\n<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cRevolutionaries Never Die\u201d was the winner of the top award at this year\u2019s Cairo Film Connection, the industry program of the Cairo Film Festival. Variety<\/em> interviewed the Palestinian director Mohanad Yaqubi, who won the best project in post-production prize.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cRevolutionaries Never Die,\u201d which is produced by Yaqubi\u2019s company Idioms Film, is his third archive-based film. It explores the work of Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab during her first decade of filmmaking, from 1973 to 1983.<\/p>\n \n\tYakubi grew up in Kuwait, Amman, Egypt, Libya, Gaza and the West Bank, and then studied a master\u2019s degree in film at London\u2019s Goldsmiths College, before returning to the West Bank, and eight years ago he settled in Ghent, Belgium, where he is a resident researcher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK).<\/p>\n \n\tFor this project he is working with researcher Mathilde Rouxel, who was Saab\u2019s assistant during the last decade of her life.<\/p>\n \n\tHow did this project come about? \n\tDo you think films can change political realities? \n\tDid you ever meet Jocelyne Saab? \n\tWhy do you think her films from this period are interesting? \n\tAre there any parallels with what she filmed in this period and today\u2019s situation? \n\tWho is your film for? \n\tWhy has it been important to show your project in the Cairo Film Connection? \u201cRevolutionaries Never Die\u201d was the winner of the top award at this year\u2019s Cairo Film Connection, the industry program of the Cairo Film Festival. Variety interviewed the Palestinian director Mohanad Yaqubi, who won the best project in post-production prize. \u201cRevolutionaries Never Die,\u201d which is produced by Yaqubi\u2019s company Idioms Film, is his third archive-based film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[11389,19688,19218,19686,17063,19687],"class_list":{"0":"post-34723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-filmmaker","9":"tag-jocelyne","10":"tag-lebanese","11":"tag-mohanad","12":"tag-saab","13":"tag-yaqubi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/strong>I obtained access to 115 reels directed by Jocelyne Saab between 1973 and 1983. The decisive turning point was when my family\u2019s house was bombed in Gaza \u2013 in April 2024. There is a scene in Jocelyne Saab\u2019s 1982 film \u201cBeirut My City,\u201d where she is standing in front of her bombed house and talking about the circumstances and her feelings and the meaning of that house for her. I completely identified with her, even though I never had the chance to be in front of my own destroyed house. That\u2019s the moment where everything she made between 1973 and 1983 suddenly made sense for me \u2013 like, this is the price you pay as a politically engaged filmmaker trying to support the Palestinian struggle. It becomes magical once you place Jocelyne\u2019s images on the timeline and her voice starts to lead us. It\u2019s as if she\u2019s making the film and I\u2019m the instrument making this happen.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>I\u2019ve actually stopped believing in the power of the image and filmmaking, as I have watched the genocide unfold, seeing the entire destruction \u2013 live, 24 hours a day. It\u2019s not about the amount of images or telling people what\u2019s going on. It\u2019s ultimately a question of geopolitical power.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>No. We had an exchange by email. She sent me one email that I didn\u2019t reply to, and she passed away five weeks later, in 2019.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>She\u2019s not only looking at the Palestinian question. Her films offer the hope for change. They are about the Arab left. She made films in Western Sahara, Egypt, Iran and also in Lebanon. In 1973 her films were about romantically politicized revolutionaries. But her outlook began to change because of the civil war in Lebanon and her sense of disbelief, as she saw how the country she believed in and loved was destroyed.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>One big characteristic of the Arab mentality is that things are repeated all the time. What I\u2019m trying to do is to step back and show that the aggression never stops and try to identify some of the underlying problems. This is really why I\u2019m fascinated by archives because if we look at other films made in Gaza in the 1970s, it looks like nothing has changed. But in the 1960s and 1970s there were political ideas, related to left-wing parties, and trying to make a coherent understanding of the situation. Now it\u2019s just blunt violence.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>I\u2019m interested, above all, in speaking with Palestinians. People who don\u2019t have sovereignty, don\u2019t have archives and don\u2019t have production of a knowledge system. There is no organized education system. Films become a way to create this kind of dialogue. Right now, the main priority isn\u2019t about creating images. It\u2019s about creating a genuine dialogue.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>I think it\u2019s the first market where I am showing this film. I wanted to have an Arab base for this and Cairo was the best option. I\u2019ve been visiting Cairo over the last two years because my parents are living there, since they left Gaza. There are still people to discuss the project with and present the film in a wider perspective, for an Arab audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"