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Falastin Film Festival 2025: reading and taking action

Mohamed

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Lighthouse is proud to be partnering with Falastin Film Festival (FFF) for a second year in a row as the festival’s booksellers! The festival takes place 15-19th May at the Scottish Storytelling Centre.

As booksellers, we know that only actual material change will dismantle the Israeli occupation and bring Palestinian liberation. Books won’t save lives, but there is a reason that the occupation deliberately targets archives, artists, bookshops, universities, arts centres and publishing houses. Israel knows that when Palestinians represent their own narratives it rattles the lie the occupation has built up. In other words, it states, in anger, joy, sorrow, revolution and heartbreak, فلسطين باقية. Reading can be an act of resistance if it mobilises us to:

  • Protest arms manufacturers in our community
  • Read up on and abide by the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement
  • Attend SCALP know-your-rights training to learn how to keep yourselves and your community safe during protests—come into the shop and pick up bust cards!
  • Join a writing circle that sends letters to imprisoned comrades and show up to support arrestees at court
  • Message your local arts organization to demand that they endorse the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel: template email here; sign the open letter to Glasgow Film Theatre.

As with last year’s festival, we asked the directors featured in the program if they had any book recommendations that were formative for their thinking, or that served as an inspiration for their projects. We got incredibly varied responses that spanned from classics such as Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa, to the tender and poetic Among the Almond Trees by Hussein Barghouti and the ever-relevant The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.

Some of these are not currently available in the UK, so we haven't been able to link to them in the list below, but we do encourage you to seek them out if you can:

Alongside the filmmaker’s recommendations, Lighthouse booksellers have added their own recommendations inspired by the program to the list below.

A bit more about Falastin Film Festival, in the words of the organisers:

FFF is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit collective of Palestinians and allies dedicated to bringing Palestinian art to Scottish audiences. Palestinians are often summed up as an ‘occupied people,’ and spoken for, though they have unending stories to tell.

Using cinema, primarily, as a tool of resistance, we strive to decolonize the narrative and equip audiences with historical context. We want to build community while celebrating Palestinian art and culture through cinema, music, cuisine, and other storytelling mediums.

Scotland’s exposure to Palestinian history, art, and culture remains rather limited. We hope to contribute to filling this gap, using both classical and contemporary cinema, primarily, but not exclusively.

In so doing, we hope to provide a vibrant representation that encompasses the geographic, linguistic, and experiential diversity of the Palestinian people, globally, all the while educating our audiences on the more than 100 years of zionist occupation endured.

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