On Sunday afternoon the CD’s Kosovel Hall audiences had the pleasure of meeting Muayad Alayan, the humorous and incisive director and (together with brother Rami Musa)co-writer of Love, Theft and Other Entanglements, an unconventional Palestinian film. In discussion with moderator Jedrt Jež Furlan Muayadexplained that they were not aiming to make a comedy but a story replete with bizarre and “awkwardly funny” humour. The tragic dimensions of Palestinians have rendered their ludicrous existence so grotesque as to be laughable. To capture this elusive balance the Alayan brothers invested the all-too-familiar scenes with an oddly dreamlike quality. In making the film in black-and-white technique, the director sought to challenge the established media stereotypes about Israel and Palestine, and at the same time foreground the main protagonists and their distinctive characters. It was precisely by elaborately constructing the film characters that the director was able to evade the typical representations of ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ that have been diluting also Palestinian cinema. Instead, Mousa is a ne’er-do-well, as average as can be. “And he’s clumsy, above all,” is how the director sees him, but can identify him neither as a hero nor a villain, despite his many faults and misdemeanours.

The director went on to discuss Palestinian cinematic reality, in many ways hindered on account of the Israeli occupation, and explained that the shooting (taking place between Bethlehem and Jerusalem) also included carefully selected locations in Palestinian zones A, B and C. 

Written by Andraž Jež

Photo Iztok Dimc
{rss uri=http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/109749061448260716122/albumid/6217660935436882897?alt=rss&kind=photo&hl=sl&imgmax=d}