The Dream / Le Rêve / المنام
Mohamad Malas, 45 min, color, 1987, Syria.
VOSTA: Arabe avec sous-titres anglais // Arabic with English subtitles.
FR
Tourné à Beyrouth dans les camps palestiniens de Sabra, Chatila, Burj al-Barajneh et Ain al-Hulweh, avant l’intervention israélienne. Les camps reproduisent les ruelles et les maisons des villages de Palestine, la caméra s’y aventure comme dans le labyrinthe des mémoires. Ce que racontent les Palestiniens, ce sont leurs rêves : apparitions de personnages célèbres, d’amis ou de parents disparus, images et sons de bombardements et d’avions, moments de peur ou d’amour, images d’une terre devenue lointaine. Jeunes et vieux, hommes et femmes disent leurs rêves, quelque chose de leur monde intérieur.
« En 1981, les Palestiniens vivaient toujours dans des camps de réfugiés en attendant de rentrer chez eux. Je voulais comprendre l’image que deux générations de Palestiniens exilés avaient de leur pays. Ceux qui y avaient vécu et qui se souvenaient de la vie qu’ils y avaient vécue, et ceux qui étaient nés dans les camps et y avaient grandi. J’étais convaincu que les rêves seraient l’élément le plus à même de me transmettre cette image, bien plus que les slogans… »
– Mohamed Malas
ENG
Shot in 1980-81, the film is composed of interviews with different Palestinian refugees including children, women, elderly people, and militants from the refugee camps of Sabra, Shatila, Bourj el-Barajneh, Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidieh in Lebanon. In the interviews Mohamad Malas questions them about their dreams at night. The dreams always converge on Palestine: a woman recounts her dreams about winning the war; a fedai of bombardment and martyrdom; and one man recounts a dream where he meets and is ignored by Gulf emirs. Malas lived in the camps while filming and conducting interviews with more than 400 people. In 1982 the Sabra and Shatila massacres occurred, taking the lives of several people he interviewed. Malas stopped working on the project, and returned to it in 1986. He edited the many hours of footage gathered into this 45 minute film, released in 1987.
“I think I managed to formulate a view that totally differs from other Arab and foreign contemplations. The difference is mainly that I adopted the position of a neighbour, thus an Arab, and not that of a Palestinian. This led to me focusing rather on our mutual relations than on the conflict with Israel. The viewer might realize how I emphasized those nightmares which the Arabs caused in the lives of the Palestinians. My concern is to show how the Arab world is addressing the Palestinian cause: first one wanted to use the Palestinian issue and when this was not possible anymore, one tried to harm it. […] The fight between Israelis and Palestinians is as licit as public, yet the Arab-Palestinian conflict remains an internal affair, it happens in secret.” – Mohamed Malas
Regards palestiniens 