Shashat Woman Cinema, a non-governmental organization with a main focus of building the capacity of young Palestinian women filmmakers, has finished producing seven films documenting the diaries of young women filmmakers during the COVID-19 quarantine period, with support and funding from the CFD Foundation.
The seven films were filmed using mobile phones and titled “Covid 20” with a total duration of 18:56 minutes, by seven young women filmmakers – two from Gaza, and three from the West Bank. The sixth is studying in the United States of America, while the seventh would like to return to Hebron from Turkey with her young son.
In “Emptiness” film, for Fidaa Ataya from Kafr Nima, who is stuck in quarantine in New Hampshire in the United State, where she studies, Fidaa expresses the state of endless emptiness that she lives in, where nature is the only witness to the longing and missing for her mother, where “the night is long as an endless silk stick, and when it is finished, the worm comes and runs again.”
As for the anxiety and fear of Athar Al-Jadaili from Gaza in “Appointment” Film, and her hesitation in going to the medical clinic to do a blood test required for her young girl, she ends up taking the risk and goes out with the girl from the house during quarantine to collide with what she did not expect.
While the fear of Amjad Habareeh from Jenin in “All Routine” film is to become like a computer, which was her accompanying facility during her study, she only receives and sends information only like inanimate things without feeling, and her concern is only to survive.
As for the joy and arrangement of wedding and Henna party for Mayssa AlShaer from Jenin, which was postponed in “When is the Wedding!” film, the filmmaker finds herself unable to complete the simplest matters related to her wedding as a result of the closure, such as choosing her wedding dress, or planning her honeymoon and travel, all this leaving her stuck looking for an answer to her question, “Is the wedding going to be or not?”
From the delayed joy of Mayssa, we see the frustration and blackness in “Messages” by Alaa Al-Desouki from Gaza, where night and day become an extension of each other without borders.
As for the waiting of Fidaa Naser, who resides in Turkey, to visit her family in Hebron with her young son to have fun under the sky of her country, it became an “impossible visit”, and her son’s world is only ed to what he sees from the window.
Dina Amin in “The Moment” Film gives us the most important lesson from this time passing in our lives, which is stopped in quarantine by realizing what she was losing before the quarantine when she was living her life like a marathon, without realizing the value of life and what is around and the surrounding people like her family.
