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Gazan Cinema as an Infrastructure of Care
Abstract by Dr. Viviane Saglier On Session III-06  (Gaza on Screen)

On Tuesday, November 30 at 2:00 pm

2021 Annual Meeting

Abstract
This presentation describes Gazan cinema as what I call an “infrastructure of care” in order to critically assess the entanglement of filmmaking and humanitarianism in the Strip. Since the beginning of Israel’s siege of Gaza in 2007, both cinema and various forms of medical care are largely framed by coordinated, overlapping, and/or competing economies of colonization, development, human rights, and humanitarianism, as well as Islamic and secular politics of resistance. In a context in which infrastructures of humanitarian care provide the conditions of possibility for cinema in Gaza, I argue that Palestinian filmmakers in turn dispense their own form of care by producing negotiated forms of self-representation. Gazan cinema functions as an infrastructure of care because its diverse modes of address inscribe it within multiple economies of obligations, solidarities, and forms of social reproduction. Following Aboumaliq Simone’s definition of “people as infrastructure” (2004), this presentation shows that cinema contributes to revitalizing social bonds and materializes the desire for social exchange and cooperation by offering modes of self-representation in negotiation with a variety of demands. Care unfolds in different directions (one cares for, about, and even, with) and at varied distances, whether it be oriented towards the self, the community, the “refugee” as a category, or the political international scene, or even emanating from the far-away spectator. I elaborate the concept of “infrastructure of care” based on a deep historicization of filmmaking practices in Gaza and a film and discursive analysis of Mohamad Jabaly’s personal documentary Ambulance/Isa’af (2015). Here I read images against the grain, by examining how Jabaly’s modalities of filmmaking retrace the competing economies of care within which Gazan images are situated. The framework of infrastructure of care thus proposes an analytical tool: tracing those personal and economic attachments’ trajectories – the circulation of care from one subject to another within film representations, filmmaking, and film funding – maps out a geopolitical and emotional cartography of Gazan cinema which may expand, parallel, or divert the financial flows distributed and channeled by humanitarian agencies and news outlets that structure a specific global economy of care. To sum up, this presentation demonstrates that Palestinian affective labor of self-representation constitutes a form of care which requires a reckoning of the global visual and humanitarian economies.
Discipline
Media Arts
Geographic Area
Palestine
Sub Area
Cinema/Film