Cinema Of The Dispossessed: Utopia In The Works Of Larissa Sansour

“Where should we go after the last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky?” writes the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in his poem After the last sky; to the moon, to a new world, to a new history answers Larissa Sansour in her trilogy of science fiction. Although Palestinian Cinema remains largely dependent on international film support funds for production, some filmmakers are now turning to experimental digital cinema as an alternative way of production. This feature will look at Larissa Sansour’s trilogy: A Space Exodus, Nation Estate and In the Future they Ate from the Finest Porcelain to explore how she has succeeded -to some extent – in avoiding censorship, unlike many other Palestinian filmmakers.

Larissa Sansour is a photographer, visual artist and filmmaker, her filmography consists of many documentaries and short films often depending on digital computer-generated cinematography. Sansour’s trilogy of science fiction explores both the utopian and dystopian realms. Evidently, the land of Palestine has been written as a utopian space in both religious scriptures and cultural texts alike. However, Sansour’s works explore more globally shared cultural and existential anxieties which makes them part of the twenty first century Anthropocene imaginary that relies heavily on evolution, accelerationism and cosmological terrorism.

A Space Exodus (2009)

Albeit short in length, the film has a philosophical depth lying beneath its fraudulent simplicity. The film is a carefully crafted Palestinian re-narration of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; the new adaptation of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing is potently noticeable as the Palestinian protagonist triumphantly plants a Palestinian flag on the moon announcing “a small step for a Palestinian, a giant leap for mankind”. The embroidery on the astronaut’s suit, the Arabized version of the score from A Space Odyssey, the Palestinian flag, the brief communications with Jerusalem all create a palimpsest of signs which is strategically used to symbolize the endurance of the umbilical cord tying the Palestinian diaspora to the homeland. Through this depiction of interplanetary diaspora, the painful nostalgia to planet earth is an amplification of the melancholic statelessness of Palestinian refugees.

Despite the sympathy of the global public opinion with the Palestinian diaspora, Palestinians still suffer from a systematic historical delegitimization which has resulted in a growing alienation of land (by confiscating it from Palestinian owners for settlement colonies) and of people (due to the self-imposed exile and forced exile in other cases). The short film’s thematic choice of extra-terrestrial alienation amplifies the agony of exile. Whether the film propagates hope or despair is contingent upon the interpretation of the spectators. Ending with the protagonist drifting away into space, we are left wondering whether it was a selfless act; an effacement of individuality in the face of the communal interest, or a way of expressing the intellectual, emotional and political exacerbation with the hope for a Palestinian future. Hence, albeit short in length and simple in narration, the film presents many layered intricate symbolisms of existential anxieties.

Nation Estate (2012)

The short film presents an imagined utopia where Palestinians live in a vertical state within a microcosmic skyscraper that is meant to substitute Palestine. In addition to its visual patchwork of signs and symbols that represent the national belonging to Palestine, the film brims with satire and criticism of colonialism and capitalism alike.

The film begins with a tunnel journey into the vertical state of Palestine, a journey that openly criticizes the biopolitics of border security which has incessantly violated the Palestinian body by turning it into a proxy of inspection, intrusion and analysis. The politics of border security in Palestine have surpassed the normal limits of inspection to now become an endeavour of identity writing; the heavy and meticulous body policing of Palestinians becomes a means of configuration that helps taxonomize the Palestinian body within a category labelled “dangerous”.

Albeit simple in its depiction, the access to the vertical state of Palestine in the film, after an eye scan, is a luxury denied to many Palestinians whose travelling is limited due to the inspections that turn any simple journey into an arduous one. Hence, the film is politically charged with conflictual dichotomies of the Self and the radicalized and criminalized Other whose body is being constantly prohibited, scrutinized, kept behind borders, and open to being loaded with prejudice. The body striated by checkpoints is a body that is being conceptualized; forced to bearing the brunt of being a menace.

To pursue the same tone of criticism, the film castigates the rampant capitalism and its fallibility. From pre-packaged canned “Mulukhiyah” to an incarcerated olive tree within the living room, the film condemns commodity fetishism by showing the absurdity of trying to contain Palestine within a limited man-made utopia. It also shows the sad reality of the impossibility of regaining the Palestine that was once there. By representing Palestine as a utopian commodity, Sansour even problematizes Palestinian properties as an imagined futurism, a romantic fantasy of many dispossessed Palestinians who have a tradition of passing the key to their lost homes from one generation to the next one; a dream of a return.

The most powerful scene of the film, in my opinion, is the one where the protagonist looks out of her window to see the real Dome of the Rock, distant and besieged by the wall of the West Bank. This scene, which in my opinion is the climax of the film, captures the agony of the diaspora; of being torn apart between two different places, two different realities.

In the Future they Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2015)

The last film of Sansour’s science fiction trilogy explored in this piece – co-directed by Søren Lind – offers a conceptual creolization of philosophy, archival works and visual arts. The narrative grapples with the idea of archaeological and narratological entitlement to the land of Palestine, thus capturing the essence of the Middle East conflict. Through the protagonist’s discussion with who appears to be her psychiatrist we discover that the protagonist is the leader of what she calls a militia conducting “narrative terrorism” by systematically planting porcelain plates in an unrecognizable desert as proof for the existence of her people and her people’s entitlement to that land in the future.

The militia is thus creating a nation through myth as the protagonist explains “we are depositing facts in the ground for future archaeologists to excavate. These facts will confirm the existence of the people we are positing”. The protagonist who seemingly represents a nation that refuses to be erased silently, explains her endeavours of encoding artifacts to legitimize her people’s entitlement to the land in the future. Thus, promising not only futuristic property, but futuristic identity.

Certainly, questions of heritage, futurity, ancestry, memory, and most importantly nation building, have previously been predominantly relegated to realist productions; however, resorting to Science Fiction not only liberates the filmmakers, but broadens the scope of interpretations as well. Through their postcolonial mythopoeic imaginary, Larissa Sansour’s films merge questions pertaining to postcolonial fiction with globally shared cultural and existential anxieties to produce novel malleable representations of utopia/dystopia.

It is important to mention that both Sansour and Lind suffered from accusations of making propagandist films. In 2011, for example, the French clothing chain Lacoste forcefully withdrew Larissa Sansour’s photograph (from her film Nation Estate) which was shortlisted for the €25,000 Lacoste Elysee Prize that is awarded by the Swiss Musee de l’Elysee with sponsorship from Lacoste. Sansour issued a statement clarifying that they branded her work as “too pro-Palestinian”. Hence, albeit unequivocally steeped in the poetics of science fiction, Sansour’s works, like all Palestinian films, are vulnerable to ready-made prejudiced labels. The reception and movement of Palestinian films is circumscribed through the politically influenced policing of criticism, just like the movement of Palestinians themselves is limited through border biopolitics which takes us back to the starting point: “Where should we go after the last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky?”