United Screens for Palestine: Refusing to Disappear

On Sunday 3 March, Kaaitheater in Brussels is showing Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel by Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi. The film will be shown in the context of Refusing to Disappear, a series of decentralised film screenings and discussions organised by United Screens for Palestine, held in different cities and venues across Belgium to celebrate the rich legacy of Palestinian storytelling through films. It is a programme that ask us to bear witness, remember, and rage against the Israeli war on Palestine and to move collectively towards liberation, for a life in freedom and dignity for all, from the river to the sea. All proceeds from this screening will be donated to Living Stipends for Palestine, a programme aimed at providing six-month grants (with a target of USD 3,000 per grant) to professional Palestinian artists directly affected by the current crisis. Both filmmakers will be present for a Q&A after the screening.

Israeli Eyal Sivan and Palestinian Michel Khleifi worked for more than a year on a film project guided by, what they themselves call, their “blind faith”. They spent two months in the summer of 2002 travelling from the south to the north of their country. They name the road they plot on the map to complete this journey through their homeland Route 181. This virtual line follows the borders of the UN Treaty 181 which divided Palestine into two states in 1947. They let the people they encounter speak. Men, women, Israelis, Palestinians, young, old, civilians and soldiers that they come across at unguarded moments in their daily lives. They all, in their own way, evoke the boundaries that separate them from their neighbours. These boundaries are created by hills and valleys, mountains and plains, but mostly by the minds of the two peoples and in the subconscious of the two societies.

Find more information about the screening here.