weber / Translation: Ted Fendt)
With introductions by Peter Grabher and Gerald Weber
A collaboration with sixpackfilm
Link Hier und Anderswo / Schüren Verlag (Download possible as OA publication)
Link Contributors
Link sixpackfilm
Link Contributors
Link sixpackfilm
For each series, films are listed in screening order.
