Abstract
On the eve of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Syrian filmmaker Mohammad Malas shot material for a film in which he explored the dreams of residents of the Palestinian camps and their narratives. Out of this footage came a 45-minute short film titled The Dream (Al-Manam), which won an award at the Cannes International Festival in 1988. Malas later followed it with a book, Film Notebook of The Dream (1991) (mufakkirat film al-manam), containing diaries and dreams that never made it to the screen.
 

Following the screening of The Dream, Ali AlAdawy will lead a discussion on the intersections between the film and the book The Notebook of The Dream. AlAdawy interrogates the concept of the “militant film” through the tension between the presence of the Palestinian cause in the collective imagination, consciousness, and ideology—whether in wakefulness or in dreams—on the one hand, and the absence of people as subjects and as a community that has historically fought for the Palestinian cause, on the other. How does the film visually embody this tension? What other texts and imaginaries do the two works evoke? And what remains outside the frame regarding the processes of producing and making the film?
 

The film will be subtitled and the discussion will be in Arabic.
 

Bio
Ali Hussein AlAdawy is a curator, critic, and researcher specializing in film, moving images, and contemporary art-research practices. His work engages with global critical theory and modern cultural history. He has curated numerous film programs and exhibitions, including Labor Images (since 2019), Serge Daney: A Homage and Retrospective (2017), and Harun Farocki: Dialectics of Images (2018). He co-curated The Art of Getting Lost in Cities: Barcelona & Alexandria (2017) and Benjamin and the City (2015). A founding member of Tripod, an online magazine for film criticism (2015–2017), he also contributed to TarAlbahr, a platform for urban and art practices in Alexandria (2015–2018). He holds an MA from Bard College, New York, focusing on the intersections of human rights and contemporary art.