TRIP ALONG EXODUS
Documentary
2 hours - 2015
Producer/Director/Writer: Hind Shoufani.
Editor: Ayman Nahle.
Cinematography: Adam Shapiro, Lafi, Nick Zajicek, Hind Shoufani, Jato Smith, Raja2i Khatib, Hussam Hariri, Atilio Menendez Ferrer.
Music: Jean Madani, Bassel Abbas, Munma.
Color: Belal Hibri @Rez Visual
This is an art house feature-length documentary exploring the last 70 years of Palestinian politics seen through the prism of the life of my father, Dr Elias Shoufani, a leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, an academic writer and leftist intellectual who worked with Fateh (but was one of the leaders of the opposition to Arafat) for 20 years.
The film follows his story from being under occupation in 1948, to moving to America to get a PHD from Princeton in the 1960’s, followed by him giving up his tenured professorship to return and join the underground PLO in Beirut, where he lived for a decade till 1983, and the subsequent move to Syria and his current exile in war torn Damascus.
I had no idea what my mysterious father did when I was growing up. I knew we had bodyguards, guns in the cars and house, hushed whispers of political maneuverings and a very absent father whom I was told was a “Writer” should anyone ask. And people did ask. In my late twenties, I realized that my father had abandoned a life in academia in Ivy League Universities in the US to join the Palestinian revolution in the 1970’s, and to create an opposition to the mainstream policies of settlement that Arafat adopted. I began to search for answers to his story, to understand this choice.
I tried to recreate the past 70 years of Palestinian history using archive, family photos/8mm films, macro footage, glitter, interviews and multi media formats in a video-art style.
Set in Damascus- featuring Amman, Beirut, the Galilee (Israel) and Washington- it is a tragic family story that reveals the reality of the leading political initiators of the secular PLO movement which has failed.
The hunt for answers on what my father did took five years, a lot of hard work and nine different cities. I located old friends and family who had been cut off, established a new relationship with my difficult father, and finally came to an understanding of where I come from, and what it is I am meant to be doing in this world.
