A Silent-Film Festival Gives a Breathtaking Perspective on Palestine

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Jay Weissberg, director of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy, used the phrase “When we talk of this as a place of destruction, we turn these people into the other” to introduce what became a deeply moving film experience for me this year. The film, Palestine: A Revised Narrative, is a newly created work assembled entirely from silent films taken in Palestine by the British army during World War I. Although the original footage is over a century old, the way it’s presented feels completely fresh.

Premiering at the Arab Film Festival in Berlin last year and shown at Pordenone last month, Palestine: A Revised Narrative is a unique film experience called a “cine-concert.” It combines edited silent newsreel footage of Palestine from Britain’s Imperial War Museum with a live, 30-minute musical performance by Beirut-based artist Cynthia Zaven. Zaven’s score blends original music with atmospheric soundscapes created with Lebanese sound designer Rana Eid. The soundscapes include distant recordings of speeches by figures like Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger, where the words fade into a low hum, as well as old audio recordings of Haifa discovered in Eid’s family archives.

I was more affected by this film than I anticipated. Palestine: A Revised Narrative feels like a beautiful, emotionally resonant travel film with a strong political message. The original footage documented the British army’s advance through Palestine after defeating the Ottoman Empire, which had governed the area for 500 years. However, the filmmaker, Zaven, skillfully re-edited the material to highlight the lives of the people within that historical context – the farmers, fishermen, and everyday citizens caught in the conflict. The result is powerfully moving, especially considering how much recent coverage we’ve seen of destruction in Gaza. It’s a vital reminder that even amidst chaos, there have always been ordinary people simply trying to live their lives in this region.

The footage doesn’t ignore the realities of war; we see scenes of destruction in Gaza and captured Turkish soldiers, even a band still holding their instruments. There’s also a moment showing the mayor of Jerusalem surrendering the city to a British sergeant, with a title card noting it was “the oldest capital in the world” being surrendered to a single soldier. However, the film primarily conveys a sense of a vibrant and lively land – filled with green fields, olive trees, busy beaches, and people going about their daily lives, often walking, dancing, and singing together.

Zaven described seeing the footage for the first time as incredibly overwhelming. While she was familiar with photos from that time and place, she’d never seen it documented on film. It was two months into the Gaza war when she first viewed it, and she was deeply affected. Both Zaven and Weissberg emphasize that the footage disproves the common, inaccurate claim that Palestine was empty before Israel was founded, and the false idea that “Palestine” didn’t exist as a place. The film immediately establishes this point by opening with a British map from the period clearly labeling the region as Palestine.

Despite being composed of pieces from the original British films, the work aims to move beyond the perspective of the colonizers. Zaven didn’t simply remove footage of victorious soldiers; she and Eid also used the musical score and Zaven’s live performance to create a sense of cohesion. During the performance, Zaven creates unique sounds by manipulating objects on her piano – scraping resin on strings, plucking wire for bass notes, and using screws to mimic bells. She notes that she only plays traditional melodies when the sea near Jaffa appears on screen, believing that “everything has changed in Palestine, except the sea.” The resulting soundscape creates a feeling of both sadness and resilience in the face of turmoil. Zaven realized that it was the live performance itself that truly unified all the elements. Her physical presence and movements onstage connected the film footage with the piano music, bridging the gap between the past and the present, and the fixed and moving images.

This project, though timely, grew out of a 2017 program Weissberg created for Pordenone, titled “The Effects of War.” That program featured numerous silent films depicting the devastation of World War I – the physical and emotional toll, and the disruption to society. Weissberg remembers focusing on themes like hunger and the impact of war on soldiers, and being particularly struck by footage of the 1917 bombing of Gaza during the Second Battle of Gaza. He recalls seeing fertile fields suddenly destroyed, including the Great Mosque, and the images stayed with him. Last year, he shared this footage with Rabih El-Khoury of the Arab Film Festival, who then commissioned Zaven to create a 30-minute film. Zaven compiled 77 silent newsreels filmed in Palestine during WWI. Since its premiere in Berlin, Palestine: A Revised Narrative has been shown at the Barbican in London, the Sahar Film Festival in Manchester, and will be featured at the Gabes Film Festival in Tunisia next May. While there are no current plans to bring the film to the U.S., Zaven hopes to do so in the future.

For the past ten years, Weissberg has been instrumental in supporting the Pordenone silent-film festival, and this presentation is just the latest example of his dedication. The 44-year-old festival is an important event, bringing together researchers, archivists, historians, musicians, filmmakers, film lovers, and the local community, and Weissberg works to ensure its continued relevance. This year, the film Palestine: A Revised Narrative was shown after a 77-minute documentary from 1917, The German Retreat and the Battle of Arras, which documented a British army offensive in France during World War I. The festival featured many images of war, and also included a beautifully restored version of Charlie Chaplin’s 1918 film Shoulder Arms – a classic and likely the first wartime satire, marking a turning point in Chaplin’s development as a politically aware artist.

Though sometimes seen as old-fashioned, silent films are actually vibrant and evolving. New films are constantly being found, and existing ones are beautifully restored and shown with live music performed by international artists. Festivals also feature discussions about how we interpret these films. However, there’s a risk of getting stuck in the past. As festival director Weissberg explains, they’re always working to show that the festival isn’t just about longing for bygone days, especially considering Italy’s own struggle with a false romanticism for its past.

To move beyond simply longing for the past, it’s important to look at these old films in a new light. Zaven understood that much of the footage was originally created as British military propaganda – newsreels meant to show people back home how successful they were in Palestine and against the Turks. But by carefully editing the material, she’s been able to reveal something genuinely beautiful, moving, and surprisingly hopeful. What struck her most was seeing the diverse population – Christians in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Muslims at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Jews at the Western Wall – living together. She found it incredibly powerful that these people shared so much in common, celebrating together and even singing similar songs, demonstrating that peaceful coexistence wasn’t something to be ashamed of.

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2025-10-23 22:55