The logo of the post-migrant theatre Ballhaus Naunynstraße: a drawing of a dog’s head in profile, showing its teeth with its tongue hanging out. Next to the dog’s open mouth is a red star.

Ballhaus Naunynstraße

Invisibility Revised
AFTER THE LAST SKY Denken Performance

Invisibility Revised

Lecture Performance von Subversive Film (Mohanad Yaqubi & Reem Shilleh)

In 1968, a group of young filmmakers decided to establish a film unit affiliated with the Palestinian Revolution newly active in Amman, Jordan. The unit was called Palestine Film Unit (PFU) and was working with Al Fatah, one of the Palestinian Libation Organization (PLO) factions that adopted armed struggle as the only way to liberate Palestine. When the PFU was established, not only did it furnish the revolution with cinematic vocabularies, but it also addressed the decades old dilemma of invisibility of the Palestinian people and would offer apparatus for reclaiming visibility. At a later time the work of the unit became a major part of the Palestinian revolutionary cinema.

This lecture performance tracks life and work of the PFU and its members as an example of a militant cinema practice in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, when filmmakers believed cinema could change the world.