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FALESTEEN

This performance film was created in collaboration with a community of disabled people living in a refugee camp in Palestine, where I lived in 2019. The film was directed and shot by a group of men who became disabled as a result of the Israeli occupation. A young man I was living with conducted interviews with the participants, and their stories shaped the direction of the work. In accordance with their wishes, those interviews are not included or shared publicly.

In the first segment, a father and son reenact the father's psychological landscape. After enduring twelve years of imprisonment and torture, he now lives with schizophrenia. Together they perform the invisible weight of memory, trauma, and survival.

In the second segment, a man reenacts two visions he experienced while in a coma after being shot in the head during a protest, an injury that left the left side of his body permanently paralyzed. In one vision, he becomes a martyr. In the other, he stands in defense of his people armed only with stones—the enduring symbol of Palestinian resistance.

In the final segment, the men walk through the refugee camp carrying those same stones balanced on their heads before arriving at a pose inspired by the work of Palestinian cartoonist Naji Salim Hussain Al-Ali. Assassinated after being shot in the neck, Al-Ali's drawings remain among the most enduring visual expressions of Palestinian resistance. The performance concludes by invoking that legacy, suggesting that resistance continues beyond the body and beyond death.

Free Palestine.

*There's anonymity here in order to keep the community safe*

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Image created in collaboration with Imad Abu Shtayyah

Washington DC, 2024

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WE ARE WORTHY OF LIFE

Three-month self-directed residency and short film/interview series created with anonymous Refugee Camp, West Bank, Palestine, 2019

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