Reflective Essay on a Palestinian Women Documentary Film

Aim and Accomplishment

Renov (1993) states that there are four fundamental purposes of a documentary: "1) to record, reveal, or preserve; 2) to persuade or promote; 3) to analyze or interrogate; and 4) to express" (p. 21). In my documentary, Palestine, Her Story, my aim was to observe — that is, to record, reveal, and preserve — the stories of the Palestinian women who served as the subjects of my film. The film is therefore an observational documentary.

Looking back on my original proposal, I can say that I have completed at least a portion of my original project. The focus of my 20-minute film is on three Palestinian women who live successful lives in London. Each woman is of a different generation and thus each one has a different experience to share, a different story to tell. Yet they also share one thing in common: Palestine. The film focuses on this connection and shows how, while all three women have been successful and now live in London, their consciousness burns with devotion towards Palestine. In terms of my original proposal, End of Diaspora, this 20-minute documentary serves as one section of the larger story I envisioned. In terms of Renov's (1993) theory of what a documentary should do, Palestine, Her Story achieves the first purpose — though I still envision accomplishing the other three purposes within the remainder of the larger project.

My film opens with Laila al-Shawa, an artist born in Gaza-Palestine in 1940. Laila describes her background, her travels, and her profession briefly. She is from the oldest generation of women featured in the documentary and speaks English well, though with a strong accent. The film then introduces the next generation — Sanaa Al Aloul, a woman from Nablus who is now editor-in-chief of Al Quds newspaper. Sanaa speaks only Arabic. The third character is of the youngest generation: Judie Kalla, a chef and author of the book Palestine on a Plate (banned in Israel). Judie speaks with an English accent. She has never visited Palestine but holds a deep, personal love for the place, the people, and the culture because of her family ties and the fact that members of her family are still there. She recreates the image and experience of being in Palestine through her cooking as well as through her writing.

At the beginning of the project my aim was to focus on journalists, using different genres of documentary filmmaking to tell their stories. I wanted to focus on individuals who left their homeland to become the successful journalists they are today despite their challenging journeys. However, after researching my subject more thoroughly, I came across Laila Shawa — the artist featured in the current film. Her story inspired me to shift my focus away from journalists and to broaden it to include the success stories of all sorts of individuals connected to Palestine, showing how each character is united to Palestine in her own way. During my meetings with Laila, I realised that there is an underrepresentation of women in Palestinian narratives. I began narrowing my focus to include specifically Palestinian women living and working successfully in London. I felt that this kind of focus would not only help to humanize the face of Palestine but also make the subject more immediate for the viewer. Instead of seeing grainy images of conflict in Gaza, I could show real women of Palestine living among us, sharing their experiences, feelings, and stories — demonstrating to the viewer that this issue is not confined to a narrow strip of land in the Middle East but is rather a conflict that touches many lives across many different backgrounds.

For that reason, the documentary focuses on (a) a quirky artist in her seventies, (b) a serious journalist in her fifties, and (c) a cook in her forties. They are all very different from one another yet all share one thing in common — a love for their homeland. As my initial aim was to highlight the successes that Palestinians have achieved far away from home, I have accomplished that task; by allowing my interviewees to tell their stories in their own words, I have enabled these Palestinian women to use their voices and draw attention to the Palestinian cause.

Originally, I had in mind making a contemporary, hybrid documentary, with the narrative unfolding through the dual use of an observational style of filmmaking and a performative element to allow for a poetic effect. I wanted to include concise discussions with my subjects on their views about the occupation and its effects on Palestinians, using both interviews and a studied observation of their present lives. However, as the focus shifted, I discovered an alternative way to tell this story — and, in fact, a different sort of story to tell altogether. I was still able to include interlude sequences of archival material, drawn both from the characters' collections of childhood memories and experiences and from archives of Palestine and the Nakba. The nostalgia felt by each character was revealed through these impressionistic sequences, as if reflecting the characters' internal reminiscences. I was glad to be able to achieve this aim.

Weaknesses, Strengths, and Methods

Lighting, style, and atmosphere are areas where I had hoped for greater consistency. I wanted the interviews to be shot in the same style of lighting and with a similar kind of atmosphere, but I failed to achieve this effect because of limited time and restrictions on locations. I also wanted to obtain better-quality archival footage of Palestine and London during the Nakba — including footage of refugees fleeing the country so that the viewer could understand the history more viscerally — but I only managed to use a small amount of footage due to copyright restrictions and the general difficulty of finding such material. Poor lighting in Layla's home marred that section of the film, again primarily because of limited setup time and spatial restrictions. I had to complete all the setup alone.

It was also very difficult to fit all the material I wanted into 20 minutes. I had to cut a great deal, which meant choosing the strongest individual lines rather than what best served the overall story. A lot of interesting material was left on the cutting room floor, and I feel that the stories of these three women could genuinely be developed into a feature-length film, because there is simply so much to tell.

I also wanted to rely less on interview footage and use more footage of the subjects' daily personal lives — something this draft lacked. What I aim to do with the film going forward is to incorporate more of these "daily life" shots.

The overall narrative is the documentary's strongest point: it is a good story to tell, and the documentary is structured smoothly and evenly so that each of the three characters has equal and ample time to tell her story. The film worked without narration, which is what I hoped to achieve — I envisioned the characters telling their stories entirely in their own words.

The use of archival material from Layla's childhood as well as home cutaways made the visual experience of the film rich and intimate. I wanted the film to be personal rather than overtly political, and I was able to achieve that effect by choosing the right questions and getting to know the subjects well. I built a good relationship with my subjects beforehand and was able to guide the interviews in such a way that the personal stories came naturally to the fore.

Judie's home provided perfect lighting and space, and I felt it was the ideal location for her interview. The environment also reflected both the youngest generation and Judie's character well. I would have loved to have achieved a similarly styled interview setting for all three subjects.

I had in mind a series of interviews similar to what one might find in a prestige television documentary series — very clean vignettes with minimal props, smooth tracking shots entering the characters' lives, followed by cutaways to old archives to reinforce the details of the story visually. The Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country served as a key reference point for this approach.

I feel that I was able to achieve this goal at least somewhat satisfactorily. I achieved a kind of balance between the beautiful and the factual, which is really what I wanted — even if lighting issues were ultimately frustrating. At the same time, I think I did greater justice to my characters by placing each one in her own environment, reflecting who she is. This actually turned out to be a strength the more I reflected on it. Rather than a uniform interview style throughout, each individual essentially brought her own environment to the film. The clutter and grainy, yellowish close-up angles of Layla's scenes reflect her whole life experience, and also the fact that she did not want anything moved: "You're making a film about my personal space and that's how it really is, so keep it as it is" — a sentiment I found both beautiful and touching. In my feature-length version, I would like to include more moments like this. With Sanaa Al Aloul, I used plain medium shots in her office at her desk, with the newspaper, a cup of coffee, and the neon light — all of which I felt perfectly reflected how she lives. Then I moved to Judie Kalla's Chelsea home, with her dogs, her food-filled kitchen, and her colourfully lit space, which felt entirely true to who Judie is. I was very happy, in the end, to have such diverse spaces to present within a single film.

Feedback I received from those who viewed the final project was positive. Viewers felt that the stories told by the three subjects were particularly effective at producing sympathy for the Palestinian plight. The style was considered appropriate, and the editing was described as even and flowing. I did not receive any negative feedback, which made me realize that the small faults I had noticed were largely imperceptible to others.

References

Bernard, S. C. (2010). Documentary storytelling: Making stronger and more dramatic nonfiction films (3rd ed.). Taylor & Francis.

Burns, K. (2011). Prohibition. PBS.

De Jong, W., Knudsen, E., & Rothwell, J. (2013). Creative documentary (2nd ed.). Taylor & Francis.

Fricke, R. (1992). Baraka. Samuel Goldwyn Company.

Renov, M. (1993). Toward a poetics of documentary. In M. Renov (Ed.), Theorizing documentary (pp. 12–36). Routledge.