Camilla Forte/Borderless Magazine/Catchlight Local/Report for AmericaNina Shoman-Dajani, executive director of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, hopes the festival uplifts Palestinians, educates allies and inspires others through art and cinema.
For 25 years, filmmakers from Palestine and around the world have submitted their work to the Chicago Palestine Film Festival (CPFF) to uplift Palestinian stories.
This year’s festival runs from April 11–25 at the Gene Siskel Film Center. It will screen over 50 films, including documentaries, shorts and features to showcase diverse Palestinian narratives, educate the public and celebrate Palestinian traditions, identity and culture.
“For us to bring Palestinian cinema and cultural events and elevate the voices of Palestinian people in Chicago through the arts gives us an opportunity to resist against erasure,” said Nina Shoman-Dajani, CPFF’s executive director.
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Borderless Magazine spoke with Shoman-Dajani to learn more about the festival, its importance to the Palestinian diaspora in Chicago and how she continues to advocate for Palestinian visibility.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you get involved in CPFF?
I am a first-generation Palestinian American. My parents immigrated from Palestine, and I grew up in a household that was very much entrenched in cultural traditions. My father was a Palestinian activist, and I always had a passion for supporting my people in Palestine.
I think my work for CPFF really comes from my passion for organizing.
I currently work as a higher education administrator at a local community college. I always felt that the arts and cinema play a really strong role in educating the public about Palestinian lived experience. As an educator, I felt it was an opportunity to bring that expertise and that background to the film festival.
What does the festival mean to Chicago’s Palestinian diaspora?
We’re the longest-running Palestinian film festival in the world. We have an opportunity to tell our stories in the heart of Chicago’s theater district, which helps us attract diverse audiences.
We’ve found that our space is much more than a film festival. It’s a welcoming space.
It’s a space where people come to find comfort, make new friends and ask questions, while celebrating Palestinian identity and traditions.
The last few years, in particular, have been a difficult time for our community due to an ongoing genocide. Coming to the film festival allows you to feel some comfort and be around people who are not just Palestinian but also allies of the Palestinian people.
There’s something for everyone here. You walk away with learning a bit more about the filmmakers and what it took to make that film.
We have all these beautiful things that we’re able to share on the screen and through the arts that we don’t get a chance to see because, historically, Arabs and Palestinians in general have been portrayed in a negative light.
We laugh. We express joy. We have cultural traditions that are beautiful. We love our music, and we love to dance.
How does CPFF bring visibility to Palestinian art and identity?
This film festival shares the Palestinian experience with the public in a way that you don’t typically see in mainstream media or in Hollywood films.
This whole thing is so much bigger than us. We see this work as resistance against the attempted erasure of our people.
In Gaza, cultural institutions, museums, archives and universities have been decimated, and so this work is critical, because we cannot depend on mainstream media or Hollywood to tell our stories. It’s very risky for filmmakers in Palestine to put their names out to the world and make films.
For those filmmakers making films on the ground in Palestine, they’re enduring a military occupation. For some Palestinian filmmakers, these films were years in the making. Even when Palestinian films are made in the diaspora, it’s very challenging to find funding and space.
We uplift filmmakers who are considered emerging filmmakers.
For filmmakers who don’t have anywhere else to screen their films or who are rejected from other film festivals around the world, we provide an inclusive space. This is a labor of love for us.
We want to educate the public about the Palestinian cause and encourage them to make a change, especially those of us who live here in the United States.
What do you hope people take away from this year’s festival?
We want people to leave with a sense of obligation to uplift the Palestinian narrative.
People should leave feeling inspired by the resilience of the Palestinian people, who, despite everything they have endured, are still making films.
When filmmakers bring their work to our screen, we want people walking away with a sense of not only inspiration from them in creating this film, but also a sense of appreciation for what they were able to experience.
Tara Mobasher is Borderless Magazine’s newsletter writer and reporter. Email Tara at [email protected].
