Countering Cultural Genocide: A Tribute to Qais al-Zubaidi’s Palestine Solidarity Cinema

The past 18 months have seen unprecedented losses in Palestine. The Western-backed Israeli genocide on Gaza, along with the coordinated and rapidly intensifying military assaults on the occupied West Bank, marks the most intense escalation of violence in more than a century of colonial expansion, occupation and oppression—and one of the deadliest events of our times. This ongoing attack has claimed the lives of Palestinian resistance fighters, elders, women, men, and children, while also systematically targeting and destroying crucial infrastructure—health, educational and cultural—prompting scholars and activists to broaden the framework of a genocide to include a “cultural genocide” and a “scholasticide.”¹ These terms draw our attention to the Zionist settler-colonial project, which extends beyond the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to include the silencing and censorship of Palestinian narratives and the attempted erasure of Palestinian collective memory and cultural production. Yet these concerted efforts on the part of the Zionist entity and its collaborators to tear apart the cultural fabric of Palestinian life not only consistently fail but continue to have the opposite effect, fuelling creative expressions of resistance through different media.

The past year also marked the loss of one of the most significant figures in Palestine solidarity filmmaking of the twentieth century: The prolific Iraqi-born director Qais al-Zubaidi (1939-2024), who passed away last December in Germany, leaving behind a strong cinematic legacy centred on Palestine. In this brief tribute, I want to honour Zubaidi’s audiovisual imprint on Palestinian history and memory, as well as his exemplary practice of international solidarity through cinema—particularly during the 1970s and early 1980s, when he was an active contributor to cinema of and in support of the Palestinian revolution. While I will introduce two of his earliest short films, Zubaidi’s extensive oeuvre, as well as his wider contributions to political cinema culture, is a testament to a lifelong commitment to cultural resistance and the documentation of the Palestinian struggle. His work—alongside that of many of his contemporaries, such as Syrian director Muhammad Malas, whose memoir on Zubaidi informs some of the biographical material discussed here—remains strikingly relevant for political education amid today’s escalating crisis.²

Qais al-Zubaidi, Eye on Cinema (2024)

Anyone exploring the history of Palestinian cinema or watching Palestine solidarity films from the revolutionary “long 1970s” will soon come across the work of Qais al-Zubaidi. I first properly encountered Zubaidi’s name while flicking through two impressive reference books he authored, published by the Institute for Palestine Studies: Filasṭin fi al-sinima (2006) and Filasṭin fi al-sinima (2): al-dhakirah wa-al-hawiyah (2019) – Palestine in Cinema (2006) and Palestine in Cinema (2): Memory and Identity (2019). These books opened my eyes to the vast scale of films made in and/or about Palestine—whether by Palestinian filmmakers or through international (co-)productions—and spanning different historical moments of the Palestinian struggle from the twentieth century into the twenty-first. Many of these films, it must be mentioned here, remain difficult to access today; some were lost due to Israel’s destruction of Palestinian film archives during the Lebanese Civil War. Others await restoration or have only recently been restored.³

Zubaidi’s films unfold against the backdrop of key historical moments in the Palestinian struggle from the late 1960s onward. From the aftermath of the 1967 Naksa to the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), the First Intifada (1987–1993) and the Second Intifada (2000–2005), Zubaidi collaborated on and helped circulate films that documented the evolving realities of Palestinian exile and the struggle for justice, liberation, and return—and later worked on archiving Palestinian cinema. In effect, his trajectory is not just that of a director but also of an international solidarity film worker wearing multiple hats. For instance, Zubaidi’s name appears not only as a director, but he is also credited as an editor of numerous Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian films from the 1970s and 80s. His work also developed across multiple sites of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle that were somehow implicated in the Palestinian struggle. At the height of the Cold War, he moved between different centres of film education and production—leaving his birthplace, Baghdad, to study in socialist East Germany in the 1960s, and later working mostly between Beirut and Damascus and Berlin. Muhammad Malas (2019) notes in his memoir about his colleague and friend that Qais had a deep love for East Germany—so much so that he made an annual ‘pilgrimage’ to the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival. He relates how Qais was very comfortable in Berlin and cultivated strong relations with those around him, including officials and decision makers in the German Ministry of Culture. He served as a refuge for many Arabs—especially Palestinians and Iraqis—living in Germany, often using his connections to mediate and help resolve the issues they faced. Besides these personal ties, he also built an extensive network through his (pro-)Palestinian films, which earned him lasting ties with Palestinian cultural, cinematic, and media institutions, as well as with significant figures in these fields.⁴

Qais al-Zubaidi’s first two short films, Ba’idan ‘an al-Watan (Far from the Homeland, 1969) and Al-Ziyarah (The Visit, 1970) encapsulate many themes and characteristics of his body of work at large. They were respectively produced by Syrian Arab Television (established in 1960 alongside Egyptian television during the short-lived United Arab Republic (UAR) (1958-61)), and the Syrian National Film Organisation (NFO). The latter was founded in 1963, the same year the Ba’ath Party came to power and centralised Syria’s media infrastructure. Ba’athist socialism rested on three main pillars: Arab unity, Palestinian liberation, and social transformation, with media serving as a crucial tool in advancing these objectives. These two short films therefore represent early examples of Zubaidi’s pro-Palestinian oeuvre as well as Syrian state-sponsored media dedicated to portraying the Palestinian cause.

In the wake of the 1967 Naksa, when Israel occupied more Palestinian land as well as portions of Syria and Egypt, Damascus emerged as a regional hub for politically engaged, and primarily documentary, filmmaking. Zubaidi was a key figure of this era, alongside Egyptian filmmaker Tawfik Saleh (1926–2013), Jordanian filmmaker Adnan Madanat (b. 1946), Lebanese filmmaker Borhane Alaouié (1941–2021), and Syrian filmmakers Omar Amiralay (1944–2011) and Nabil al-Maleh (1936–2016), amongst others—many of whom worked on at least one film about Palestine themselves. Syrian TV and the NFO notably had amicable ties with East Germany’s media institutions at the time, a connection that resonates with Zubaidi’s longstanding relationship with (East) Germany.⁵ This engagement began in the 1960s with his studies at the Babelsberg Film School in Potsdam and later extended to his archival work with the Federal Archives in Berlin, where he co-founded the Palestinian National Film Archive. These transnational collaborations not only informed his cinematic and political goals but also reinforced his commitment to preserving Palestinian visual history.  

Between Testimony and Dream: Cinematic Expressions of Palestinian Realities

Although aesthetically quite distinct—the former an observational documentary, the latter an experimental and poetic short film—Far from the Homeland and The Visit share a common structure: both are framed around a visit. In Far from the Homeland, the car drive into and out of the Palestinian refugee camp of Sbeineh in Syria, where the short film is set, serves as a narrative frame. The Sbeineh camp is located near Damascus, where Palestinians displaced during the 1948 Nakba, as well as those uprooted during the 1967 Naksa, came to live. In The Visit, the reality of confinement in the occupied West Bank is powerfully dramatised by positioning the camera inside a Palestinian man’s car as it slowly and eerily approaches one of the infamous checkpoints at night—a constant hurdle for Palestinians, whose freedom of movement is severely curtailed and strictly monitored by the Zionist regime. Indeed, following the 1967 war, Zionist authorities imposed severe restrictions on the freedom of movement of Palestinians in the West Bank through a combination of military occupation, administrative regulations, and security measures.

The Visit

Far from the Homeland documents everyday life in the camp through the eyes of a group of children who respond to questions like: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “What do you do in your spare time?” The filmmaker, Zubaidi, remains unseen behind the camera, his presence is only marked audibly by the questions. This observational-interview technique bears a resemblance to Muhammad Malas’ The Dream (1987). Reflecting on the production of that film, Malas recounts that in 1980, he visited Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon with a voice recorder, asking residents—both those who had known Palestine and those who hadn’t—about the images of Palestine that appeared in their dreams.⁶ For Zubaidi, Far from the Homeland, shot on 35mm, was the first film he produced as a director in Syria.⁷ The film was subsequently selected for screening at the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival, where it won the Silver Dove Award in 1969. Three years later, it won the Jury Award at the 1972 Damascus Youth Cinema Festival.⁸ 

Far from the Homeland

In cinema, the act of visiting has historically often been associated with a detached outsider’s gaze or ear, whether that of an ethnographer or a tourist journeying to capture a subject from a distance. However, for politically committed solidarity filmmakers like Zubaidi, the visit functions differently. Far from the Homeland was his first attempt at expressing and developing his understanding of documentary cinema.⁹ His entry into the camp is not just about witnessing and listening but about using the camera as a tool for collective storytelling—facilitating active participation in the construction of reality. Prior to shooting the film, Zubaidi stayed in the Sbeineh camp for some time to get to know its inhabitants and to familiarise them with the camera.¹⁰ As he recounts: 

During the scouting phase, I made daily visits to the camp to observe the people, striving to immerse myself in their daily lives, with a particular focus on the children. Then I began filming on a daily basis, openly using a camera, and following a cinematic approach I had envisioned for myself. I sought to discover aspects of life within the camp, and to capture the hopes and dreams of Palestinian children. The camp’s residents would watch me as I filmed, observing how the children stood before the camera and interacted with it. I used the children’s relationship with the camera as a foundation for the film’s structure. Everything in the image screen appeared ordinary and part of daily life—there were no explicit references to the Palestinian tragedy or the loss of homeland.¹¹

Far from the Homeland

Later, the children joined him back in the sound studio, where they commented on the footage, contributing to a soundscape that Zubaidi integrated into the final cut of the film.¹² This experimental approach to the relationship between sound and image, as well as to cinematically conveying the Palestinian struggle, was not met without criticism. Some viewers in Syria felt that the film was inappropriate for Palestinians and accused it of being propaganda for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (although Zubaidi claimed to have had no knowledge of UNRWA at the time).¹³

Far from the Homeland

Children and youth frequently appear as protagonists in Zubaidi’s films, both those he directed and/or edited. Shahadat al-Filastinyyin fi Zaman al-Harb (Testimonies of Palestinians in the Time of War, 1972), for instance, revives sculptor Mona Al-Saoudi’s work documenting Palestinian children’s drawings and testimonies from Baqa’a Camp in Jordan in 1968. Incorporating original drawings, interview texts, and archival photographs, the film juxtaposes these materials with a reconstructed audio narrative, as the fate of many children remains unknown—many were martyred in 1970, during Black September. His first and only feature-length fiction film, Al-Yazerli (1974), based on a novel by Syrian writer Hanna Mina, follows the struggles of a young boy working in the fishing town of Lattakia, Syria. While not about Palestine, the poetic film presents the harsh realities of manual labour, economic hardship, and repressed desires through the perspective of a child—a perspective that lends the film a certain rawness that is also present in his films about Palestine.

Palestinian children have long been a central motif in Palestinian, Arab, and international films and media about Palestine, beyond Zubaidi’s work. Children are frequently foregrounded as victims in international or humanitarian media to appeal to liberal spectators. But they also—notably in films by Zubaidi and his contemporaries—embody agents of hope and the future of Palestinian resistance. The latter role is evident in a growing body of Palestinian and Palestine solidarity films, ranging from early works like the Palestinian Film Unit’s Bi-al-Ruh, bi-al-Dam (With Soul, With Blood, 1971), Children of Palestine (1978) by Monica Maurer and Samir Nimr and Khadijah Habashneh’s Atfal wa-Lakin (Children, Nonetheless, 1980) (produced for the UN’s Year of the Child). Later films—such as Mai Masri’s Children of Fire (1990) and Children of Shatila (1998)—as well as, to name just one more recent example, Rehab Nazzal’s Vibrations of Gaza (2023), continue to depict Palestinian childhood as both a site of trauma and a force of defiant survival. 

Politics of Montage: Zubaidi’s Cinematic Language

Montage and editing were central to Zubaidi’s filmmaking, deeply shaping his aesthetic approach and political vision. In Far from the Homeland, the film begins with a sped-up slideshow of photographs alternating between images of children and tents, underscored by the rapid sound of gunfire. Influenced by Soviet avant-garde montage, particularly Pudovkin—whom Zubaidi cited as an early inspiration¹⁴—this dialectical use of sound and image recurs throughout the film. One such example is the juxtaposition of children’s voices with bleak visual footage of their everyday surroundings: rows of tents and makeshift playgrounds squeezed into the confined spaces left in between. This contrast highlights the disjuncture between the claustrophobic reality of refugee camp life and the boundless imagination and dreams of its youngest inhabitants.

Far from the Homeland

Zubaidi studied editing and photography at the Babelsberg Film School in Potsdam, East Germany in the 1960s. These two disciplines became defining features of his body of work and his approach to filmmaking, shaping his understanding of the image and techniques of composition. Several books he wrote in Arabic in the 2000s on editing, film, and television further attest to this interest. Zubaidi’s practice extended beyond directing his own films—produced largely under the auspices of Syrian television, the Syrian National Film Organisation and the PLO’s Department of Media and Culture—to include editing, writing, translation, and archival preservation. In addition to his own films—documentaries, short films, and narrative features—Zubaidi was a prolific editor, contributing his skill to the projects of colleagues of his generation, who shared his political and cinematic commitments, including Men Under the Sun (1970) by Nabil Maleh, Mohammed Shahin, and Marwan Al-Moadhin, Khalid Hammadah’s The Knife (1972), Omar Amiralay’s Everyday Life in a Syrian Village (1974), Ghaleb Shaath’s, Land Day (1978), Qassem Hawal’s Returning to Haifa (1980), and Muhammad Malas’ The Night (1992). Palestine solidarity cinema has always been inherently collective, intermedial, and while deeply rooted in national struggle and identity, carries a strong internationalist ethos.

Men Under the Sun

A significant feature of Zubaidi’s work is his ability to combine a documentary commitment to truth-telling with a contrapuntal editing style that creates tension and allows for synthesising ideas. We find such interplay in The Visit, where montage takes on a more experimental form in relation to the theme of Palestinian return to the occupied West Bank. Rather than a conventional documentary, the film unfolds as a poetic, dream-like collage, assembling different media forms, objects, and recurring motifs in ways that evoke strange associations between text, photos, acting sequences and moving imagery. In a way, The Visit more accurately articulates the surreality of occupation lived under Israeli occupation in the Palestinian West Bank, and the absurdity of returning to “visit” the highly monitored homeland. 

The Visit

The film comprises an interplay of paintings by Syrian artists Nazir Nabaa (1938-2016) with poetry verses by three prominent Palestinian resistance poets (Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), Samih al-Qasim (1939-2014), Tawfiq Zayyad (1929-1994) that overlay archival photographs of recognisably Palestinian faces or events (such as an UNRWA photo), creating a palimpsest of documentary evidence of the Palestinian struggle and poetic expressions of resistance. All these visual elements are underscored by two distinct, alternating soundtracks: one, Syrian composer Solhi al-Wadi’s (1934-2007) ominous music recognisable also in Tawfik Saleh’s pan-Arab film produced two years later The Dupes (1972); and the other, a more abstract, experimental sound by another Syrian, Sohail Arafa (1935-2013) that offers a kind of sonic equivalent to what we see visually deconstructed in several close-up shots, such as a check-point barrier, a guard’s whistle, the muzzle and trigger of a gun. These deconstructed objects reinforce the kind of Brechtian mode of alienation Zubaidi used to compel active audience engagement. Brecht was very present in Zubaidi’s everyday life and thinking, Malas remembers.¹⁵ This later led him to also translate texts by Bertolt Brecht, whom he deeply admired, culminating in Masraḥ al-Taghyir: Maqalat fi Manhaj Brikht al-Fanni (Drama of Change: Bertolt Brecht Selected Studies in Epic Theater (1978). Interestingly, The Visit did not sufficiently align with the Leipzig Film Festival’s conventional system of documentary film classification, leading the festival to broaden its definition of what constitutes a “documentary” to include what they called “documentary re-enactment” films.¹⁶

Drama of Change: Bertolt Brecht Selected Studies in Epic Theatre (translated by Qais al-Zubaidi)

The film’s intermedia collage constructs less of a coherent narrative; instead, it projects an accumulation and layering of signs, a play with themes and objects connoting the Palestinian struggle that range from resistance, occupation, flight to mourning, experimenting with different artistic forms to those ends. These intertextual references to other Arab artists of the same generation and political inclination as Zubaidi, are illustrative of a shared, anti-imperialist, pan-Arab repertoire of metaphors, stories and vocabularies pertaining to Palestine that Arabic literature, poetry and art is replete with, with each fragment being independently rich in cultural, symbolic and political history. This intertextuality embeds the subject of Palestine within a broader semantic and symbolic realm of resistance art, while simultaneously harkening back to the 1920s Soviet avant-garde, whose artists equally experimented with and integrated multiple art forms into their respective activities.

The Visit

What characterises not only Zubaidi’s early films but his cinematic trajectory at large, is his decades-long solidarity with the Palestinian cause in which he saw himself not merely as a detached observant from afar, but as a concerned and implicated visitor with a shared hope for revolutionary transformation—a vision in which cinema would play a key role. Zubaidi’s trajectory was fundamentally international, and he has been vocal in interviews about identifying himself, above all, with the Palestinian struggle for a homeland. Recognising Zubaidi’s devotion to Palestine, Palestinian literary critic Faisal Darraj (b. 1942) describes him:

Qais, who left his homeland, did not accept the departure all of his dreams. He settled for fragmented dreams and went to the Palestinian cause. The Palestinians shared their estrangement, and the Palestinians eased his estrangement. The two sides shared a just cause, one that includes the fighter-martyr and the artist who is honest to the point of martyrdom. Perhaps Qais was not preoccupied with the Iraqi he was, nor with the Palestinian he had become. He was preoccupied with two more important relationships: The free man defending a just cause, and the just artist who defends freedom.¹⁷ 

This description hints at Zubaidi’s complex relationship with Iraq, illustrating his sense of exile that did not necessarily stem from a court order but from a deep feeling of alienation. His political aspirations and dreams seemed unattainable within the constraints of his home country at the time. The Palestinian struggle thus became central to his search for purpose, providing him with a cause through which he could strive for justice and liberation.

Conclusion

As we remember and honour Zubaidi’s contributions, it is important to note that Palestinian cinema, particularly from the revolutionary period in which Zubaidi was most active, still tends to be noticeably absent from, and marginally featured in, prominent film magazines and film studies curricula in the West. However, recent months have seen a renewed and growing interest in screening these films. Cultural workers have been organising fundraising and solidarity film screenings in different venues, including universities and activist spaces across the world. Public screenings can become sites of political education and mobilisation, bringing together activists, cultural workers and scholars in solidarity networks that extend beyond the screen. In this context, the important two-decades-old Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) campaign is steadily gaining traction, as it recognises culture as a crucial battleground in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. The battle against Zionist repression and censorship is far from over, and it may get worse before it gets better—and in some places more harshly than in others. Neither films nor written texts can end imperialism and Zionist settler colonialism as it is escalating in Palestine right now. However, films shot during different historical moments that have contributed to the Palestinian struggle serve as reminders of its enduring nature—and, in turn, of how media has always shaped our understanding of and relationship with the land and people of Palestine. Palestinian cinema has persisted and proliferated—if not even more so in moments of crisis—despite deliberate attempts to suppress artistic expression and expressions of solidarity. Honouring Zubaidi’s work today means not only recognising his artistic contributions but also ensuring that his films—and the revolutionary cinema he was part of—continue to be watched and discussed in the public sphere.

Endnotes