Pandemic Stasis and Nonlinear Memory in Palestinian Short Films

Abstract

When the COVID-19 lockdown was introduced in Palestine-Israel in 2020, it changed how the everyday was negotiated, with stricter control on movement, access, and contact with family members. As the pandemic progressed, the lockdown restrictions layered over an existing framework of structural violence that determines individual movement, remembrance, access to health care, and living conditions. In the two short films analysed in this article, Lifting the Mask (سقط القناع) by Najwa Najjar (Palestine, 2020) and MAY: Locked Down with “Eva” in Nakba Anniversary (أيّار) by Maha Haj (Palestine, 2020), the lockdown stimulated a collision between the past and the present with ongoing, and at times increased, restrictions on movement and memory work in the West Bank. In each piece, the unhomely is presented uniquely, but the subject matter — memory, the occupation, and the pandemic — remains constant. As the viewer is transported (and yet also confined) to the home in both films, this article is concerned with the ways that the unhomely enhances the connection between the personal and the political in Occupied Palestine. Key to this is time and memory, and this article considers the question: How does memory become nonlinear as it simultaneously envelops the ongoing Nakba, which began in 1948, and the impact of the pandemic and its accompanying lockdown? The article concludes that the pandemic is but one strand in a narrative that weaves memory, movement and nonmovement, and the broader political circumstances into a tapestry of inequalities that pre- and postdates COVID-19.

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-11207854

Repository URI

https://hdl.handle.net/2164/24306