The first film unit by Palestinians came into existence at Sulafa Jadallah’s home in Amman, Jordan, in 1968. Filmmaker Khadijeh Habashneh, who joined the film unit in 1974 and played a crucial role in establishing and maintaining its archive, described Sulafa as ‘the first Knight and the first Arab woman cinematographer’. In 1982, upon Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, the film unit’s office in Beirut was bombarded and its archive looted and left in partial ruin.

The protracted loss of the film unit’s archive – as well as its possible retrievals and recent reworkings – is the launch point for this seminar, in which we will watch excerpts from Palestinian cinema and discuss the labour of women, feminist memory work and loss as a generative concept.

There will be vegan soup and drinks.