Shooting under extraordinary conditions, the director, who worked with Godard on his "Ici et Ailleurs" ("Here and Elsewhere") - this film was shot on the same 16mm camera - and founded the PLO's film division, covers conditions in Lebanon's refugee camps, the effects of Israeli bombardments, and the lives of guerrillas in training camps. "They Do Not Exist" is a stylistically unique work which explodes at the intersection between the political and the aesthetic.

A rare film by the legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the founders of the Palestine Film Unit, the first filmic arm of the Palestinian revolution. Shot by a French news team, the footage was edited by Mustafa in Lebanon to produce one of the earliest films on the occupied territory in Gaza. Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza employs experimental editing tech- niques to produce a cinematically and politically subversive film. The film won the prize as best film at the Damascus Film Festival in 1973 and was screened at multiple festivals. It was the only film produced by the Palestine Cinema Group, which in 1974 became the Palestine Cinema Institute.

Directed by Mustafa Abu Ali.

The first revolutionary film produced by the Palestine Film Unit. Filmed in Jordan, the film documents Palestinian protest against the Rogers Plan.

Following the operation against the Israeli sports delegation participating in the Munich Olympics in Germany in 1972, the Zionist entity launched retaliatory raids against the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon (specifically the village of Da'al in Syria and the Nabatieh camp in Lebanon) on September 8th, 1972. In reflecting the sheer barbarism of the Zionist aggression, legendary Palestinian filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali is compelled to reach for new filmic grammar to reflect on the brutality. This is a film haunted and haunting, with unfiltered images of death. Lifeless babies, features bloated. Children in hospital beds, limbs twisted, faces bruised. Agony. Skulls shattered. Hands crushed. Occasionally, lifeless eyes blink, a twitch of the hand brings something akin to hope – that life persists, life could persist.

In the early summer of 1976, right-wing militias representing a coalition of ultra-nationalist and counter-revolutionary forces laid siege to the refugee camp of Tall al-Zaatar (“Hill of Thyme”) in Beirut. After holding out for months without food, water, or medical supplies, and under heavy artillery and sniper fire, the camp fell to the militias on 12 August. What followed was one of the worst atrocities of the civil war, with over 2,500 civilians massacred and the camp razed to the ground. Produced after the massacre, but featuring footage shot before and during the siege, Tall al-Zaatar remembers the camp and its community, recounting the long months of siege and resistance, and recalling the horrors of the massacre through the testimony of survivors.

Palestine in the Eye chronicles the profound impact of Hani Jawharieh’s death for the PLO Film Unit. The film reflects on his life through interviews with family, colleagues, and his own cinematography, including the moment of his death while filming for the Unit in 1976. Although the film has later been attributed to Mustafa Abu Ali, the Unit’s method of work was to describe everyone as a collective of “workers,” and we see this in the film titles, which collectively list the names of all those who participated as a non-hierarchical collective. Through this reflection on Jawharieh, we are offered an understanding of the workings of the Palestine Film Unit and its international connections.

Here and Elsewhere takes its name from the contrasting footage it shows of the fedayeen and of a French family watching television at home. Originally shot by the Dziga Vertov Group as a film on Palestinian freedom fighters, Godard later reworked the material alongside Anne-Marie Miéville.

Reel from the Tel al Zaatar outtakes. The following was written on this reel: “artigliere – batteria – danza di fucili – Munir-funerale“. In this footage, we see women dancing with rifles, men playing bagpipes, Abu Saleh, Um Ali (Um il thawra, who lost 4 sons), Martyr’s Cemetery (on the outskirts of the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut) and a funeral procession with Mahmoud Darwish, Abu Saleh, Um Ali and many others. Courtesy of Emily Jacir, Monica Maurer and Johnny McAllister, AAMOD, Roma.

Revolutionary Palestinian film.