Palestinian Cinematecture: Recapturing Reality via Architecture Narrative

             “If we don’t tell our story, who would,”  Proclaimed Mona Al-Kurd as she filmed the colonizer Yaqoub taking over her house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, Jerusalem. Using a video filmed on her phone, she was able to mobilize a mass and convey the voice of thousands of Palestinians who were and are still subjected to forced displacement. The project discusses the idea of war imagery and cinema as a force of sociopolitical change. In our ever-changing society, the digital age presents  an opportunity to convey and create images of meaning and moral values, promoting ideologies, excluding oppression and marginalization. These images found in films, television series and programs, are referred to as the seventh art.

              The design represents a series of “cinematic spaces” that connect the Dheisheh refugee camp to downtown Bethlehem, Palestine. Aiming to enrich the cinematic culture and mirror the Palestinian stories of marginalized areas audio-visually. Empowering a new generation of pioneers, YouTubers, influencers, and local filmmakers to share their experiences to local and global audiences. 

             Platforms as a solution, The architectural concept is based on horizontal platforms that express cinematic spaces and are inspired by Dheisheh camp residents’ social use. Vertical Platforms that reflect the outdoors and screen cinema towards the People’s Flow. These spaces are divided into 3 main functions: 

1) Social Cinema — Mobile Film: To ensure the project’s independence from any agenda. The community, in general, was involved with interactive exhibition spaces, including an open-air cinema, and a “Mobile Film” to attract pioneers and spread the culture of cinema in marginalized areas. An external exhibition showcasing the history of Palestinian cinema and public squares that accommodate the Camp Film Festival or the Schools Film Festival, for example, where the films of the people they have produced are shown.

2) Social  Film Production —Film Lab: It aims to help people make their film production. It has more than one level of users, pioneers, YouTubers, influencers and local filmmakers. They form an integrated and continuous cycle in enriching each other’s experiences. Pioneers can contribute by acting and directing, an idea, writing a coherent script, using people’s voices in animation, dubbing, borrowing tools and shooting equipment. Uploading video clips filmed on smartphones and sent to an editor and audio and video producer. These digital stories will be promoted via social media by influencers in exchange for providing them with architectural spaces such as the use of outdoor studios, a theater to speak through, a lecture hall for discussion, and capacity-building workshops on the subject of film production. 

3) Cinematheque  _ Film Library: is a digital library of archive films and film- related objects with the venue of the exhibition, and is responsible for preserving the general cinematic heritage. It includes the cinematic works of all Palestinians from Occupied Palestine in 1948, Diaspora, West Bank and Gaza. Film Library works on digitization and certain processing with international standards.