Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Safwat Nazzal: My article examines Maysoloun Hamoud’s Bar Bahar, as a contemporary Palestinian film that delivers profound meditations on the stagnation of cultural identity through an auto-critique of the intersectional oppression faced by Palestinian women.
FM: What research and/or methodologies do you incorporate in your article?
SN: I read sociological texts dealing with gender politics in Palestine. I worked to connect this research with concepts learned in a film analysis course. Applying an interdisciplinary approach allowed me to examine social and political elements of Hamoud’s works that were otherwise not explicitly apparent.
FM: Describe the original context for/when writing this article while an undergraduate student.
SN: “Off-Script: Toward a Revolutionary Arab Cinema” came from a personal skepticism I had toward the political potential of cinema. I have long romanticized Palestinian Third Cinema of the twentieth century as a crucial moment of identification for a dispersed Palestinian people, yet the illusion dwindled as I became aware of my own naivety in anchoring “Palestinianness.” I was introduced to Bar Bahar at the 2017 Arab-American Film Festival. It spoke to my own identity crisis as a Palestinian American and I immediately knew that it was a film I would need to study.
FM: How has your department and/or institution supported your work in film and media?
SN: As a Film Production student, I am fortunate enough to have stumbled into the Film Studies department. It has provided me a holistic, discursive education that could have horrifyingly remained technical. No doubt, I have been given the tools to play, yet it was through my own pursuits of film knowledge awakened by an incredible educator that I feel I have held myself accountable for my education.
FM: How has your faculty mentor fostered your advancement as a film scholar?
SN: I owe my existence as a film scholar to Dr. Kelli Fuery for opening my mind and forever changing the way I approach and interact with cinema. Her background in psychoanalysis has exposed a potential in film that I had irresponsibly overlooked. She has given the frame credibility, or at least given me the eyes to find credibility in the frame. Without her invaluable guidance and mentorship, I would have been a directionless filmmaker sinking in editing timelines and f-stops, blind to the wonders of cinema.
FM: How has the Film Matters editorial and publication process impacted the development/evolution of your article?
SN: I feel the inclusion of film stills was a strong note that gave my arguments more of a punch. It’s one thing to describe the gaze of a father looming over his outed daughter and an entirely other thing to see the gaze complement the text.
FM: What audience do you hope to reach with your Film Matters article and/or what impact do you hope it has on the field of film studies?
SN: I hope to reach Palestinian and Arab filmmakers and scholars. I hope it might create or participate in some sort of communication between diasporic voices. In that way, the article is not so different from Hamoud’s film, which is made by a Palestinian but funded by the state of Israel. Her film has been well received by some in the West Bank and abhorrently despised by others (as evident by the fatwa). Ironically, it’s this nuance in reception that seems to strike the very heart of what Hamoud is trying to say. I am sure there will be Palestinians that disagree with my position. I hope they do. If there is any hope for a Palestinian state, it will depend on such disagreements.
FM: What are your future plans?
SN: Life after graduation is a dark mystery. In the short-term, I will be working on a friend’s olive farm in Jordan; I’ll then to try to find something to do in Los Angeles. It’d be insulting to my family if I didn’t. In the long-term, I hope to produce a Syrian soap opera. My grandmother loves them but doesn’t take my film pursuits seriously. It’d be a great way to reach her.
Author Biography
Safwat Nazzal is an independent writer and director at Chapman University, who deals with madness and authority in his short-form narrative and documentary work. He has served as a lead programmer at Chapman’s Cross-Cultural Center and as of 2018 is a programming intern at the Arab American Film Festival.
