Ghost Hunting (2017)

Director Raed Andoni places a newspaper advertisement in Ramallah. He is looking for former inmates of the Moskobiya interrogation centre in Jerusalem. In his ad he asks that the men should also have experience as craftsmen, architects or actors. After a casting process that almost feels like role play, he arranges for a replica of the centre’s interrogation rooms and cells to be built to scale inside a hall – under close supervision from the former inmates and based on their memories. In this realistic setting the men subsequently re-enact their interrogations, discuss details about the prison, and express the humiliation they experienced during their detention.

Using techniques that are reminiscent of the so-called ‘theatre of the oppressed,’ they work together to dramatise their real-life experiences. Their reconstruction brings long repressed emotions and undealt with trauma to the fore. Working on the film takes its toll on the men – both physically and mentally. The director also appears in front of the camera; not only is he creating a stage for his protagonists, he is also coming to terms with his own fragmented memories of imprisonment in Moskobiya thirty years previously.

Ghost Hunting is a 2017 Palestinian documentary film directed by Raed Andoni, starring Ramzi Maqdisi. It was awarded the best documentary at the 2017 Berlinale. Also, it was selected as the Palestinian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards.

Source: The Palestine Film Institute

Read the introductory chapter to Ramzy Baroud’s latest book These Chains Will be Broken: Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press, 2020) in our Books section (link also attached here). The book’s foreword is written by Khalida Jarrar, Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and a prominent figure of Palestinian resistance who has been detained on multiple occasions by Israeli forces. The book is also graced by an afterword from Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur “on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories” and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. The illustrations in These Chains Will be Broken have been made by Dalia Alkayyali.

This introduction to the book, presented here by Baroud, is titled “Palestine’s Organic Intellectuals”, and is published online for the first time as a preview to Ramzy’s larger work, courtesy of the publisher, Clarity Press. True to its title, this introduction begins with Antonio Gramsci’s definition of “organic intellectual”, aptly contextualizing the condition and role of Palestinian prisoners in their consistent transgenerational “anti-colonial struggle”, as their stories, narratives and modes of resistance are presented in Baroud’s book for the greater world to acknowledge. Click on the visual link below to read the introduction and get access to relevant information about the book and its author.

Book Introduction: These Chains Will be Broken (Clarity Press, 2020) – by Ramzy Baroud

We are delighted to present the introduction to Ramzy Baroud’s latest book entitled “These Chains Will be Broken: Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, 2020). The book’s foreword is written by Khalida Jarrar, Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and a prominent figure of Palestinian resistance who has been detained on multiple occasions by Israeli forces.