Activiteit
SG - Documentary: Beyond the Frontlines
Throughout the series Normalising the Abnormal, we have taken different approaches to better understand the mechanisms at play in the sense of alienation and saturation many experience in a tumultuous world.
About Beyond the Frontlines
We close off the series with a unique documentary, Beyond the Frontlines by French cineast Alexandra Dols. Her award-winning film is an exceptional case study of the professional experience and writings of the East Jerusalem based psychiatrist, Dr. Samah Jabr. The documentary traces Dr. Jabr’s work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories where she shares the normalisation of the abnormal from a very different perspective; the states of mind amid her Palestinian patients. The private conversations with the specialist are presented in a multi-voiced movie, featuring interviews and columns which are intertwined together with poetic escapes making the viewer privy to the invisible dimensions of occupation narrated by the expert specialist. It is a unique window into cognitive load resilience strategies,the de-colonisation of the mind beyond the front lines and, the ways in which Palestinians have come to cope and hope.
Warning: This film contains scenes that may be unsuitable for young or sensitive audiences
Beyond the Frontlines, Alexandra Dols, Hybrid Pulse – France, 2017, 113 minutes, English subtitles
Free entrance for WUR-card holders. You can reserve at movieW under ’10-zittenkaart’.
About lecture series Normalising the Abnormal
Developments which keep overtaking each other on the world stage have been challenging our emotional stamina and pressed hard on our moral compasses. It has even led many to tune out of following the news. This series explores psychological and social numbing which has crept into processing what we know and how we feel whilst moral alarm bells may be blaring inside many heads and hearts. Studium Generale invites you to unpack the personal and collective mechanisms at play in normalising the abnormal.
About Alexandra Dols
Alexandra Dols is an author, director and producer. She cofounded Hybrid Pulse and within it, coproduced and directed several short
and two feature documentaries, MOUDJAHIDATE (2008, 75’) and BEYOND THE FRONTLINES (2017, 113’).
A contributor to French website Le cinéma est politique [Movies are politics], she has also been teaching visual literacy in a self-defense perspective in working-class neighborhoods since 2009.
Issues of power and image are a core component of her transdisciplinary work. In 2017, she co-published Dr. Samah Jabr’s first book, with French publishing house PMN Editions.
Beyond the Frontlines was successfully released in French movie theaters. It won the Sunbird Award for Best Documentary Film at the “Days of Cinema” Film Festival in Palestine.
Hybrid Pulse Association was founded in 2005 by Selma Zghidi and Alexandra Dols. It aims at assisting women with the process of writing, directing and broadcasting their audiovisual productions on the one hand, and designing visual literacy workshops on the other hand.