Review: Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution, by Nadia Yaqub

Before the features of Hany Abu-Assad, Annemarie Jacir, and Elia Suleiman won international acclaim, Palestinian cinema emerged as a collective effort to document an unfolding popular struggle and to nourish Palestinians with images of themselves as active subjects fighting for liberation. Returning to these images with Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution, Nadia Yaqub recuperates little-seen Palestinian documentaries from the revolutionary 1968–82 period, contextualizing them in relation to prior and subsequent depictions of Palestinians, enduring questions about representation and visibility, and regional and global cinemas of decolonization. Her carefully researched book draws from writings by and interviews with key filmmakers to tell a grounded, intimate story about the vexed politics of image-making within a revolution, while linking Palestinian cinema to the Global South. For Yaqub, “the nature and possibility of political filmmaking” (p. 2) is epitomized by Palestinian filmmakers’ representation of a vulnerable community risking their lives for...