Move the clocks back nearly nine decades and replace “Free Palestine” with “Palestine is not for Balfour to give away”. Our story begins in the titular year of 1936, when Palestine was under British rule, and Zionist migrants were starting to flow into the occupied nation. The controversial Balfour Declaration established that the Jews should return to their promised land and set up a “national home”. In response, Palestinians organised a popular uprising known as the Arab Revolt.
A child and a mother watch the newly-arrived, and the girl asks: “why aren’t they wearing trousers”, leaving her embarrassed mother unable to voice a response. The sartorial differences, however, remain the least of the problems. The idea that these foreigners may take their land is a far more prominent concern. The news of the planned partition leaves the Palestinians perplexed and indignant.
The oppression tactics are surprisingly familiar. Much like present-day Israel, the British occupiers deceived, humiliated and brutalised the Arabs. They routinely burnt down their olive trees, blew up the houses and murdered insurgents. And they propped up agitators with the purpose of undermining the resistance. The new immigrants lent a helping hand: the Zionist Committee secretly founded the “Muslim Association” in order to break Palestinian unity, and they paid Muslim journalists a large sum of money in order to translate propagandistic literature into the language of the Prophet.
Filmed in Jordan and the Occupied West Bank, Palestine 36 seeks to emphasise its historicity by inserting impressive archive footage of Jaffa, Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine before 1948. The most prominent characters include the cynical and conveniently lenient High Commissioner Wauchope (Jeremy Irons), sadistic Captain Wingate (Robert Amarayo), resilient rebel leader Khalid (Saleh Bakri, perhaps Palestine’s most prominent actor at present) and sharp village boy Yusuf (Karim Daoud Anaya), who lands a job in a Jerusalem newspaper of questionable ethics. The allegiance of Arab Christians is also a central topic, embodied in the figure of father Boulos (played by heavily bearded heartthrob Jalal Altawil). The disciple of Jesus remains loyal to his Muslim brothers throughout, to the extent of potentially sacrificing his own life.
This two-hour film culminates in the al-Bassa massacre of 1938, when the British sadistically murdered between 20 and 100 Palestinians (according to different historical sources) in retaliation for a landmine that claimed a military vehicle and the lives of two soldiers. The Palestinians denied the authorship of the explosion.
Annemarie Jacir firmly establishes that Zionism is a proxy of British Imperialism – we hear it from the horse’s mouth during a casual conversation about the colourful colonisation techniques. The Palestinian helmer and scribe is a renowned artist both insider and outside the film industry – she is an acclaimed poet and story writer. The movie script is mostly concise and clear, threading together multiple personal stories in the name of a greater purpose: Palestinian sovereignty. Such approach is apparently justified in the film itself, as the colonisers claim that all Palestinians should suffer punishment because their religion promotes the collective ahead of the individual. Conversely, this is also the film’s greatest shortcoming.
While extremely insightful and educational, Palestine 36 is not a cinematic tour-de-force. The abundance of characters prevents more profound emotional allegiance with the victims. Plus, some of the protest scenes look a little stagey. Irons, Aramayo and Bakri are satisfactory in their roles, however unremarkable. Palestine 36 will be remembered as an urgent historical register rather than a gut-wrenching drama
There are multiple reasons to watch Jacir’s fifth feature film. This is a heartwarming tribute to Palestinian self-determination. And a welcome addition to the Pantheon of films about the horrors of the British Empire, alongside recent movies such as Viceroy’s House (Gurinder Chadha, 2017) and Letters from Baghdad (Zeva Oelbauma/ Sabine Krayenbühl, 2017). To boot, Palestine 36 is a powerful reminder that the neocolonial tactics of Zionism are not without precedent, and that British Imperialism has the ability to shape-shift into something equally depraved.
Palestine 36 showed in the 5th Red Sea International Film Festival, where this piece was originally written. On various VoD platforms on Friday, December 12th.
