Hidden Haifa (2024)
Origin: Palestine | Documentary | Director: Nizar Hassan | 00 minutes
(From https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/hidden-haifa-palestinian-memory-archival-evidence-how)
The film starts one evening at the port of Haifa with Hassan's reading of Haifa Diary: Reminiscences of an Octogenarian (2014) by Abdul-Latif Kanafani (1927-2019).
Kanafani was born and raised in Haifa before the Nakba. Then, eventually, like millions of other dispossessed Palestinians, he travelled far and wide before writing the memoirs of his childhood and early youth in Haifa towards the end of his life. (Hassan confirmed to me that Kanafani is not immediately related to the renowned Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani, though they come from the same extended family.)
Kanafani's memoir becomes the starting point of Hassan's documentary. He takes a copy of this memoir in English and another book Kanafani wrote in Arabic, 15 Shari' al-Burj (15 Burj Street), and travels throughout the city talking to Palestinians who help him reconstruct their collective memories of Haifa.
They visit cemeteries - climbing over walls and lifting tombstones to read what is there to discover. Hassan later researches the Hebrew and Arabic archives of the city and reads through boxes of old documents, poring over maps and old weapons museums. Here, Hassan acts as both a filmmaker and archivist.
In his journey, minute after minute, a hidden but tangible Palestine reveals itself through this reconstructed history of Haifa - in Hassan's mind, right in front of his camera as it curiously probes his face, his figure, and his travel from one street of his homeland to another.
Whether in Arabic, Hebrew, or English, the history of Palestine is present and uncovered once Hassan is done with it. This is the real history - a history from below - that translates collective Palestinian memory into archival evidence and a documentary film that reveals the pain and power of cinema.
Hassan, with his greying beard, bespectacled face, quiet determination, and disarming sense of humour, is mesmerised by the trove of evidence of Palestinian dispossession.
Needless to say, as we watch Hassan following the memory of Kanafani, we think of the better-known Ghassan Kanafani and his classic novella, Returning to Haifa, which Kassem Hawal, a Lebanese filmmaker, turned into a film in 1982.
Years later, the Iranian filmmaker Seifollah Dad's The Survivor (1995) was also based on the same novella. There have been other adaptations of the classic piece in other mediums, including recently for the stage by Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi.
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