To Commune 12: Chikako Yamashiro, Mohammad Malas

土の人 (Mud Man) | Chikako Yamashiro, Japan, 23 min, 2017

Migrating birds splat droppings on mud figures lying expressionless on the ground. One man awakens, and tunes in to the words of a poem audible from within the falling matter. The seeds in the bird droppings are made of poetry. The mud people awaken and begin to recite this verse. The man digs a hole with the intention of planting the seed, but falls to the bottom of the hole, as the earth rumbles. There he finds a passage connecting to a time and place in a different dimension, and drawn by the growing sound of gunfire, finds himself in a battleground. A war of past memory looms into view on a screen in mid-air, its light shining on the man. The mud people take on the memories of war shown to them by the seeds. “This is no place to live.” In order to choose the future, they search repeatedly for an alternative way out. Revolutionary “verse” can be heard like tiny breaths of wind in the hole. Through the final exit they arrive at, lilies bloom riotously. The mud people awaken, their hands stretched to the sky, as beautiful as the flowers, and the air resounds with a rhythmic clapping. 

al-Manam (The Dream) | Mohammad Malas, Syria/Palestine, 45 min, 1987

Filmed in 1981-82, The Dream is composed of interviews with Palestinian refugees. Mohamad Malas asks people in the refugee camps of Sabra, Shatila, Bourj el-Barajneh, Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidieh in Lebanon about their dreams at night. Gathering the dream testimonies of children, women, old people, and militants, a pattern emerges. The dreams always converge on Palestine: a woman recounts her dreams about winning the war; a fedayeen of bombardment and martyrdom; and one man tells of a dream where he meets and is ignored by Gulf emirs. During filming, Malas lived in the camps and conducted interviews with more than 400 people. In 1982, the Sabra and Shatila massacres occurred, taking the lives of several people he interviewed, and he stopped working on the project. He returned to it in 1986 and edited the many hours of footage gathered into this 45 minute film, released in 1987.

With poetry reading by Zakariya Amataya, ‘จินตนาการสีขาว,’ composed in response to the works in the programme.