Palestine 1936: A story for today

Daniel Nelson

Despite being a story of events in Palestine 89 years ago, the release of Palestine 36 could hardly be more topical. To Palestinians, of course, every one of the subsequent years has been topical, historic and disturbing.

The title has particular significance because — long forgotten by almost everyone in the West — 1936 was the beginning of a three-year Arab uprising, the Great Revolt.

Also largely forgotten, and will fascinate UK audiences, is that the rebellion was against the British, not the Jews, though it was Jewish newcomers who were being favoured by the British administrators in, for example, employment and land.

Even more sadly, as Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir has said, “A lot of people don’t even know, surprisingly, that the British were even in Palestine.”

But as she added, “This is for Palestinians. It’s our story that hasn’t been told.”

She tells the tale with verve and drama: the film is a big-scale, action movie that captures the sweep of history, starting with snippets of the lives of a variety of  characters from all sides of the confrontation — farmers, children, journalists, soldiers, businessmen, labourers, bureaucrats — and gradually weaves them into a single history-making whole, or rather, leads them to a single explosive, deadly, cruel, heroic, tragic flashpoint.

It’s almost too carefully crafted, as though there’s a checklist of types of people and points of view to be made. But nearly everyone is more than a stereotype and Jacir manages to keep control of the varied sub-plots and corral them together in order to paint a vivid picture of history on the turn.

Every character in the film has an opinion about Palestine and its future, the film itself is anti-colonial and pro-Palestinian and is Palestine’s official submission for the Academy Awards. It’s a triumph that it was made at all: Jacir insisted it was filmed in Palestine and production was halted and re-started four times as a result of the 7 October attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliation.

This is not a documentary: it’s a story set in a historical moment, but it’s highly relevant today. “Everything that is going on now was set up back then in 1936; everything that the Israeli army does, in fact, is all taken from that moment,” says Jacir.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND, by the filmmakers

The farmer-led revolt against British colonialism in 1936 marked the beginning of the largest and longest uprising against Britain’s 30-year rule. Palestinians from all classes were mobilised, and nationalistic sentiment spread in the Arabic press, schools, social and literary circles.

The British, taken aback by the extent and intensity of the revolt, retaliated by placing Palestine under martial law, deploying over 20,000 troops to Palestine, and still failed to control a population of less than one million people. Ships arrived loaded with tanks and machineguns. The Royal Air Force began strafing the countryside. Thousands of Palestinians were imprisoned, beaten, and the leadership exiled.

The revolt lasted for three years and was arguably the largest and longest anti-colonial uprising in the British Empire.

Director’s Statement

Gazan poet Ne’ma Hasan said,“When the roads are blocked, draw a new map.” This has become our way of life, one we learned from our parents and grandparents. It feeds into everything we do; going to work, going to a doctor’s appointment, visiting family, making a film...

It has been a long-time dream to tell the story of the 1936-39 revolt, and telling it through the different points of views of an ensemble of characters came naturally. The 1936 uprising marks the most pivotal moment of our history and I was interested in telling the story in an intimate, raw and personal way. The script’s structure follows the various characters’ journeys, weaving in and out like embroidery. Every one of them is somehow connected to another. Their lives intersect, sometimes just barely. Each one is confronted with a moment that changes them, brings them to a place they did not expect and it is there they make a choice of how to go forward.

Palestine 36 is a period film, but I never conceived it as something of the past. It has always been current, relevant and alive. Sometimes critical, never nostalgic, always searching. Set in a time I never lived, Palestine 36 is deeply personal. We do not choose the circumstances of our lives, we do not choose war or the million painful moments we learn to survive. Sometimes we choose how we react to them.

The idea of the film came to me in images. Simple at first – a hand-stitched lace curtain, a burnt black field, a dock worker staring at the waves, an old radio bringing unwanted news. A country finally erupts into open rebellion. Images became stories.

My work is deeply entrenched in the world I live in. For Palestine 36, I disappeared into a river of research for the film. Reading every book, every document, every account I could get my hands on. Collecting images, photographs, film reels, and countless impressions. I could not stop thinking about the massacre at Al Bassa village, just 25 kilometres from my home today. My home in this land that gives to us and takes from us. A landscape which persists and survives and has room for all who love it.

Of course the land would become a major character in the script’s embroidery. To make a film set at the height of the revolution means to capture a feeling, the same way that poetry does. A feeling that at that specific moment, in that small window, everything feels possible. Full of fear and full of hope and ambition. The most pivotal moment in our history. A circle was the strongest image; Palestine 36 was always a cyclical story. Palestine 36 is a celebration of a defiant rebellion facing insurmountable military opposition: a dramatic portrayal of its failings and its resilience. Colonialism and imperialism, our own betrayals and affairs, we witness the disintegration of a country.

In 1936, we lost a partof ourselves. I wonder did we lose? Did Empire win? This film is about all those things. It is a story of a village, a community of people full of dreams and desires. Ordinary people who find themselves in an extraordinary time. It is a nod to the persistence of the human spirit, the desire of a people to be free.

It is our story. Making this film is the most difficult thing I have ever done. When the genocide began, everything fell apart. Our people were being annihilated and we found ourselves trying to make a film about a dark moment in our history before we knew we’d be going through one of the darkest moments we have ever lived. We plunged into new depths, it felt like insanity. Sometimes we were broken. I lost count of the number of times production started and stopped. We kept going. The cast and crew came together to insist to make something, to pour all our pain into an act of love, to say to each other we will not be erased. The script, the story, the location, everything changed. One thing grew stronger. This film became an offering. - Annemarie Jacir