Rashid Masharawi, who produced the anthology of 22 short films that was Palestine’s official entry to the Academy Awards, has remarkable optimism about the future of Gaza
Being a Palestinian under Israeli occupation will not help someone make a good film, according to Rashid Masharawi, but a good film-maker will help Palestine.
With his anthology film From Ground Zero (in Arabic: From Zero Distance) he attempts to do just that by bridging the space between the Palestinians in Gaza who have endured a campaign of annihilation behind closed doors to those around the world watching as an incomprehensibly vast tragedy unfolds in real time.
The result is a collection of 22 shorts by Palestinian film-makers, ranging from documentary to vignettes and animation, which turns our attention not only to the past – and to the unrelenting violence of the present, when the death toll in Gaza continues to climb – but also to the future and what cannot be taken.
“Cinema can protect memory and can keep Palestinians on the ground because films are like dreams, ideas. Nobody can occupy dreams. Nobody can occupy ideas. Nobody can occupy memory … Nobody can occupy your imagination,” said Masharawi in an interview in London ahead of the film’s release in UK cinemas on 12 September.
