Kings and Extras
Palestine | 2004 | 1h02 | Documentary The films of the PLO Media Unit were supposed to show a self-determined image of Palestinian reality – and they went missing during the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. In a “road-movie” from Palestine to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, the director Azza El-Hassan follows the contradicting and confusing clues as to the whereabouts of the lost archive. The increasingly absurd search finally leads her to a martyr’s graveyard, where the films are said to be buried and where, for obvious reasons, no one is willing to dig. While Azza’s search for lost images leads her down various dead ends, she is confronted with new clues and starts to construct her own story. The film reflects the situation in the Middle East – a failed revolution, the problematic relationship with the Arab neighbours, the question of a Palestinian identity today. Azza El-Hassan shows myths, life stories and life lies, the personal effects of defeat and loss. She even brings some humour to the tragedy of the situation – to which she simultaneously feels a sense of belonging and opposition. A film by Azza El-Hassan Azza El-Hassan was born in 1971 in Amman, the first exile of her Palestinian family, who fled again to Lebanon after Black September and had to leave everything behind a third time, after the Israeli invasion, to return to Amman. After studying film and TV in Scotland and England, she worked for satellite TV in Dubai. In 1996, she went to Palestine to shoot her first documentary, “Arab women speak out”. She decided to stay on in Ramallah, where she works as a freelance filmmaker. Between 1996 and 2007, she shot several documentaries including “Title deeds from Moses” (1998), a film about Israeli settlements around Jerusalem, “The place” (2000), “3cm less” (2002), “Kings and extras” (2004), “Always, look them in the eyes” (2007) and ”The unbearable presence of Asmahan“ (2014). These films have been produced and shown by several international TV channels and at numerous festivals, where three of his films have won awards.
