From Turtle Island to Palestine
Like Palestine, the lands of Turtle Island have been deeply impacted by settler colonial violence, occupation, apartheid and genocide. We emphasize our solidarity with Palestinians through sharing an intergenerational program that uses movement, music, and storytelling as a means to challenge settler colonial narratives while reclaiming roots and place.
This screening is part of Queer Cinema for Palestine: No Pride in Genocide. Queer Cinema for Palestine started as a film festival in 2021 offering a vibrant space for artists around the world to stand together against pinkwashing. This global solidarity initiative uses art to oppose the ongoing violence of Israeli occupation and apartheid against Indigenous Palestinians. The program features in-person and online events from cities across the world.
Queer Cinema for Palestine featured some of the more than 50 filmmakers who have pulled their films from the Israeli government sponsored TLVFest in response to the boycott call from Palestinian civil society. More than 200 filmmakers, film artists and scholars have pledged not to participate in TLVFest in a sign of growing rejection of Israeli pinkwashing and recognition of the intimate connections between liberation struggles of all oppressed peoples and communities.
Rana Nazzal | we would be freer (9 min)
T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss | Future Ancestors (3 min)
Sobhi Zobaidi | My Very Private Map (22 min)
Jamelie Hassan | Olives for Peace (2 min)
Alize Zorlutuna | There are many ways to open (4 min)
Rana Nazzal | Something From There (7 min)
Alize Zorlutuna | your touch unsettles how I see (4 min)
Edzi’u | The Wind Carries Their Names (7 min)
Sobhi Zobaidi | Looking Awry (Hawal) (30 min)
Program Links:
Jamelie Hassan // rabble.ca article
Edzi’u // latest album coverage // Warrior Song music video
T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss // Arts Help article
Sobhi al-Zobaidi // The Tyee article
Alize Zorlutuna // artist website
Rana Nazzal // artist website
from the river to the sea project is a global series of screenings/presentations in solidarity with Palestine working to support oppressed narratives, initiate dialogues, nurture systems of care, and draw upon our audiences’ proactive support to uncover ways to organize towards our collective liberation, from Turtle Island to Palestine.
In order to elucidate narratives otherwise blurred by xenophobic, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic media, we are calling on our national and international art community to join us in responding to the urgency of this matter thoughtfully and proactively. In doing so, we hope that we can maintain a long-term movement in support of the Palestinian fight for self-determination, a fight we know has a long road ahead.
Screenings in Windsor, a city built on the traditional territory of the Anishnaabeg people of the Three Fires Confederacy (Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa) will work to bring together our community to foster discussion, understanding, and give us tools for collective action to stand against genocide.
Entrance will be by donation, fundraising for Medical Aid for Palestine.
Children are welcome! There will be a colouring station and facilitator present.
Artcite’s exhibition space is fully accessible, except for the bathroom, which is down a flight of stairs.
WHAT IS BDS?
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement works to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians and demands that Israel to comply with international law through economic and cultural pressure.
BDS is a non-violent grassroots tactic that applies pressure on corporations and institutions supporting Israel’s regime of settler colonialism, apartheid, and occupation over the Palestinian people.
Because states, corporations, institutions, and those in power have refused to take action to stop this injustice, in 2005, Palestinian civil society called for global citizens to take up BDS in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.
WHAT IS PACBI?
The state of Israel has systematically destroyed Palestinian art and culture in order to erase Palestinian identity and connection to the land. At the same time, Israel overtly uses culture as a form of propaganda to whitewash or justify its regime of occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid over the Palestinian people.
The state developed and funds the “Brand Israel” campaign depicting Israel as a Westernized modern, liberal, and civilized cultural bastion surrounded by barbaric nations.
Nissim Ben-Sheetrit, the deputy director general of the campaign, has explained: “We are seeing culture as a hasbara [propaganda] tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture.”
In order to counter these propaganda efforts, PACBI urges international cultural workers and cultural organizations, including unions and associations, to boycott and/or work towards the cancellation of events, activities, agreements, or projects involving Israel, its lobby groups, or its cultural institutions.
Boycotts are aimed at institutions and not individuals. The only exception is when an individual cultural worker is an official representative of the state or a complicit Israeli cultural institution.
WHAT DOES "FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA" MEAN?
This phrase has long been a call for liberation for the Palestinian lands to be a just, free, and peaceful state for all, regardless of ethnicity, religion, or gender. Before the establishment of the state of Israel, the lands of Palestine had long been a place where people of all backgrounds were welcomed and lived together peacefully.