speaking from the I eye #5
Subversive Film
Hasib Hourani
Text by: Hasib Hourani
Brunswick VIC 3056
Australia
About
Subversive Film and Hasib Hourani examine and enact narratives of solidarity in this speaking from the I eye program. A screening of four short films from Brussels and Ramallah based collective Subversive Film’s Tokyo Reels project, is accompanied by the reading of a newly commissioned poem by Lebanese-Palestinian writer Hasib Hourani who lives on unceded Wangal Country.
The Tokyo Reels are a collection of twenty 16mm films that were held by a Palestine solidarity group in Japan. The films were made by directors from Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, the UK, Italy, Germany, and Japan, exposing the internationalist scope of militant filmmaking during the period of 1960-80s. Entrusted to Subversive Film after a screening of one of Subversive’s films in Tokyo, the films have since been digitised, restored, and presented in different formations across the world. Militant cinema asks the question of what can film do? How can it mobilise people in the context of a liberation struggle? The Tokyo Reels project offers a response. The films carry with them layers of transnational solidarity in the form of Japanese voiceovers and subtitles. They occupy the screen filled with the defects of scanned film, bringing traces of the past into the present. As Subversive Film write, ‘Tokyo Reels is a ground set for asking questions, expansive reading, presentation, translation and occasional speculation, as methods of recirculation and redistribution of films, solidarity making and friendship.’
Hasib Hourani has co-curated a selection of four short films from the Tokyo Reels that speak to the overlap between the Lebanese and Palestinian fights for liberation and the fact that the Palestinian struggle is one of geopolitics rather than nation alone. He responds with a newly commissioned poem.
Subversive Film
Subversive Film is a cinema research and production collective founded by Reem Shilleh and Mohanad Yaqubi. The collective aims to cast new light upon historical works related to Palestine and the region, to engender support for film preservation, and to investigate archival practices. Their long-term and ongoing projects explore this cine-historic field including digitally reissuing previously overlooked films, curating rare film screening cycles, subtitling rediscovered films, producing publications, and devising other forms of interventions. Formed in 2011, Subversive Film is based between Brussels and Ramallah.
Hasib Hourani
Hasib Hourani is a Lebanese-Palestinian writer, editor, arts worker and educator living on unceded Wangal Country. His debut book, rock flight, was released with Giramondo (AU) and Prototype (UK) in 2024, and with New Directions (US) in April 2025.
Program
Text by
Hasib Hourani
IN RESPONSE TO KUFR SHUBA (1975) DIR. SAMIR NIMR. IN RESPONSE TO THE FOUR-DAY BATTLE
walked up the mountain today, felt like i needed to. and the dirt was fluid
beneath my feet. loose and dry. but still i climbed. and the rocks were grey like
pewter and i wondered above the crunch what it could become instead: a pot,
a spoon, a sword. rocks to fill a pillowcase.
i can see everything up here: the town, the trees, the road to the village of
steadfastness and blood. i can see a bomb, smoke, and the clouds which
don't look all that different. it's all monochrome, too, so the sky is grey. like the
buildings. like the day. like the rocks, they're pewter, remember? and round
the corner, behind a stone wall, a truck is being filled with gunpowder by the
fistful. i see these kinds of things from the top of the mountain. i see into open
windows of houses where children sleep. the rope that will become a sling and
the rock we will use to go with it. i see tomorrow and it's so colourful, the
yellow like lemon. i see the children sleeping. the pillowcase that will be
emptied and reused. made either into a weapon or a bindle, that depends on
tomorrow.
a toy truck is filling with sand: the sand is grey like ash. the truck will be
replaced with one that looks just the same, trapped to explode in tiny hands,
sending carnage across a blockaded sky. it's friday and we're on the road to
the village. the one of blood but more importantly sumud. passing metal in the
windows, exposed out the tops of buildings which make them stand high. so
tall, like mountains. so everyone can see everything. the road, tomorrow,
friday. which is full of metal and sharp like swords. arms at the ready. take the
spoon made of pewter and the pot, too. and clang like battle cry. take the rock.
a bullet.
on friday we go forward. up the road to steadfastness and blood, brave
and patient under the sun, which is grey in this monochrome sky.
on saturday we fight
on sunday we fight
on monday we fight and they retreat.