By Nicholas Davies

There are no cinemas in Gaza.

Take a minute to absorb that and we’ll proceed.

Khalil El-Muyazen’s ‘Gaza 36mm’ is a quiet, powerful documentary that does a good deal more than merely outline the history of film exhibition in Gaza. Yes, it provides an overview of the general trajectory of post-WWII cinema history in Gaza – the popularity of the movies immediately after the war; the rich competition among cinemas and importation of films from Egypt, Lebanon, Europe and Hollywood in the 60s; the Islamist opposition to cinemas as dens of prostitution and pornography in the 70s and the subsequent destruction of all Gazan cinemas.

In examining this rise and fall of the movies, it points as well to problems and issues in the wider Gazan and Palestinian culture. In opposing and shutting down popular culture, did the Islamist movement in Palestine inadvertantly support the occupation by focusing energies inward an against its own people? The movement went to extremes – as one of the film’s subject points out, cinemas were burned down to ensure that brief minutes of objectionable material would not be seen. How did this happen? Why was it allowed?

Further, it muses on some even further-reaching questions: What was taken away with the removal of cinema? What are we missing when we don’t have art? Something of an answer comes in the form of fascinating twin artists (they are also collaborators on this film) Mohamed and Ahmed Abu Nasser – better known as Tarzan and Arab. Filmmakers who have never been to the cinema; artists who have never been to a gallery – the pair speak of their passion for the movies, about the sorrow they feel at wandering past Gaza’s destroyed cinema houses, and explain their intense desire to have that magical – yet, for so much of the world’s population, everyday – experience of sitting in the dark with friends and strangers watching something that has the power to change lives. (For more about Tarzan and Arab and their clever work, go here and here).

Despite its complexity, with a runtime of under an hour, ‘Gaza 36mm’ is pleasantly short, sweet and to the point. It’s also beautiful to look at – a quick-tempo barrage of images that saturate the viewer in the mechanics, paraphernelia and multiple aesthetics of film and filmmaking. Part lyrical essay film and part social history doc, the film elegantly mourns yet something else that has been taken away from the people of Palestine.

It is fitting that the film’s final sequence features the twins sitting in the dark watching some of the earliest film footage ever produced – the Lumière brothers’ ‘Workers Leaving the Lumiére Factory’ – an excellent image to inspire a new start for cinema in Gaza.

Trailer