Origin: Unknown | Documentary | Director: Ursula Biemann | 40 minutes

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Ursula Biemann 2008 docu 40 min.

This fascinating, highly stylised film essay explores the logic of the
refugee camp as a form of extraterritoriality ruled by International Law.
Over some 60 years, millions of Palestinians have created a civil life
within the restricted space of the camp: a space designed as an interim
solution. Biemann turns to the state of these societies to query a cluster
of ideas (legal, symbolic, urban, mythological, historical) surrounding the
idea of "the camp" in philosophy and jurisprudence. Engaging innovatively
with the thought of Giorgio Agamben, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and
others, her piece shows the "exceptional" life compelling Palestinians to
configure a distinctive, perhaps prescient, model of society and political
identity that transcends (of necessity) the parameters of traditional
nation states. Biemann's film combines eye opening interviews with found
and documentary footage to convey a conceptual as well as an aesthetic
sense of the "conditions of exception" that describe this postnational mode
of being.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7owONQFbl4

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View trailer