In the teary eyes and in the nervous movement of her hands of Mira Sidawi (Lebanon, 39 years old) when she talks about what it means for her to be Palestinian, one can sense deep uneasiness and urgency. Also an unchosen rage, the same one that her father felt when he fled in 1948 from Sheikh Danun, a town near Acre (today in the north of Israel), a feeling that this filmmaker aspires to transform into a moment of beauty in her films. .
“Art is my only weapon of resistance,” she says, in an interview with this newspaper while passing through Madrid this week, invited by the Association of Women Filmmakers (CIMA). His visit coincides with the 76th anniversary of the start of the Nakba, the “catastrophe” in Arabic, a term used to remember the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians after the creation of the State of Israel. Also with an intensification of Israeli attacks on the south of the Gaza Strip and a new massive displacement of people to safer places. “Right now, as we speak, there are women and children dying under bombs. People I don’t know, but who are Palestinians like me,” she says, referring to this more than seven-month war that has caused the death of at least 35,000 Palestinians.
Sidawi, born in the refugee camp of Burj Barajnehon the outskirts of Beirut, has directed Four Wheels Camp (2016) and The Wall (2019), the story of four young people from a refugee camp who make a film to send to Roger Waters, former leader of Pink Floyd, to visit the place. Being Palestinian and also a refugee limits her work and “stigmatizes” her existence, she laments. “I ask myself every day what it means to be a refugee. Superman was a refugee, I am too,” Sidawi ironically.
Ask. What does the war in Gaza look like from a refugee camp in Lebanon?
Answer. I don’t want to call it war or conflict. This is, first of all, an occupation. And it has been happening for 76 years, since 1948. In other words, it did not start in October of last year, although now something much bigger and stronger has begun to happen: a genocide. The people in the refugee camps are angry and furious because they see that there is no way out. And he also feels very afraid for his safety. What is happening is scary and traumatizing. Me too.
Q. His films take place in the chaotic, dangerous and dirty alleys of these fields, which become comical and even beautiful.
R. I am a Palestinian refugee and art is my only weapon of resistance. I do not speak in military terms, I am deeply pacifist. Creating beauty in a film from what life is like in a refugee camp helps its inhabitants see and feel that beauty. And that transformation of the place we live in gives us power and dignity. We are a story, we are not numbers.
Creating beauty in a film based on what life is like in a refugee camp helps its inhabitants see and feel that beauty.
Q. You left Burj Barajneh a few years ago, but your films are still anchored in that field. Do you conceive of making another type of cinema?
R. Refugee camps like mine are a source of inspiration and creativity. They are also places full of people that no one talks about and who cannot tell their stories. People who look from afar at what is happening in Palestine. And that is dangerous. For example, now people are seeing what is happening in Gaza live. These images remain in our subconscious. What does this generate in many people? Rage. Desire for revenge. That is why it is urgent and important to transform that anger. It is an obligation. I could stay crying in a corner watching what happens, but I can’t. That’s why I tell stories about the place where I come from and where my family lives. I would like to tell others, but first I have to finish these and I hope that my work is useful for something.
Q. In Four Wheels Camp Ask the rural inhabitants where they want to be buried. What is the message of this film?
R. That we deserve a chance. We do not choose where we are born nor where we will be buried. My parents are buried above my two brothers, who died before, because in the countryside there is no place to bury otherwise. Dead upon dead. It scares me that I won’t have a choice and end up like this. I told my mother that she didn’t want that for me, and from there the film was born.
Q. It is a short film that is conceived as a tribute to his father.
R. My father fled Acre with nothing, he didn’t even have shoes. He built a shop in the countryside, he met my mother, who was also from Acre, and they got married. The Lebanese civil war forced us to flee to the mountains. My father made a house of tin and stones, in which it was very cold in winter and we suffocated in summer. We were very poor. I helped him clean other people’s bathrooms while listening to music by Umm Kulthum. He was a fascinating man, who wanted to be a writer, but he couldn’t. The occupation cut his story short. It is impossible to know what was there before him, who he played with or what he dreamed about. You don’t know what he left there, in that first part of his life. And I have never been able to go to Acre, of course. I am a refugee, I don’t have a permit.
Q. Her refugee status is omnipresent.
R. There are many ways to be Palestinian, but they are all complicated, today more than ever. You are born a politician, even if you don’t want to. And when you are a refugee even more so. I have identity documents that say I am a refugee, which stigmatizes me and limits me. And she also asked me every day what it means to be a refugee. Superman was a refugee, I am too… But if I am a refugee for everyone, why can’t I go anywhere, why am I blocked in this field?
Q. Is making films when you are Palestinian and a woman the ‘most difficult’ of circus shows?
R. It is not easy to be Palestinian and make films, it is clear. I think it is an act of bravery, because it can cost you your professional future and even your life. As Palestinians we have to find the right and intelligent way to tell the story we want to tell. But I don’t feel that being a woman cuts my wings. Palestinian society relies on women, who support and defend their families. They are powerful women, whether they wear veils or not, whether they are Muslims or not. I think you see these women in my films. I want to be one of them.
Q. However, listening to her, it is clear that being a refugee is an obstacle to producing and directing films.
R. It is different to be trapped in a refugee camp than to be in the West Bank or to be a Palestinian in London. For example, when I make a film, I need someone who is outside, a kind of producer, who fights for me from another place, who defends the film, raises the funds… Because I am very limited.
Q. His new project also takes place in a refugee camp.
A. Yes. It’s called The bulldozer and it is about a huge excavator that arrives and stops at the gates of the refugee camp. There is a boy, Ali, who sees her and starts playing on the vehicle. Women also begin to hang their clothes there. It’s a comical situation. But one day he sets off and destroys the field. What is Ali doing? He is a boy with a great imagination and he wants to save the countryside.
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