The postcolonial’s main connotation bespeaks, “after,” a next phase, if you will. Yet, as Robert J.C. Young explains in his introduction to Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction, “Postcolonial theory involves not static ideas or practices but creative interconnections: relations of harmony, relations of conflict, generative relations between different peoples and their cultures. It is the product of a changing world, a world that has been changed by struggle and which its practitioners seek to change further” (11). The key phrase for the purpose of this essay is “creative interconnections.” Too often in postcolonial studies, the emphasis is on the past, the evils of the colonizers, and adjacent to this, necessarily, the travails of the colonized. However, the past cannot be changed, only reevaluated, recontextualized, or perhaps reshaped and expanded to include other voices, experiences, cultural lives lived behind (and in front of) a camera. This essay argues for a re-examination of the “post” in postcolonialism by examining the literature and cinematic art of Palestine. As these works suggest, resistance is not merely a physical act, but can be taken up through “creative interconnections.” Creative connections, in this context, invites a movement from victim narratives to modes of resistance through art and activism. This paper will endeavour to elaborate these relationships, by looking at Annemarie Jacir’s 2008 film, Salt of the Sea (2008), and Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi’s documentary, 5 Broken Cameras (2011). 

Two Films: One Conflict

Collectively, the films Salt of this Sea (2008) and 5 Broken Cameras (2011) speak a polyphonic language—a Babel rich with many tongues all uttering at once. It is the question of the land and one’s connection to it that shapes their Palestinian perspective. Indeed, Palestine’s origins spring not from the British Isle, but rather, “The establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine in 1948 [which] involved the forced expulsion of around 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland” (Young 17). Edward W. Said, a Palestinian-American, wrote extensively about the issues surrounding expulsion and the global ramifications of the Zionist movement. In his essay, “The Burdens of Interpretation and the Question of Palestine,” Said argues for a balanced account of the Palestinian problem, asserting that the conflict should not be seen, reductively, as a struggle of equal sides, but of one side dominating another. Said sees this inherent dialectic (Israel and Palestine on equal footing) as harmful and not particularly truthful:   

Such interpretations (for they are, at bottom, interpretations) have been a consistent aspect of the question of Palestine since its modern inception. There has always been an appeal made by one or both of the parties to a silent and impartial jury somewhere out there … Present appeals by Israel and Israel's friends to such abstractions as “democracy” or the “Judeo-Christian heritage” have not made either of these two solemn fictions any less a weapon in the rhetorical battle between partisans. (Said 31) 

These “solemn fictions,” Said asserts, undermine the reality on ground and are not representative of the lives of the Palestinians. Suheir Hammad, a poet/activist whose activism centers on the lived Palestinian experience, draws on her parent’s history as Palestinian refugees in her writing. The family moved to America in the ‘70s and although born in Amman, Jordan, Hammad’s influences stretch across the transnational divide, using hip-hop and other cultural influences to tell her personal story of belonging, dispossession, and the gendered complexities inherent in hybridity. The star of Salt of this Sea, Hammad’s role is in many ways autobiographical as her character, Soraya, who leaves America (by way of Brooklyn) to reclaim her Palestinian roots. Ian Buckwalter’s review of the film captures the complexity of Soraya’s character: “[…] in a film that highlights the physical barriers – walls, roadblocks, armed guards – that keep Palestinians where the Israelis want them, the film’s biggest barrier is the one Jacir erects between Soraya and the viewer. She’s easy to support in theory, but difficult to like in practice. Except in those too-rare moments when she drops the polemic and Jacir allows the story to carry the politics instead of the other way around.” We are made to understand the turmoil she feels, and yet, the use of Hammad’s powerful words – as poet and lyricist – are missing. Hammad is a very gifted poet, but none of this is captured in the film. Her poetry performances have been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and her 2010 TED Talk/performance, “Poems of War, Peace, Women, Power,” is a powerful testament to her gift with words: her ability to speak to a lived experience as the daughter of Palestinian refugees.

In the poetry collection, Born Palestinian, Born Black, Hammad reminds us: “now that our soil has become co-conspirator/eating up our dreams and dusty tears/bearing the fruit of our horrors/in orange navels/rooting us yet stronger/firmer to our ancestors’ bones/we ask/when did stones/become the comrades of sunken boys/who utilize rubber bullets and empty shells/as toys/?” (“Children of Stone” 43). As Hammad’s poetics assert, children in war, of war, reveal the brutality of life in Palestine, performing how innocence does not last for long.  

Salt of this Sea is a fascinating drama, but the documentary film, 5 Broken Cameras (2011), directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi takes the viewer right inside the conflict. Here, the Palestinian conflict is made real as our focal “character,” Burnat, provides a personal journey – each dramatic beat punctuated by the use of five different cameras utilized over the course of the film (each camera meets, as it were, a violent end). Told from a father’s perspective, which commences with the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel, co-director Burnat is determined to capture historical moments as the tide turns from a more positive light to what, eventually, becomes a darker world. The positive light is embodied in Phil, a protestor, whose optimism is felt through most of the film. As a Palestinian, Phil has a positive outlook that things will turn out right in the end. Sadly, Phil is killed by a tear gas canister that hits him in the chest (one of the film’s darker moments). 5 Broken Cameras is a moving portrait of displacement, memory, community, and familial connection. In an interview with Cineaste, Burnat (with Davidi) speaks about the genesis of the project and why it was important to document the conflict – or more accurately, the truth of the conflict: “You have to talk about the reality of our lives,” Burnat says. “When I had my accident, which is shown in the film, I got treatment at an Israeli hospital. If I had gone to a Palestinian hospital, I might have died. I know that some people in Palestine don't want to hear this. They don't like to acknowledge this reality” (26). Moreover, “Without the camera nobody would know. Sometimes something happens, like when Ashraf was shot. There was a lot of controversy after the footage was shown in the news media. Many things like this happen every day, but there are no cameras around. In that case, the camera was there. The camera is a powerful witness” (27). Indeed, each camera represents a different time period and a stage in his son’s life, alongside documenting the ongoing protests in Bil’in. This framing technique has spawned dynamic, critical interpretation. Jennifer Dworkin, for example, considers 5 Broken Cameras to be an important film, both for what it shows, and for what it does not show. There is, in documentary filmmaking, always the question of subjectivity versus objectivity. Even if a film claims to be “truthful,” it still derives from the point of view (the lived experience) of the filmmaker. Jennifer Dworkin, writing for Film Comment, argues that “5 Broken Cameras stakes an unusual claim to authenticity, announcing itself as ‘outsider’ art - the homemade work of an accidental filmmaker … While the focus on Gibreel provides some of the film's strongest moments, it also yields some that feel contrived … Would a toddler really take an olive branch and give it to a fully armed soldier? The film at times fails to trust itself” (70). 

Whether the film “fails to trust itself” or not is irrelevant – we trust Burnat, we trust little Gibreel, and yes, we trust the martyred Phil. Why? Because so often the voices of the marginalized – let alone the power to control their own images and narratives – are lost to a Western perspective. Young warns us not to take this course as it tends to lead nowhere at all. “The assumption that the Western way of doing things, or thinking about things, is always the best way is the legacy of the West’s own economic military power and dominance, of which colonialism formed a part” (7). It is through art – through film, music, dance, multimedia, and other forms that the postcolonial can find a place to grow in reach, to not only elucidate the past, but shape the future. Both films – Salt of this Sea and 5 Broken Cameras – speak to identity and an often obscured (or silenced) perspective. 

A Multiverse of Identities

Given this reflection’s emphasis on identity, it is important to note that 5 Broken Cameras embodies several identities of its own. Each camera represents a distinctive period of time of Emad’s youngest son’s life, but as it unfolds, the building turmoil is palpable. By the film’s end, it is clear that a transition has occurred, not simply or solely in the chronological sense, but an accumulated emotional weight. The toll this takes on Emad and his family gives real gravity to the filmmaker’s situation – he is risking his life every day to capture Palestinian life as it happens. It is difficult to be both an observer (behind the camera or not) and a participant. Indeed, at a certain point, Emad, due to his own injury, becomes a part of the visual narrative he, himself, is constructing. 

Salt of this Sea, like 5 Broken Cameras, challenges the audience to see the Palestinians differently (or to see them for the first time), whether they understand the conflict or not: art provides a clearer lens by translating – and transmitting – lived experiences across cinematic space (and time). The two films (one fictionalized; the other, a visual journal of sorts), manage to take in the effects (or affect) of the loss of land, and the loss of identity. As the first Palestinian film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2013, 5 Broken Cameras did garner the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Award. Now that we’re on the cusp of the film’s 10th anniversary, it might be a good idea to visit (or revisit) this work of activism, a work alive with those “creative connections” important to a postcolonial discourse.