Artium looks at Palestine through film and art

The museum offers a special program focused on Palestinian history

While the war continues, Artium casts its artistic gaze on Palestine. It does so through cinema and art, with the intention, throughout this week, of sharing with citizens a special program focused on Palestinian history. He will do so with a selection of films from the Tokyo Reels project and with the painting A Wider Kind of Love (2021), by the British-Palestinian artist Rosalind Nashashibi.
In the first case, Room Z of the museum hosts the screening of a selection of films belonging to the archive known as Tokyo Reels. This collection contains a series of films about the conflict between Israel and Palestine in the 70s and 80s produced by authors from different backgrounds. Through documentary and fiction, the films reflect that historical moment and the struggles that were unleashed.
The films, some virtually unknown, had been preserved for decades by a Palestine solidarity group in Japan (hence the name of the archive). In 2019, the film research and production collective Subversive Film, based in Ramallah and elsewhere, received this legacy. The selection presented includes the films The Path to Tragedy (Don Catchlove, 1970), Blown By The Wind (Jack Madvo, 1971) and Cowboy (Sami Al-Salamoni, 1973).
Complementary exhibition
In this same space, between the months of September and November 2021, Artium programmed two pieces from the filmography of Rosalind Nashashibi (Croydon, United Kingdom, 1973): Vivian's Garden and Part One: Where There Is a Joyous Mood, There a Comrade Will Appear to Share a Glass of Wine. The screening of these two films was accompanied by several paintings made in residence by the artist, including A Wider Kind of Love.
Nashashibi here represents an open watermelon with the colors red, black, green and white. This was precisely the symbol of identity that the Palestinian people assumed after the Six-Day War in 1967, at which time displaying the Palestinian flag in Gaza, controlled by Israel, was considered a crime. Palestinians began using watermelon slices instead as a form of protest. Recently acquired by the museum, the painting has been reinstalled at the entrance to Room Z, the same location it had three years ago.

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