18:00: Introduction and screening: Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory

19:00 Conversation between filmmaker Mohanad Yaqubi via Zoom from Gaza and Toufoul Abou-Hodeib, associate professor of history at the University of Oslo. Moderated by artist Helle Siljeholm.

The program is organised by artist, filmmaker and assistant programmer at Kunstnernes Hus Cinema, Ayman Alazraq.

Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory is a meditation on the Palestinian people's struggle to produce an image and self-representation on their own terms in the 1960s and 1970s through the establishment of the Palestine Film Unit (PFU). Beginning in the late 60s a collective of young Palestinian filmmakers, foremost among them Mustafa Abu Ali, filmed the violent oppression of Palestinians, their resistance and difficulties related to being a stateless people. Among the documented events are the Israeli bombings of Palestinian refugee camps and the Jordanian and Lebanese civil wars. Becoming pivotal elements in the emerging alternative Arab cinema movement and the anti-colonial underground movement Third Cinema, the filmmakers in the PFU were exceptional in the way they filmed the Palestinian revolution from day to day as it was unfolding and using film as a tool for resistance among the Palestinian people.

Unearthing PFU films stored in archives spread across the world after an extensive research, director Yaqubi’ compilation film resurrects an explosive material and, to many, a forgotten memory of resistance. The selected clips in Off Frame are tied together through their straddle of borders between fiction and propaganda, dream and reality. The film reanimates what is within the frame, but also weaves a critical reflection by looking for what is outside it, or what is off frame.

Mohanad Yaqubi, born in 1981 in Kuwait, is a filmmaker and producer and teaches Film Studies at the International Art Academy in Palestine. He is one of the founders of the Ramallah-based production outfit Idioms Film and the research and curatorial collective Subversive Film, which focuses on militant film practices. He has directed and produced several short films, both fiction and documentary, which have been shown in international festivals.

Toufoul Abou-Hodeib is associate professor of history at the University of Oslo. She is interested in the cultural history of the Middle East, with a specific focus on Lebanon and Palestine.

Ayman Alazraq, born in 1979 in Jerusalem, is an artist and filmmaker and work as program assistance at Kunstnernes Hus Cinema, Oslo. He is one of the founders of the Ramallah-based production outfit Idioms Film. He has produced several art works and short films that have been exhibited internationally.

Helle Siljeholm is an artist based in Oslo. Siljeholm has worked with various art projects in the Middle East since 2008. Together with choreographer Sara Christophersen, she received the Hans Christian Osterø Memorial Award (2015) based on their distinctive work for dance in Palestine, a work developed in partnership with Sareeyyet Ramallah - First Ramallah Group.