Back to selection
Permission to Narrate: Narrative Sovereignty in Documentary
Suhad Babaa, Jess Devaney, Tracy Rector and Zaina Bseiso The following is an edited transcript of the panel discussion “Permission to Narrate: Narrative Sovereignty in Documentary,” which followed a September 13 screening of No Other Land at the Camden International Film Festival. Moderated by Suhad Babaa (executive director, JustVision), the conversation featured CIFF programmer Zaina Bseiso, filmmaker and 4th World Media Lab founder Tracy Rector, and Jess Devaney (founder and president, Multitude Films). Using the film and Edward Said’s concept of “permission to narrate” as a starting point, the panelists explore the challenges of solidarity and co-authorship in the context of dominant Western media narratives that often fail to give Palestinians the power to tell their own stories. (A fifth panelist, the Palestinian writer and poet Mohammed el Kurd, was ultimately unable to travel to the festival, but his contributions also inspired the framing of this discussion.)
Babaa: As a little bit of background, Just Vision is a team of filmmakers, journalists and human rights advocates, and we have a laser-sharp focus on filling a media gap on Israel-Palestine. We do that through documentary filmmaking, investigative journalism, and we couple that with strategic audience engagement campaigns. I’ve had the deep honor of producing and executive producing our latest films, Boycott and Naila and the Uprising. And importantly, for tonight’s screening of No Other Land, I am the co-publisher of Local Call, a Hebrew-language news outlet where Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham are both extraordinary journalists breaking stories, including the investigative reporting that you might have all seen around Israel’s surveillance of the ICC and ICJ that has made and sparked waves around the world, as well as the ongoing reporting around Masafer Yatta.
As we were preparing for our conversation, we thought it was fitting to harken back to Edward Said. Edward Said, for those of you who are unfamiliar with his work, was a philosopher, a political activist, a scholar, and he wrote a profound essay called “Permission to Narrate” back in 1984 in response to, at the time, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon during the Lebanon War. In that piece, he describes the various fact-finding missions that were organizing themselves to investigate war crimes and specifically speaks to one commission, a British investigation that was launched to understand to what extent and what degree Israel was committing ethnocide and genocide in Lebanon at the time. Despite having a massive body of facts that emerges out of these fact-finding missions, his essay raises the question: Why was it? Why is it that Western countries like the U.S. in particular, despite international audiences and communities and governments being widely concerned by Israel’s behavior in Israel-Palestine, failed to acknowledge that body of facts? And he goes on to speak about the importance and power of narrative, and specifically the gap that existed in western media in allowing Palestinians to narrate on their own terms what is actually happening on the ground. He concludes that with that gap, no body of facts really can penetrate the mind, and I think it really lends itself to our conversation today. I want to turn to Zaina, who is a programmer at Camden, and have you share a little bit about why No Other Land was programmed this year.
Bseiso: Obviously, the first reason is quite evident: we wanted to contextualize what’s happening in Gaza within the larger framework. Basel and Yuval, and the collective that they’re a part of who made this film, have been working on this for many years. It’s been years and years of collecting footage, because they’re also journalists and activists. In an interview, they said that they decided that this was the time to release it. They had been working on it for maybe 10 years, and this was the time to release it, to contextualize what is happening in Gaza within the larger occupation and ethnic cleansing that is happening, and to show the breadth of the violence not only within the West Bank, but also in Gaza and in Jerusalem and so on. It was important to show the cyclicality of these events, the connections between the two spaces, and to counter the narrative of, “It all started on October 7.” A big part of curation is very much context—where we are and the audiences that we’re trying to reach—and it was very important to us to bring to this audience this perspective that we are beyond this narrative.
It was also important to start contextualizing this conversation within the images that we were seeing on social media. We see people putting their bodies between a bulldozer and a house. We see the crying, we see the pain, but we don’t see the banality in between. We don’t see what it means to be in a certain subjectivity that lives under constant threat, to be in a state of fear that if you wake up tomorrow, you might not have your house anymore, and the banality of living under this situation and thinking about water, about your basic resources, the fear in being killed just because you want to create life in the place where you live and the community that you live with.
On the creative level, it’s a film that holds its own ground very much. The cinematic experience of it is not one of, “Let’s compromise the image for the subject matter.” It was very much thinking through form, thinking through aesthetics as its own politics, while also bringing us the front lines of what is happening and giving us the emotional journey of what happens in between. So, really appreciated the creative potential of this film, even though it was dealing with urgent moments and time was not on its side in some ways. And we don’t always curate films that we are fully in agreement of. We curate films that stimulate and provoke questions, and I really appreciated the questions that it was bringing up around solidarity allyship. What is the positioning of a person when he wants to be an ally, but he’s still affiliated and takes on the privileges of the occupier?
Babaa: Tracy, you are with 4th World Media Lab and throughout your body of work you’ve really focused on supporting indigenous people and strategically marginalized people with the technology and tools to bring their voice and drive social change. I know you think a lot about this concept of narrative sovereignty. Can you define what that is and how you think about it?
Rector: Narrative sovereignty is something that oftentimes people are unsure about or how to define. Narrative sovereignty is the right of a group or community to control and shape the stories, representations and narratives about themselves, their culture and their histories. It sounds simple, but when we think about the aggressors, those in power are often the ones who write history. Narrative sovereignty is about planting those seeds, and those seeds will continue to flourish despite the attempts to oppress and silence us. Speaking our truth, our truth to power is essential in these times.
Babaa: Zaina, we just left off as you were thinking about the conversation between Basel and Yuval throughout the film around the power dynamics in their relationship, in the struggle We have this definition of narrative sovereignty, and I’d love for you to reflect on that. What does it mean in the context of Palestine?
Bseiso: Where to start? I’m going to take this film as a case study for a second and think through the power dynamics that happen in the process of making, but also on the screen. There is this relationship between Basel and Yuval where you start to see over time how Basel reinterprets the situation for Yuval, for him to really understand what’s going on, even though Yuval is present with him. There’s always this allusion to, “You’ll never fully understand it because you are not in it.” And even though this is very much present in the film, when you look at how the film is covered in the media and through festivals and the way it’s written about, there’s always a foregrounding of how this is a collaboration between Israeli and Palestinians and look at this wonderful peacemaking group, but the dynamics and the nuance of that is never fully addressed even though the film is telling you, “Let’s look at that.”
That for me speaks a lot about what it means and what we expect in the west from these kinds of collaborations. Why do we need them? Why do we need this unbiased, let’s say? It’s because this is how some people perceive it: if there’s a collaboration between both sides, it becomes an unbiased, non-subjective, credible narrative. Now, we can listen to it and really understand it from a clear perspective—as if subjectivity in this kind of situation is not credible, as if our own stories and the stories we heard from our parents and their parents are not credible. This replicates laws and human rights watches and Amnesty International. It took them a very long time to validate the stories that we’ve known for years that are a part of our DNA now. There is also a violence in that, when you tell someone, “I want you to make a film with your occupier, so I can believe you.” If you deconstruct it for a second, it just doesn’t make any sense.
I’m sitting here in the privilege of this room, with all of these resources around me, and time, and I’m able to reflect on that in a way that Basel and many other filmmakers cannot. And I really appreciate what Basel is doing: he has a mission, and his mission is being fulfilled through this film because they want to reach a wider audience—especially here, in the country that is supplying weapons, that is supplying those bulldozers that are demolishing their houses—so we understand that there’s a different framework. We’re talking about different timeframes here. Basel needs to accomplish this now, but we have a responsibility to think about how this impacts us in the longer term. What kind of dehumanizing situations and structures are we creating here by foregrounding this collaboration?
Babaa: Tracy, I want to come to you because you’ve similarly been thinking a lot about narrative autonomy, narrative sovereignty, and I’d love to hear what you’ve learned along the way. What are the limits of the kind of solidarity that we’ve experienced, and that Zaina is speaking to, as imposed oftentimes by the industries and the world around us? And what are ways in which you’ve seen solidarity efforts work effectively? What needs to be in place for that to happen?
Rector: Admittedly, I’m a bit tender in this moment. My eldest child’s friend was murdered last week in Palestine, and one of her very last posts was an image of a native elder stating that “We are still here.” Her message was, international solidarity matters. And I think about the ways that we are here. We are safe, we are comfortable, we’re surrounded by resources. When we look around, how are we truly impacted by what’s happening? How are we indoctrinated? How are we complicit? And I think about the young people who are sacrificing their bodies, their spirits, their educations to speak up, because they recognize time is short. I believe solidarity demands blood. It demands sacrifice. It demands effort and action. Solidarity is not passive. It’s not simply making a Instagram post or resharing. It’s showing up. It’s lending your resources to those who do not have resources. It’s being present for these conversations.
It’s also demanding from your governments and officials to stop funding what’s happening around the world, specifically in Palestine, Congo, Sudan. Our tax dollars are funding multiple genocides and it’s not for us. Those in power are benefiting the most and we need to remember that. I think about solidarity often when it comes to the commitment I’ve made to indigenous peoples and storytellers. That means questioning, examining, not making assumptions that all persons who show up as allies are doing so altruistically. It’s also holding out a modicum of skepticism as well. I’ve been burned so many times. I’ve witnessed many of our filmmakers and the grief that they feel in betrayal from allies. When we talk about solidarity and allyship, it’s an evolving action. It’s not a comfortable space to be in. It takes true effort, self-reflection and the continuous humility asking what is needed of the communities that you’re supporting.
Babaa: Tracy, thank you for that. Jess, you and I have been working together for a really long time in all kinds of ways, and one of the things that I’ve come to learn about you is, you think deeply about how the work that you do supports communities who are most strategically marginalized. Today at Multitude, you’re often working with BIPOC filmmakers, queer filmmakers, those who are oftentimes telling the stories that are challenging dominant narratives. And one of the things that I think I’ve learned over the years from the work that we’ve done together is that, even with the most well-intentioned, most politically aware, most thoughtful solidarity efforts, the world around us is constructed in such a way that even in those healthy relationships, those power dynamics and imbalances are constantly playing out. There’s such a need to have constant attention to how do you build the structures that ensure, or try to mitigate around, that. Talk to me about your experience at Multitude working with filmmakers. What are some of the ways in which you’ve put things into place to help deal with that? And what is the role of gatekeeping and industry makers in determining what is palatable storytelling, and how do we navigate that together?
Devaney: I think we need to start a serious conversation about ceding power. We’ve been talking a lot about representation and authorship. We’ve all heard everything about diversity, equity, and inclusion, but we haven’t had serious conversations about ceding power and being in solidarity across multiple marginalizations. That requires a constant conversation around the power and privilege that we each hold in different spaces. And solidarity is not just a choice that we make once and position ourselves in. It’s the continued action of showing up together. And I think when we’re talking about the power of curation, the power of acquisition and all of the terms of what allows films to come from communities and be seen by communities, there are a lot of points of exercising power there that we need to interrogate.
In terms of what we do at Multitude, it’s imperfect. We try to think about the structures that we can put in place from the earliest stages of relationships. Legal and contractual structures, who has final creative say or tie-break, how will different decisions be made, who is accountable to different decisions at different decision making points? And how are we going to handle conflict and tension, and what kind of agreements are we going to make amongst ourselves in showing up to those conflicts and tensions? I think there can be a tendency to feel like we can position ourselves in the liberal mindset of, “I can learn all the right words around each issue area and say all of the right things,” but it’s really in the interpersonal moments of tension and understanding and listening and recognizing power and ceding power that solidarity really happens.
Bseiso: We ask ourselves a lot in the curatorial team, is this a journalistic film or is this creative nonfiction? Because we want to think through information versus aesthetics, the relationship between form and subject matter and how aesthetics can be very political in themselves, and the embodied experience of watching something on a certain plane of time. You have an hour and a half or two hours—how does it sustain itself over that time? What is the relevance of this film right now at this point in time with the specific community? And for us, that relevance was very clear: this film was being done before October 7, and it was being released very soon after. There was a whole narrative building around it that was revealing this relationship of solidarity, but also how the world is ready to receive Palestinian narratives at this point in time, while also educating the audience about the longitudinal nature of the struggle and how this has been happening for a very long time. The idea is that there is a very nuanced relationship between the Palestinian narrative as a subject, and the Palestinian narrative as its own sovereign protagonist. There are so many films, let’s say, that are made by US collaborations, but also made by Israeli filmmakers, that talk about Palestinian history and try to work in allyship.
Tantura, for example, that came out that speaks about the massacre of Tantura, but it speaks about it in relation to the experience of the director. And this is a common thread that happens, that the Palestinian narrative becomes the subject of someone else’s experience and the image becomes a vehicle for their self-reflection, and it becomes, in the long term, a dehumanizing narrative in itself, even though the film was well intended: It was trying to also provide information, to show the audience a history that needs to be seen, but it had a bigger impact that was contributing to the dehumanizing narratives. There is a very thin line between subject and sovereign, and I think that this film was playing with that relationship in a very interesting manner and we needed to talk about it.
Bseiso: I would really appreciate it if we open this conversation beyond this room and allow these questioning of narratives to exist outside of festival spaces, and to normalize it even more, because we need to be okay saying that we don’t want to hear narratives from others who are seeing them through an interpretive experience. We are okay hearing subjective narratives from the people who experienced them or who were told about them by their families. We don’t need reinterpreted narratives. And this is no reference to No Other Land. This is a reference to the media landscape that we live in that gives more priority to certain voices over others, and I think it’s up to us to push against that and normalize the opposite.
Rector: It shouldn’t be unusual that a festival like this would show a film such as No Other Land. It should be the norm, so please keep a lookout for organizations that are courageous and standing in solidarity actively.
Devaney: Yes, and I just want to put out a challenge to funders, distributors, programmers, producers, people working at different points of conferring power around film, to really enter into the ongoing process of self and collective interrogation around ways that we will support and center narrative sovereignty and understand authorship as something deeper than representation. And I also just want to say, film workers and the makers in the room, if gatekeepers cannot meet us with what we’re asking for, we are holding the value. Filmmakers, film workers, you’re creating the value. You’re the reason we’re all in these rooms and having these conversations, and there is such deep power in that.
Babaa: And since Basel and Yuval couldn’t be here, I want to just bring their voice back into the room. At the end of the film, they offer us all a challenge. What is the point of making a film that moves you if you don’t do anything with it? There’s genocide ongoing. That genocide has been ongoing for not just 11 months, but arguably for decades. There’s a responsibility that everyone in this room has, whether it’s thinking about our roles as industry folks, or as filmmakers, or just as everyday concerned people, I just want to pass on the urging that I heard at the end of No Other Land: do something with this. Speak up. The time to speak up is now. March with your feet, vote with your pocketbooks and make sure that we put our money where our mouth is.
