Rebel Justice

90. Saeed Taji Farouky: Palestine, Protest, and Resistance Through Filmmaking

• Rebel Justice - The View Magazine • Episode 90

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What does it mean to create art in a time of genocide? How can filmmaking become an act of resistance? 

Saeed Taji Farouky joins Rebel Justice to explore these urgent questions from his perspective as an award-winning documentary filmmaker, educator, and activist. Over two decades, his camera has taken viewers from Myanmar's oil fields to Afghan frontlines, consistently centering voices that mainstream media erases.

Throughout our discussion, Saeed offers profound insights into sustaining hope through creative resistance, the continuity of Palestinian culture through art, and the responsibility of institutions during humanitarian crises. "This is probably the one chance in everyone's life to participate in a liberation movement," he reflects, challenging listeners to overcome fear and find their own form of meaningful resistance.


Credits

Guest: Saeed Taji Farouky

Producer: Charlotte Janes

Soundtrack: Particles (Revo Main Version) by [Coma-Media] 


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Host:

You're listening to Rebel Justice, the podcast from the View magazine. When we think about justice, we think about it as an abstract, something that happens to someone else somewhere else, but justice and the law regulate every aspect of our interactions with each other, with organisations and with the government. We never think about it until it impacts our lives or those of someone close. Our guests are women with lived experience of the justice system, whether as victims or women who have committed crimes. People at the forefront of civic action who put their lives on the line to demand a better world. We ask them to share their insight into how we might repair a broken and harmful system with humanity and dignity. We also speak with people who are in the heart of the justice system, creating important change Judges, barristers, human rights campaigners, mental health advocates, artists and healers. Today's guest is someone whose work sits at the intersection of art, politics and resistance.

Host:

Saeed Taji Farouky is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, educator and activist. Over the past two decades, his films have taken us from the oil fields of Myanmar in A Thousand Fires to the Afghan front lines in Tell Spring, not to Come this Year to stories of migration, exile and Palestinian identity. His films insist on centering voices that are too often erased, and on confronting the political choices that shape how we see the world. In this episode, we talk about Saeed's filmmaking journey and background and how cinema can be both a creative and political act. We also talk about his activism from direct action to running the radical film school, and how he sees the role of artists in moments of crisis, and we dive into Palestine the unfolding genocide, the silencing of activists and the way many companies and institutions try to sidestep accountability while ignoring calls for justice. Saeed doesn't shy away from these questions, and this conversation is as much about filmmaking as it is about truth-telling, resistance and the power of collective action.

Saeed:

Well, I mean, I always just describe myself as a Palestinian, Egyptian and British filmmaker, radical educator and activist and hopefully I integrate those three practices. That for me, probably is the most important thing to stress about my work is that I consider my work part of my activism. The two are really inseparable.

Host:

So you've been making films for over 20 years across the world around themes of conflict, human rights, colonialism, and you've been recognised with awards like the Amnesty International Film Prize and a Senior TED Fellowship. But if we go right back, can you take us to the moment that you began to realise that film can be used for more than entertainment?

Saeed:

Yeah, by the way, I don't associate with TED anymore. We wrote a very public open letter, me and a few other of my colleagues at TED just quitting the fellowship because they had strayed into, you know, platforming, extreme right platforming. And for me, what broke me was that they had, in the last conference, two people who were genocide deniers of the Palestinian genocide. So, anyway, I'd had enough, and I think we were proved right, because one of Ted's most revered guests is Elon Musk and he's turned out to be a neo-fascist provocateur, disgusting human being, disgusting business practices, white supremacist ethics. So anyway, they built their brand around him and I'd had enough. Anyway, it's a difficult question, but I'll explain why I mean film.

Saeed:

There's never been a question in my mind that film is more than, say, an industry or a form of entertainment, because I've always just had an extremely profound relationship with film, in the way that it's sort of, you know, when I was watching films as a kid. It was such a transformative experience, it transported me. It was a way of sort of understanding other people's suffering in the same way that I was suffering. It was a way of sort of understanding other people's suffering in the same way that I was suffering. It was a way of seeing also beauty and joy in other ways. And so I had never really, you know, I never thought of it as just film. I always took it very seriously. And then, when I started making film, I always took it very seriously but and you know, as a form of expression, as a form of culture, as an art form, as a, you know, as a way for society to express itself and to communicate. And then, when I started making film professionally, I understood that they have a different concept of this idea of you know, the impact of film Is that they sort of, especially in the documentary industry, they want, you know, a very linear relationship. They often want, like you make a film and you change society, you know, and I never actually believed in that, that was never my motivation, even though I believe profoundly in the potential for film to change lives, let's say.

Saeed:

But I never bought into this idea of you know film can change the world quote unquote Partly because I just think it's really been co-opted by a very neoliberal system of marketing. Right, it's a huge part of the marketing of films. It also buys into, again, a very neoliberal, I think, a neoliberal perception of um charities or human rights work. So very often when people say, you know, this film can change the world, what they mean is there's some kind of corporate charity campaign and they expect it to have an impact, but that impact is probably measured in views or clicks. And the other reason is just, I don't think it's necessary to you know, if I'm making a film about Palestine, like I'm doing now, it's totally unnecessary to say, all right, well, you're going to make this film, but on a practical level, how are you going to change the world with this? You know, it just seems to me like a totally misguided question. Uh, but I don't mean on your part, sorry, I mean on the part of film funders, but I, but there is a practical answer. It's just not what most of the film film world thinks of.

Saeed:

And I would say, for me, when that really became concrete is probably, you know, I have this radical film school and, and what I realized, the participants in that film school taught me so much about the potential for film because, firstly, making films with other people was was changing their lives, and then they can go on and change their communities, obviously, but they were also doing things like establishing collectives of filmmakers because they couldn't see in the world the kind of film industry they wanted, so they were creating it. They were making community cinemas. They were living in a housing estate that was going to be demolished and in that housing estate they set up a cinema where they showed films about the housing crisis. So I started to understand this different relationship between film and change, not in the kind of corporatized sense, but in a very practical, literal, material sense.

Saeed:

And then what really changed my work altogether was when I started researching the militant cinema of the 60s and 70s, particularly the Palestine film unit, and they were filmmakers who thought of themselves as liberation fighters, but with a camera instead of a gun. So they were not objectively documenting the Palestinian resistance, they were participating in it and resistance they were participating in it and they were willing to die for it. So when I saw that I understood this was not just a form of entertainment and that the feeling I had always had which I never really understood its context that there's something real about this was it had a history to it and that history suddenly made sense to me, kind of going back to what you were saying about the Radical Film School, about this was it had a history to it and that history suddenly made sense to me.

Host:

Kind of going back to what you were saying about the Radical Film School for those who haven't heard of it, obviously you gave an explanation of what it is, what kind of drove you to start this initiative and what is the kind of most inspirational or transformation you've seen among participants from the school.

Saeed:

I mean, actually I was invited to sort of run it, so I didn't. It wasn't my own initiative, although it's something you know, it's something I'd wanted to do for a long time. But there was basically there was a film program at a gallery and it had sort of just disappeared. And then they wanted me to kind of reboot it, and me and the person who recommended me for that role we sort of said why don't we make it slightly different and have it specifically be about the kind of cinema that's not being made anymore? And you know I do.

Saeed:

I also teach in much more conventional places the National Film School, you know NFTS, for example. I lectured at Harvard in their film department, at UCL here in the visual anthropology department, which is where a lot of documentary filmmakers come out of, and so I've always seen, although I teach in those institutions, I know that none of them reflect the way I see cinema. None of them really think of cinema as a form of profound self-expression or a revolutionary act or any of these things. So we kind of understood, when we had this chance to do a film school, that it should do. It should do that right, it should really. And it doesn't really teach you how to make films. It's much more about practice, the kind of approach to cinema and the social aspects of cinema. So, working collectively, you know how to embody revolutionary politics in cinema. Those kinds of things.

Host:

And kind of going off of that, based on what's taught, your films also foreground voices that are usually erased, like Afghan soldiers, oil workers in Myanmar. Why do you feel it's so vital to share your perspectives and not just the usual Western gaze?

Saeed:

Yeah, this was the whole reason I started making films, I mean or at least no, I wouldn't, that's not necessarily true, I that's, but that's, that's a philosophy that I think I embodied from the very beginning, because I had, I had been working as a journalist so I could see, you know, and it's probably it's clear to everyone that the perspective of journalism in this country is, you know, typically they want to tell you the story through the eyes of a white English person. And so you know, as a person who's not white English, and particularly specifically as Palestinian, you know, I had experienced 20 plus years of either seeing myself, my community, my political perspective not represented at all or really badly misrepresented. You know, the whole sort of British documentary industry is about people representing other people, sort of taking on the responsibility, and sometimes it has probably to give them the benefit of the doubt. You know it comes from a good place, but the result is often that people are just silenced and their voices are misrepresented. So as soon as I decided to make a documentary, my approach was to kind of look at what I felt was the most pressing issue and that was most misrepresented or mishandled in the media and try and contradict it.

Saeed:

So the first film I made, you know, in 2004, there was also this discussion about a wave of migration and there was at that time kind of a peak in irregular migration, particularly from North Africa to Southern Europe. But all the documentaries I was seeing and you're right, there were thousands of them were, you know, the European looking at the immigrant. So I thought, what if we make a film about the immigrant himself? So I made a film about a Moroccan man trying to cross into Spain and it became a film about also the relationship between the camera and the person in the film and power, dynamics and money and all these kinds of questions that the industry doesn't really ask. So from that moment it sort of defined my kind of cinema, which is also, you know, self-critical.

Host:

Thank you, that pretty much makes sense, I suppose, in that film where you're asked for money kind of how ethics come into the filmmaking.

Saeed:

How would you say on a practical level that it takes to get to that a successful product?

Saeed:

I would say you know, and whatever it takes to get to that product, sort of immaterial. I mean that's typically the standard approach, I think, of the documentary industry. If you relate more to that person that the camera is pointed at than the person behind the camera, it's impossible for you to take that approach right. I mean, I spent most of my and most of my work is still around the Arab-speaking world and most journalists covering it. They don't speak Arabic, they're not necessarily Arabs and I think you know. Obviously I would expect people, just on a human level, to empathize with other humans, but unfortunately that's not always so. So once you take out the idea of creating a product and what's the most efficient way of creating a product and what are the you know at at any expense, it means your priority has to be the well-being of the people in the film that you're making, and very often it starts with language. So you know, there are still people who talk about the people in documentary as a subject which I find, you know, really uncomfortable, or a character, or I don't like any of those words because these are people who have, you know, lives and identities and etc. And much greater than their role in the film. So my priority is always what's the best thing I can do for the people in that film, keeping in mind though I mean I'm not, you know, I hope I'm not idealistic, because keeping in mind that I am a filmmaker, I'm not, I'm not an aid worker, for example.

Saeed:

But I think a lot of those choices are where a lot of films go wrong, when they become unethical, is just that they don't, they're not rigorous enough in choosing who to work with. So, for example, I wouldn't make a film with someone who is starving to death, Because that's someone who doesn't need a filmmaker at that point. They do need an aid worker, and the power imbalance is so great that I couldn't justify that relationship. There's no way I could justify making that film, and I can't pretend that it's going to somehow help them if they need food now, and my film is not going to come out for another year, a year, two years or whatever. So it's about centering their security, safety, in the filmmaking process rather than merely the process of making the film.

Saeed:

Now you also want to make a good film, which means you need to find someone who fits, someone who's interested in collaborating on the film, and so that collaboration, for me, is really the key to an ethical approach. You have to have an understanding with that person. This is our relationship. This is the financial arrangement. Whatever it is, this is where the film might go. This is who might see it. What are you happy with? What are you not happy with? You know, as though you are making an arrangement with a co-worker at the beginning of the project. That's absolutely necessary.

Host:

Given everything going on in the world, what role would you say that artists or filmmakers should play in moments of political crisis?

Saeed:

I think the role for artists and filmmakers should always be to dissent against the tyranny of governments, of dictatorships, of colonialism, of capitalism, not just in a moment of crisis, of course. Now that responsibility is much greater, because we are in a moment of crisis and my whole work, my life, my career, has changed dramatically in the last two years, in a sense that the genocide of the Palestinian people is my focus. Everything I'm doing now is about ending the genocide of the Palestinian people and fighting for the liberation of the Palestinian people. So now it takes different forms. You know I'm very inspired by militant cinema of the 60s and 70s.

Saeed:

I sometimes make documentaries along the same principles, but I also make, you know, pretentious arthouse films. I also make abstract, experimental films because at a time of crisis I, in desperation, I need to communicate with people. I need to find somehow a way of expressing that pain and fear and rage and resistance, and I want to sit with people and have a conversation with them afterwards about it. You know, if I were a writer, I would write about it. That's my way of communicating. And I also want a forum where other people can feel that or communicate that freely, and I want those spaces to become spaces where we can discuss strategies of liberation. So you know, this is why, this is why, essentially, we don't teach how to make a film in in the Radical Film School. It is because you know, you know, on the understanding that your work is ethical. It's not purely about the content of your film or what your film looks like or the form, it's about what you do with it, it's about how you make it. So the documentary I'm working on now I'm collaborating with people arrested for protesting in the name of Palestine. Just bringing those people together is an act of resistance because we're meeting each other, we're organizing with each other, we're hearing each other's stories, we're feeling new forms of sympathy for each other. Then, when we make the film together, we're sharing our experiences. Then when we show the film, it becomes a forum for also organizing, sharing strategies, learning how to dissent.

Saeed:

So the artist should be the liberation fighter that's pushing at the edges of especially now, even if we forget Palestine the government's really authoritarian attempt to limit, to suppress freedom of speech in this country, to completely control and dominate our right to dissent from the government's position. You know it's a really dangerous place we're in now. Politics has failed mainstream politics. Unfortunately, even you know politicians who dissent from the mainstream parties, as we see now with the new party on the left, are also not necessarily doing very well. I don't have faith in parliamentary politics in and of itself. I have faith in the power of individuals to create a mass movement that forces change and sometimes that message takes the form of a work of art or film. So I think the role of the filmmakers also to see themselves within this constellation of forms of resistance.

Saeed:

That's why I take issue when people say you know and you honestly get this question when you apply for funding how is your film going to change? You know what is the impact going to be on and you know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't need there to be a qualitative or rather quantitative impact on society.

Saeed:

A prison and I project my film on the side of that prison and 100 people, 100 protesters, can watch it and feel the anger and the people inside the prison can hear the audio. You know that's powerful to me. Does it have a measurement that I can put in a funding application? Probably not. You know, put in a funding application? Probably not when participants in the film school sit in a room with other people that look like them for the first time in their lives and understand that their dream of making film is not just a waste of time or a waste of money, but can be a genuine form of expression and collective action. That's not a quantitative change that I can put in a funding application, but that changed their lives and they changed my life as a result.

Host:

Thank you. I think we sometimes forget the actual meaning of film, that it doesn't have to be this award-winning, available on every streaming platform To the community that it's serving they at least have a voice and also particularly, as you said, the film you're currently working on. Obviously, we're all aware that the UK government's previously moved to criminalize former protests, specifically around Palestine. As both an artist and an activist, how do you navigate this climate of increasing repression? And also, what does it say about democracy?

Saeed:

Well, I mean, what it says about democracy is it's under serious threat. I think there's a complacency in this country. I think we have a lot to learn from forms of protest of our European neighbors that are far more effective. You know it's very popular to make fun of the French rioting whenever they don't like a government policy, but you know it's effective. It's a show of anger and it works. You know research shows it works, but also contemporary history shows it works. Anyway, aside from, you know, trying to encourage English people to take to the streets more, how do you navigate it?

Saeed:

I mean, this is also one of the reasons why, for me, art can be a very effective form of dissent is that art's job, or generally the approach of the artist, is to abstract a concept, and so I don't think this is the purpose of art. But one of the convenient side effects of that is you can talk about an issue but evade, you know, arrest. Some groups are now outlawed and even outside of that, you know, freedom of speech is severely being criminalized. But when I make work that's abstracted, in a way it gives me a form of freedom because I can speak to my community and people who want to organize and resist. They understand what that film means or what that image means or what that piece of sound means. But again, I think our responsibility is not just in the production of the work, but in the the entire process who we're working with, where our funding is coming from, where the film is shown and, like you said, absolutely the fact that you know one of the things I'm grateful for. I mean, it sounds strange to say I'm grateful for what's happened over the past two years, but it's been an incredible. It's been a perfect embodiment of this phrase we didn't liberate Palestine, palestine liberated us. If you're familiar with that phrase, you know on a personal level, this is not about me, but I'm just going to talk personally.

Saeed:

For a second level and this is not about me, but I'm just going to talk personally for a second it has completely freed me from this really rigid framework I've had my entire career, which is how do I get this form of funding? How do I get this institution to like me and show my work? How do I secure a premiere in this festival? How am I going to win this award so that I get a high profile? I don't give a fuck about any of that anymore. I could not care less.

Saeed:

And the moment when something like the Cannes Film Festival passes me by and I don't even notice that it's on, I realize how free I've become from the really pathetic, cowardly institutions of cinema in this country, internationally, and this entire system they've created, which has absolutely no relationship to cinema the way I see it. So, yeah, I'm much more interested in collectively making a film and projecting it on the side of a prison than I am now in showing at a major film festival where I know that over the years, those film festivals that have been happy to exploit my suffering and my risk-taking and my friends' suffering and risk-taking as Palestinians and to build their brand as being risk-taking and showing cutting-edge films and political cinema, and friends of mine from Gaza whose families have been killed and who the people in their films have been killed, they're more than happy to use that to produce their brand. And then the second we ask for one statement of solidarity. They betray us. So why am I going to be interested in giving them my film again?

Host:

Completely. How do you sustain hope and creativity in the face of ongoing struggle?

Saeed:

I think we have to look at hope as a proactive process rather than just a default setting. It's not that I feel hope, it's that I have to sustain hope or I create hope. I feel very lucky in that I don't have an issue with being creative in times of crisis. You know, I've always looked at cinema and now other things.

Saeed:

I mean I'm doing sort of live performance art stuff, fun, silly stuff, kind of like. I mentioned stuff that's silly enough that it seems inoffensive but is actually very radical. You know, karaoke with revolutionary speeches, for example, something we did at a festival last year. I've always tried to transform grief and pain into work and so I don't have that issue. I mean, of course there are times when I just can't do any work, but I've never lost hope. I've never lost faith in the role of the artist in general and me in particular, making work, Because when I watch something and it affects me so profoundly, I understand at a minimum that's valuable On a social level. That's valuable Because if I feel that way about it, there must be other people who feel that way about it, and that's how I make films. If I think this is important or interesting, I just assume other people are going to see the world, like me, I hope. But I think what's difficult is sustaining only art, which is why, for me, the activism is also essential, because there are various reasons for making art and I think I've kind of tried to explain them now. But how am I going to stop the genocide now? This is why, as an activist, I was interested in materially breaking the supply chain of Israeli weapons. So I think for me I have to do both at the same time and I have to make each of them in relationship to the other. So you know the way that my art is a form of resistance and protest, the whole process of making it. I hope at least that's the intention.

Saeed:

I also feel like my activism is a form of creating a narrative, of building a sort of continuity, because the activism in Palestinian cinema in particular is not just to make a good film or a moving film, but it's that you're building the idea of continuity of a culture that has existed for hundreds of years and will continue to exist. And one of the ways that we assert the continuity of a culture is the artwork that we create. The continuity of a culture is the artwork that we create. I'm always inspired, because my mother was an archaeologist, and the idea that artwork creates a historical legacy that you can dig up in a thousand years' time and reinterpret.

Saeed:

I find that absolutely fascinating Now when we look online and we find clips from films of the Palestine Film Unit, because actually the archive was stolen in 1982 by the Israelis and the Israeli military and they still have it. But occasionally you find a clip online and for me that's like a process of archaeology and it's fascinating to see and try and understand how it was made in context and why those images were chosen in that sound and why that language. But what I also find incredible is when you look at a work you know, from 1972 for example, and the militants in that film are saying exactly the same things we're saying today and dealing with exactly the same issues we're dealing with today. So you understand a continuity of culture and a continuity of struggle, meaning we're inheriting that resistance from the people who've started building the movement themselves.

Host:

Thank you. I think probably the most impactful part of the film in Strange Cities of Familia when he's buying the tickets and he says the line, your country isn't in our drop down. For me that was the most powerful part of the film that's very kind.

Saeed:

No, I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, in a way, that line. That line is sort of you know, it's almost like this phrase the banality of evil. That line is about the systematic erasure of Palestine, even in the most subtle ways, and there's a connection there. For me not to put blame on the character of the travel agent, because he's sort of blameless, right, he's, in a way, dealing with a machine in front of him that doesn't recognize Palestine.

Saeed:

But this idea that the individual is waiting for the bureaucracy to tell them what's right or wrong is a situation we still find ourselves in now, when, you know, for two years, british journalists have been saying well, journalists and politicians, well, we can't use the word genocide because it's not officially recognized as a genocide yet. So, aside from completely abandoning their own moral obligations, it's also practically an absolutely insane thing to say because, for example, the Armenian genocide is not legally recognized by the British government. Does that mean every one of these people denies the Armenian genocide? You know, if they're waiting for the ICJ to make a ruling, that's a five to ten year process. So are they waiting for half a million people to be dead and then, in 2030, the ICJ to say we find Israel guilty, and then they're going to use the term. Well, what's the point? They're not historians. If they were a historian, I might at least understand that as an excuse, but they're journalists dealing with the information they're facing today. So there is this profound cowardice in the journalistic class, in the political class in this country, to defer their moral responsibilities to the bureaucracy and they don't even know who it is. Because they can't tell you.

Saeed:

Who are they waiting to recognize this genocide If they say it's not legally recognized as a genocide? Almost no genocides are legally recognized, and even the ones that are, it's fascinating to look at the details. I mean, I was just listening to a podcast about this the other day. So, for example, Srebrenica was legally recognized as a genocide, but the ICJ fell short of recognizing the perpetrators. So in other words, they didn't say Serbian forces committed the genocide. They just said there was a genocide committed. We're not going to pin the blame on anyone. So even the political process, the legal process, the most robust legal process we have in this world, is completely flawed. So who are they waiting for to tell them they don't know Really what they're waiting for? Is there to be no risk to their careers. They'll agree with whatever direction the wind is blowing, because these are people whose priority is not the defense of the defenseless. Their priority is their careers, the advancement of their careers.

Host:

Finally, for listeners, creatives, activists, filmmakers, who may feel powerless in the face of everything in front of us right now, what message would you like to give them, and almost.

Saeed:

What action would you like to encourage? Oh, I don't really do. I don't really do messages I mean. But I'll tell you why. Because there are dozens of ways of engaging as an activist in in the resistance, but there are also dozens of reasons why that may not be possible for individuals.

Saeed:

I'm very happy to blame politicians and journalists, etc. But as individuals, I cannot encourage someone, for example, to chain themselves to the gates of a weapons factory if they are poor and caring for a parent, for example. So while that might be an incredible movement, for legal reasons I can't say it. And for ethical reasons, on an individual basis, there are very good reasons for people not to take part in something like that If your immigration status is can't afford to be arrested, whatever it may be. But what I think is the most important thing is that within everyone's sphere of life, that they are constantly resisting in whatever way they can resist. So there are always people willing to take more risk. There are always people who can't take that much more risk. But the movement succeeds when every aspect of society is pushing in the same direction. So that's also a reason why I don't undermine things like March.

Saeed:

Right, there are people now in the movement who say you can have half a million people in the streets every week, but the genocide hasn't finished, hasn't ended, we haven't stopped the genocide.

Saeed:

Or I've been writing to my mp for years and they ignore me. Or I've boycotted spotify now, for example, because the ceo invests in israel weapons, but it makes no difference. Or these celebrities have made a statement, but it has no material effect. On an individual basis, yes, if we analyze each of these individually, we could very easily say it has no effect, just as people have told me they believe chaining yourselves to a weapons factory has no effect. Fine, we can critique those. But if every one of those things is happening at the same time and the tide becomes impossible to ignore and that's also contributing to isolating Israel culturally, financially, politically, then eventually it's going to have an effect that's irreversible, in the same way that apartheid South Africa required decades of work from all aspects of society. So I think the most important thing for people to commit themselves to is to find their form of resistance and commit to it and accelerate it when it needs to be accelerated as you said, different people, different backgrounds, they can't commit to the same that a wealthier white british person can do.

Host:

So I think it's really important to acknowledge that whatever is possible for you, because some people might feel that they're not doing enough just by virtue they can't do anymore because it might threaten their status in the country. Many things.

Saeed:

I think it's super important yeah, and also, you know, if you, you know, there, I know many people who wish they could do something else. They could, they wish they could do something more but they can't. But there are always ways to support those people who are doing something more. So, you know, I would love to go do medical work in Gaza, for example, but I'm not a doctor and that's a risk that I'm not willing to take because I might be killed. But I can support people who do, whether it's financially or publicly, or politically or socially, whatever it may be. So, you know, not everybody has to be there, and in fact I don't think that would be the most effective form of resistance if everybody was there. But everybody should be able to do something and commit to that form of something. And it does require. You know, I don't want to give everyone too easy a ride.

Saeed:

I do think that this time in our lives because it's an extreme situation and we are staring down the barrel of a gun every day, not just the genocide in Gaza, but also the threat to democracy and freedom of speech in this country that everything we talk about, everything we teach children in school and we learn in the civics class and we study in university and the films we make about resistance heroes and whoever choose your socially acceptable hero in this country World War II, the resistance fighters in Nazi Germany, the international brigades in the Spanish Civil War, etc. Etc. You know, this is a country that loves historical heroes and if we admire their principle and we're raised and me as a Palestinian in Britain raised with a whole other level of appreciation of heroism, the entire thing is based around. If you were faced with this, what would you do? That's the whole social concept of the hero. It's designed so that when you see what they went through, you would do the same thing. So there is a barrier of fear that people have to get over. I'll put it in a more positive way, right Not to make people feel guilty. This is probably the one chance in everyone's life in this country to participate in a liberation movement. You know that's an incredible gift.

Saeed:

When I think about the liberation movements of the past, I have this incredible envy that I wish I was there. I really aspire to be that kind of person or to see it. You know, when I see photographs of people on the streets in Portugal after the peaceful revolution that threw out their fascist dictator. It just brings me to tears because it's ordinary people on the street laughing, crying and hugging each other. I wish I was there, and I know everyone has their own scene that they can look at and say I wish I was there, but that there is today, that there exists here in Britain and everybody has the opportunity to take a role in a moment like that. That 20 years from now we're going to look at photographs and either see ourselves in it or wish we were in it.

Saeed:

So there's a realization that I don't think most people have reached yet, we haven't yet understood, and I think, when the bombing is over and international diplomats and journalists are allowed into Gaza and documentaries are released, et cetera, et cetera, I don't think people are prepared for what they're going to see. That they will see the images they associate with the Holocaust, images they associate with Srebrenica, with Rwanda, with the Rohingya. You know these issues, that there's no doubt in our minds that these are wrong and unjust. They're going to see those images and they will realize soon enough that this was their never again moment. But we have to realize it now and we have to somehow overcome the barrier of fear that stops us from acting. And for me, you know what helps overcome that is well, it helps that I don't have a family. So I understand, like there are friends of mine who can't take that risk because they have children, I understand that, or they can't take a particular kind of risk, but for for me, the usual excuse, let's say I'm going to talk about very specific.

Saeed:

You know, if we're demanding that a film festival boycott Israeli delegates, official government delegates from Israel, and the film festival will say but that risks our funding, we might collapse, the film festival may not exist if we do that. And I say to them but then what is the purpose of your festival? So for me, it's realizing that these institutions have zero reason to even exist if, when faced with a genocide, they do nothing. What is an art gallery? What is the purpose If, when faced with probably the most extreme crisis of our lifetimes, we do nothing?

Saeed:

A film festival that says you know all of their material is going to say we stand up for human rights and equality and justice and we want to platform filmmakers who are challenging dictatorships, etc. Etc. And then, when they really have the opportunity to do that, they do nothing. Then the institution is useless. Let it die, let it collapse. I mean, what a small price to pay to participate in ending a genocide. You know, in 20 years are people going to say, wow, the Berlinale Festival in Germany, good thing, they denied a genocide in order to keep going. That's really what our focus should have been. Or are they going to say the scale of that genocide is unimaginable. Why didn't we do more?

Host:

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