Palestine Film Festival Review: Belonging

Director Tariq Nasir’s “Belonging” is a documentary about his family’s life in Palestine during the 1948 Catastrophe and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Through personal family interviews, archival film footage, photographs, and documents, Nasir shows the history of the Nasir Family in Palestine prior to Al-Nakba, the Great Catastrophe and during the Six-Day War.

The film begins with his parents. His mother, Ivis, grew up during the Great Depression in America and his father Sari, grew up in Jerusalem during the 1937 Palestinian Revolt and throughout Al-Nakba.

Tariq’s uncles and aunts, who grew up in Jerusalem during this time also, recall the violence even prior to 1948. As children living in Palestine under British rule, they saw death and destruction in their own neighborhoods. Even though they lived with Jewish families and people got along, Jewish militias bombed the British headquarters in 1946 and killed 138 people. Eventually they bombed coffee houses, bus stations and attacked British soldiers.

As the film explains, the British knew they planted the seeds of conflict between Arabs and Jews so they handed their geopolitical mess over to the United Nations. On November 29, 1947, the UN partitions Palestine in half, giving one-half of Palestinian land to the Jews.

He shows photos of the Nasir Family’s two-story, stone house in Jerusalem and then his father, uncles and aunts recount what happened to them in 1948. One morning there is a knock at the door. Armed representatives of the Jewish Army tell Sari’s father they must leave their home because they will not be responsible for his family’s safety. Eventually a Jewish family moves into the Nasir Family home and claim it as their house.

Years later the mother returns to the house with her house key. She sits on the stairs. From the balcony of her house appears a Jewish woman who tells her: “What are you doing here? This is no more your house.”

According to her daughter, Hind, her mother left her key, the one she kept in a pocket close to her heart all of these years and left it at the door. Then she died.

Later Tariq and his aunt visit the house to find it is an Israeli Television station.

The Nasir Family has received no financial compensation for the confiscation of their land and property. They represent one of thousands of Palestinian families who experienced the same emotional, psychological, familial, cultural, historical, and financial loss.

When Aunt Hind recalls how the family walked by the house and her father used to sing “We will come back to you,” she brought home the loss families experienced in their expulsion. The Palestinians lost their lives and they have had to swallow these losses for almost 60 years while the world denies them their human rights.

“Belonging,” feels so intimate because family members share their personal life stories in extensive detail. The word “belonging” is about growing up on the land of one’s origin, the land that holds the roots of family, history, language, culture, and way of life. Each person retells their family history though his or her own eyes. And many of the family members have reflective thoughts about the events that transpired.

The person who illustrates these reflections most poignant when he talks is Uncle Samir. He makes assessments about what he learned from his tragic, life experiences. For example one day after school he saw 7 Israeli soldiers’ bodies in the street. When he got home the radio news reported 2 injuries. In this moment he noticed that in life he hears one thing but sees something else.

Everyone was so honest about their personal pain and how they have responded to it over the years. When Ivis talks about having a baby in the middle of the 1967 war and she explains how she woke to find an Israeli soldier rocking her infant in the apple box, the affects of war and occupation on her show in her vivid recollection, her facial expression and her tears.

While people narrated their life experiences, the use of archival film footage photographs and documents not only added to the film’s credibility but brought their experiences home to the viewer. When someone explained what the Israeli soldiers looked like and what they were doing, film clips emphasized the experiences and made me feel as if I was reliving these historical moments with the family.

It is these kinds of moments captured on film that illustrate the importance for Palestinians and their families to document their personal experiences, even if they are traumatic and painful, as a means to share Palestinian history with people. There are thousands and thousands of family stories waiting to be told.

At present there are six million Palestinians living in the Diaspora.

“Belonging” retells the Palestinian narrative from the Nasir Family’s point of view, but the film’s components combined make it an important cinematic document for Palestinian modern history. It helps the general public understand who the Palestinians are and the challenges they have faced and continue to face as a people.

This film will be showing Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at the Gene Siskel Film Center for the 6th Annual Chicago Palestine Film Festival.

Directed by: Tariq Nasir
Country: Palestine/Jordan
Year: 2006
Duration: 68 minutes

-U.S. journalist and film critic Sonia Nettnin writes about social, political, economic, and cultural issues. Her focus is the Middle East.

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