Director: Max Francos
"Nakba" is the Arabic word for "catastrophe", an expression that describes the most tragic event in the history of the Palestinian people, the dispossession of their land when Palestine was partitioned in 1948. Since the cave paintings in prehistoric caves, mankind has continually imprinted the walls with its history, leaving a visual legacy of its existence. The film was shot in a former Palestinian refugee camp, "Ein El Sultan", and a former Jordanian military base, both near the West Bank town of Jericho. Ein El Sultan was built to accommodate Palestinians dispossessed of their land and driven from their homes after the 1948 division of Palestine into two states: Israel and Palestine. After the "Six Day War" in 1967, when Israel annexed the West Bank, the camp's inhabitants had to flee once again to other refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria ..... The former Jordanian military base was taken over by the Israeli army and later used as a training camp to counter this new type of war: the "Intifada".
The walls of the camp and the military base are covered with drawings, paintings and graffiti telling a story of conquerors and conquered. The film sets out to decipher the iconography of the signs engraved and fossilised on the walls, scratching at them as the archaeologist does to reveal the buried memory. The drawings and graffiti of the camp and the military base are original, unmanipulated and inherent to the filming locations. The refugee camp was completely destroyed by the Israeli army, fearing that it would become a symbol of resistance for the Palestinian people. As a painter, I have given priority to the aesthetic character of the image over 'political discourse'. Music, poetry, painting and the folklore of the Palestinian people make up the colours of my 'palette'.