Shahrazad

Overview

Shahrazad is an experimental video work that explores the sensations of waiting and feeling trapped in a stagnant, cyclical routine, both of which are considered characteristic elements of the Palestinian situation. ‘We Palestinians’, Rashid Masharawi explains, ‘revolt and negotiate, resist and conciliate, build and bomb. We are the victims of war and of peace, divided by The Wall and by our own disputes, immunizing ourselves so as to be capable of continuing on with life despite countless disappointments and the sedimentation of hopelessness in our spirits. We are constantly in search of new ways to narrate our story. Shahrazad springs from this need to document. It is another way of contemplating this simultaneously new and old Palestinian situation, of engaging with the absurdity of its present context, and of suggesting a cinematic language free of apathy and claims to expertise, which can potentially articulate it’.

In Shahrazad, Masharawi attempts to highlight the anxiety that lingers behind the veils of speech and newsreels, and to locate the missing, untold parts of the Palestinian story.