Fertile Memory

18 March, 2021 - 19:30
SABZIAN.BE

On 18 March 2021, Sabzian and Courtisane are hosting the seventh Milestones screening online, presenting Al Dhakira al Khasba [Fertile Memory] (Michel Khleifi, 1980), the first full length film to be shot within the disputed Palestinian West Bank “Green Line”. Fertile Memory is the feature debut of Michel Khleifi, acclaimed director of the Cannes Film Festival triumph, Wedding in Galilee. Lyrically blending both documentary and narrative elements, Khleifi skillfully and lovingly crafts a portrait of two Palestinian women whose individual struggles both define and transcend the politics that have torn apart their homes and their lives.

On the occasion of the online screening of Fertile Memory, Sabzian will be publishing several texts on the film on 17 March 2021. On the evening of the screening, an introduction to the film by Stoffel Debuysere will be posted on Sabzian. The film will be available on Sabzian, free of charge, worldwide.

The presentation of Fertile Memory is part of a series of four Milestones screenings hosted online by Sabzian, of which three are in collaboration with Courtisane. The film and introduction will be available on Sabzian’s home page on the day itself.

Fertile Memory

Michel Khleifi
,
BE, DE, PS
,
1980
,
colour
,
99'

The first full length film to be shot within the disputed Palestinian West Bank "Green Line", Fertile Memory is the feature debut of Michel Khleifi, acclaimed director of the Cannes Film Festival triumph, Wedding in Galilee. Lyrically blending both documentary and narrative elements, Khleifi skillfully and lovingly crafts a portrait of two Palestinian women whose individual struggles both define and transcend the politics that have torn apart their homes and their lives.

Grandmother Romia fights an unending legal battle with the Zionist authorities who confiscated her ancestral land soon after the Israeli occupation in 1947. With her family scattered all over the globe while she works in an Israeli factory, Romia doggedly maintains a dignity and passion that for her are the difference between mere subsistence and tenacious survival. Sahar Khalifeh, a divorced novelist and young mother living in the West Bank, struggles to maintain a modern role for herself within her increasingly intolerant occupation community. Representing both contemporary Arab womanhood and vanguard Palestinian conscience, Sahar must balance the changes in her world after the Six Day War with the changes in herself after achieving personal emancipation.

With painterly flair, Khleifi elevates the everyday details of Romia's and Sahar's lives to a timelessness as irresistible as the hauntingly beautiful desert landscape they fight for. Whether in a tearful lullaby or a sensuously performed lover's lament, the women of Fertile Memory lend tender and powerful voices to their people's chorus of outrage. Michel Khleifi's Fertile Memory puts a distinctively feminine expression on the ordinarily violent and male dominated face of Palestinian resistance.