Sobhi al-Zobaidi
red green black and white Indians | 2008 | 0:43mins | DV | Palestine
About the Sea | 2007 | 9:06mins | DV | Palestine
Sobhi al-Zobaidi is a filmmaker and writer. He was born in Jerusalem, grew up in al-Jalazon refugee camp and studied cinema at NYU. Since the mid-1990s he has been an active member of the new and independent film movement in occupied Palestine. He has directed a number of award winning documentaries, short fiction works, art videos and multi-media installations. He writes both Arabic and English reviews and essays on Palestinian arts and culture. He has taught film and media at Birzeit University and at Al-Quds University in Palestine. Currently al-Zobaidi is conducting doctoral research at Simon Fraser University where he is focusing on issues relating to dispossession and memory.
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In the summer of 2007, Palestinians near the town of Nablus came out demonstrating against Israeli ghettoization dressed like ‘Indians’ wearing simulated war bonnet headdresses of the Plains Indians. In red green black and white Indians al-Zobaidi, believing such moments turn history into memory, plays on the fuzziness between the two concepts rather than on any clear analogies.
Palestinians live in an ever-diminishing landscape as we constantly lose our geographies to Israeli occupation. In this film a group of young men and women lament the sea that they cannot reach anymore and they cherish their memories of it after it has vanished behind the Israeli apartheid wall.
Featured in: The Pit of Babel: A Speculative Archive
Featured in: SIGNAL Artist Talk: The Land
