On the intersection between performance and film, Palestinian filmmaker Noor Abed’s work explores human relationships. For example, our songs were ready for all wars to come is an 8mm footage choreography of playing women whose stories are linked by communal mourning rituals.
This short video essay, created at the request of the Singapore Art Museum, explores how Palestinian gamers mimic life under colonial occupation in Los Santos as a virtual proxy of the state of Palestine.
Now Pretend is an experimental investigation into using race as an arbitrary signifier. Drawing on language, personal memories, and the 1959 text “Black Like Me”, it deals with Lacan’s mirror stage, and the movement from object to subject.
The footage in this rare film by legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali was shot by a French news team, after which Abu Ali edited it into one of the earliest films about the occupied territory in Gaza.
