“From 1956 to 1973, as Borhan Alaouié and his team filmed the movie Kafr Kassem, one wonders what remains of the massacre that shared its name? How this event can be represented and used to support the struggle of the Arab peoples against their oppressors, particularly the Palestinian people? Whatever remains of an event defined as a massacre, recorded as trauma in the collective memory of the Arab world, and condensed into the resonant echo of a name—Kafr Kassem—a name that has become legend, poem, or myth? How have the layers of narratives surrounding this massacre, the traces of memory, and the countless retellings shaped its essence, as it has been repeatedly described, unfolded, and reiterated? These are stratifications, entanglements of words and facts, yet the foundation endures. (...)
"We did not want to create a bloody spectacle, as bourgeois artists tend to do; we wanted to make this massacre meaningful," Borhan Alaouié declared (...) From that point on, the challenge seemed to lie in this question: how to transform blood into a symbol, to make it a force? But first, a symbol of what? And, for the enemy, before it became blood, what was Kafr Kassem a symbol of?”
Jean Narboni, in “Le sang changé en signe” (Kafr Kassem), Cahiers du cinéma nº256, February - March 1975
- Duration: 118’
- Production year: 1975
- Country: SY
- Language: AR Subtitles: EN
