Filmstelle

I recently attended a screening of R21 aka Restoring Solidarity by Mohanad Yaqubi, a Palestinian director specialized in archiving material. Released in 2022, it’s a collection of footage about the Palestinian struggle from 1964 to 1982, with 20 movies produced in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Japan. Yes, Japan, where the 20 film reels, originally under the possession of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) office in Tokyo, were stored by locals after the dismantlement of the PLO office in 1996. These reels were translated to Japanese and distributed among solidarity networks. Some of the reels are more informative, like the ones illustrating the functioning of the PLO office, some feel more like propaganda from Japanese activists expressing their conviction for anti-imperialism, and some are more emotional narrations, like a short movie on children playing war.

R21 is a very simple film. I’m not sure if it’s even too ambitious to call it a film. It’s essentially a collage of footage, with little to no editing (if only you would call that the selection of material and cutting to appropriate length). Unlike other documentaries, there is no voice-over, no narration, the only contextualization happens in the few shots showing the director picking up the film reels and the digitalization process. The director himself said that his goal was to act more as an art curator rather than a film creator, that “The film has a narrative, but that’s not my intention as a filmmaker. I’m trying to expand ways of using archives and producing narratives”. But then what is the point of making the movie? What does he seek in putting the footages together, without an apparent shaping of narrative from his side? We had an interesting discussion after the movie about this so here is my attempt at writing them down.

First of all, obviously, the material speaks for itself. Of course there is an art in showing opposing perspectives and letting the viewer judge for itself, but here there is no need to explicitly condone or condemn the material. Yaqubi lets the original filmmakers voice shine through without making it about his intentions. After all, selection of information is in and out of itself political. By making a decision on what to show and what not to show, and in what order, the director already holds the power of the narrative and decides how to impact the viewer’s (emotional) response. What is addressed with this film is not what the director does with the material, but is the mere fact of him possessing the material, which already represents a powerful instrument. The tragedy in countries that undergo political instabilities like occupation or corruption is the destruction of history. Beyond diverging interpretation of events, the physical documentation of those become impossible, with news being manipulated, documents being destroyed, and opposers being silenced. Theregore grassroots efforts in searching, collecting and distributing historical documents are crucial in historization. I am by no means an expert in the shaping of collective memory, but I feel that as the cinematic experience is the closest it gets to emulating reality, with sound and images reaching the viewer for an extended period of time, with an explicit narrative, film is one of the most effective cultural instruments to immerse the viewer into the spirit of the international solidarity movements from the past, in essence to “restore solidarity”.

In the end, the story of R21 could have happened anywhere, anytime. The movie does not intent to focus on the Japanese activist movement in itself. Sure, there is an undeniable sense of surprise hearing about Japanese sympathy for Palestine, as it’s pretty uncommon to hear about its involvement in the Palestine-Israel wars. There is also little to no context given about the historical background of Japanese anti-imperialism or Japan’s attitude towards its own settler projects in its Imperial times, because that’s simply not the film’s subject. The main intent is not to make an educational movie about Japan’s imperialist resistance but to highlight the possibility and necessity of international solidarity, with an example of one country. If you dig deep enough, it should be possible to make a similar work from other countries as well. But regardless of where the viewer comes from, the movie touches upon a sense of relatability that transcends continents and times.

60 years after the footage in the movie, Israel’s settler colonialism still prevails and we are now witnessing a genocide. In our current times where access to information is less regulated by the media and people are documenting their direct point of view over the Internet, what will be the legacy left after 60 years from now on? Who will decide its narrative and how can one take control of it? R21 is a proof of instrumentalizing archiving and shows preservation can fuel radical transcontinental solidarity.