Rashid Mashrawi: Selected Works

Overview

Tension
The film conveys the palpable sense of tension below the surface of daily life that harbours within a Palestinian population in 1998 which Masharawi felt building up during the period of the "peace process". Thus the film is situated in the meaning of the space between the many proclamations and statements. It focuses on the act of observation by literally eschewing spoken dialogue for a narrative produced by editing imagery, music, and incidental soundtrack. Tension investigates an interminable duration, which on occasion gets measured by sudden punctuations releasing and recoiling around unforseen, perhaps even unimportant scenarios. Tension provides a frame for this worldview by opening and concluding with the natural cycle of sunrise and sunset, restated in terms of another "natural" workcycle - the many waves of Palestinian dayworkers moving through gates and checkpoints to work in Israel and return in the evening.

Rashid Masharawi was born and raised in Shati refugee camp, Gaza Strip. He is a self-taught filmmaker, Masharawi's films portray his knowledge of living under the Israeli Occupation in refugee camps, the new space of the intifada, as well as his constant reflection on cinema narrative.

"What I have been trying to do is make out of the Palestinian situation a cinema. I have something like fifteen films, between features, shorts, and documentaries, and together I feel they can offer a mirror and document of the Palestinian life in the last twenty years, in the same time to try to make cinema."

Masharawi considers their value as important in reinforcing his situation as a Palestinian filmmaker born in the refugee camps, who has decided to remain living and producing within the Occupied Territories.


Out of Focus
The terminology "out of focus" refers to perception, meaning a visual quality even if it is used to refer to the understanding of an idea. In cinema, a film scene discovered to be shot "out of focus" is generally unusable, as it destroys the continuous sense in cinema, of the otherwise natural, transparent window.

In this short film, Masharawi begins this film with the idea that nothing in life is "out of focus", but the interpretations can be. The short film begins with perception, taking the camera into the West Bank in order for the director to see what may lay behind the images, and offer one focus only through images, through the interpretation as a film. Masharawi states that for Out of Focus, he began with the desire to investigate after so many years, what was still not "clear" enough for some people. What in fact remained and still remains "out of focus". Such that in 2000 there is still a refugee situation that must continue to wait.


Behind the Walls
Behind the Walls reflects Masharawi's route through Jerusalem, as a city with a soul that is not divided of conflict, but in his eyes secure within its walls, wrapped over by prayers and hymns that suggest a deep history which flows and bends to support with the arches and rise as buildings to protect the city from invasions, which the film illustrates is led by the Israeli settlers.

Shahrazad
It's the anxiety that goes beyond the veils of speech in the news bulletins, searching for the language that speaks of the missing part of the story. Words here are coloured images charged with emotions, and subtle patterns of behaviour engulfed by silence, details in the path appearing on the surface. A film by Rashid Masharawi. Produced by Sharjah Biennial. Production: Cinema Production Center.