A Night We Held Between

A Night We Held Between unfolds from ‘Song for the Fighters’, drawn from the sonic archive of the Popular Art Centre. Shot in labyrinthine caves and underground passages in Palestine, the film weaves moving bodies, rituals and ancient sites through layers of the song, conjuring history as a permanent present tense, a collective and imaginative act.

Noor Abed: ‘The occupation is always fragmenting land, so our bodies are learning all the time how to move and how to resist, how to try to re-enter, how to smuggle, and how to get used to the new road, to the new city. I always thought my body is the only thing I have, especially living in Palestine with the constant presence of aggression and dispossession. I figured that it’s lighter to just make art with the body.By documenting our daily lives, our rituals, we are reclaiming the narrative and showing our strength and resilience as a society, that we are more than just victims. Image-making is a powerful tool in promoting the truth of something. So using a medium that looks nostalgic and historical, I wanted to create another reality. I’m hoping that these images can intrude on the history that has been mainstreamed, because the only images we have are from Western and Orientalists.’– Excerpted from Hanis Maketab, ‘A Palestinian Artist’s Poetic Film Turns Resistance into an Art Form’, Asia News Network, 20 November 2024.