Selections

Mohammad Bakri
Interview with Palestinian actor and director Mohammad Bakri

Interview (Part 1): published in Banipal 45 in 2012.

“My love for the theatre came from my love for the Arabic language”

Interview by Imad Khachan

Photo by Michael Powell

I met Mohammad Bakri at Chess Forum, the well-known chess parlour in New York City. As I enter I spot him, sitting at a table with a chessboard before him. He has the sort of presence that carries a kind of pride, as if he is standing up even when seated. It’s a presence whose aura hides extreme pain and sorrow behind a wall of silence. And this silence speaks far more than words. I shake hands and ask him, “Would you like to play a game of chess before we start?” and he replies, “I would love to”. He opens the game with a pawn followed by the queen, a suicidal move made only by a total novice or a seasoned player. It quickly becomes clear Mohammad Bakri is no beginner as he wins the game in five easy moves, surprising me with his outside-the-box moves. One such move, which we talk about below, was his movie “Jenin Jenin” (2002) that depicts the tragic devastation inflicted by the Israeli army on that refugee camp in April 2002, and that resulted in a long-running law suit for slander against Mohammad Bakri by five Israeli soldiers.

Let me first ask you to introduce yourself to Banipal’s readers. And, by the way, this is the second interview published in Banipal with an actor and filmmaker – the first was with Costa Gavras in Banipal 3.

I was born in 1953, in the village of Al-Ba’ani, in the Upper Galilee region of Palestine. In 1976, I earned a BA in theatre and Arabic literature from the University of Tel Aviv. That same year, I debuted in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge at the Haifa municipal theatre, which I would direct more than a quarter century later in 2003 for Haifa’s Maydan Theatre. For that same theatre, I played Bernarda Alba in Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba in 2000, and then in 2007 directed A Day From Our Time by Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous. Between 1993 and 2000, I worked in Jerusalem and Ramallah for Al-Kasaba Theatre, which I and its owner, the actor and director George Ibrahim, co-founded. I acted in many plays at Al-Kasaba, including Abdul Ghaffar Mekkawi’s The Night and the Mountain, The Clown by Mohammed al-Maghout, The Immigrant by Georges Shehadé and Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman. I also directed Ramzi Abu Almajd, which was inspired by South African playwright Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Banzi Is Dead.

However, the big change in my professional life happened in 1986, when I produced a theatrical adaptation of Emile Habiby’s novel The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist, directed by the Kiev-educated, Palestinian director Mazin al-Ghattas. This one-man show has been put on over two thousand times all over the world. The play is presented in Arabic and is usually accompanied by a simultaneous translation into the language of whatever country the play is being shown in. The play has been presented into many countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and in Israel itself, and has met with great success wherever it is shown. Throughout the whole process, Emile Habiby participated actively, both as a friend and as a mentor.  

When and how did you decide to become an actor?

My love for acting came from my love of movies as a child. My love for theatre came from my love of literature and classical Arabic poetry, and especially pre-Islamic poetry, with its rich imagery and soaring imagination. As for cinema, my obsession started as a child when I used to watch Hollywood classics. After the 1967 war, movies from other parts of the world started reaching those remote villages in Galilee. There I discovered Egyptian movies as well as martial arts movies and, of course, Bollywood films. At the time, Galilee was under Israeli military rule, which did not allow electricity to reach the region. Fortunately for me, and the people of Al-Ba’ani, an electrical engineer named Abu Abdullah Yousef Boulos lived in the village and, like me, he was also obsessed with cinema. He opened a cinema in the village, which he operated using a generator he had made himself. So, although Al-Ba’ani at that time had no electricity, it did have a cinema! People used to joke that while the Arab villages of Galilee lived by the light of gas lamps, the chickens in the neighboring Israeli settlement enjoyed electricity around the clock. The whole thing was part of an Israeli government plan meant to deprive Galileans of everything, including running water and electricity.

People had to struggle daily in the face of the military government to earn the basics for human existence. That struggle, which was led by the Palestinian Communist Party, that fought for the right of return for the Palestinian refugees and stood against occupation and discrimination, did bring about some changes in the mid-1970s, including water and electricity to the Arab villages that had been ruled under emergency laws by an Israeli military governor since 1948. The Israelis used these military laws to confiscate Arab land and build settlements on them. This was the vision of Ben-Gurion, who did not appreciate that Galilee was still full of Palestinian Arabs and consequently started confiscating lands there. In 1964, he built the city of Karmael – the biggest Jewish settlement in Galilee, erected on lands confiscated from four villages in Galilee: Al-Ba’ani, Deir Al-Assad, Nihif and Majd Al-Kroom. This city was built over the agricultural lands of these villages as well as over their stone quarries, that were famous for beautiful yellow stone used in building houses. At the time, Israel tried to evict Galileans by issuing them with temporary ID cards, known the “red ID card”, which stated that the bearer was not a citizen of Israel and could therefore be deported at the discretion of the military governor. Galileans resisted having these ID cards forced on them, especially after seeing that all those who took them ended up being transferred to the other side of the border, either to Lebanon or Syria. The Palestinian Communist Party played a great role in making people aware of the dangers of accepting the red ID card. They even tried to stop those about to be deported from being forced into the military trucks that carried them across the border.

Your love of Arabic language influenced your love of theatre and cinema. Can you tell me how you became engaged with the movie “Hanna K.”?       

Yes, my love of theatre came from my love for the Arabic language, and thanks to the influence of my teachers. My love for classical Arabic literature made me love world literature. And under the influence of literature and cinema, I decided to study theatre in college. My initial interest was literary, and it sprang from my love of the language. I also liked to write – composition was my favourite subject in grade school. The teacher would always ask me to read my composition to the whole class. And from that came my desire to perform for an audience. But I entered the world of cinema by chance in 1983 through the film “Hanna K.”. Costa Gavras, the director of “Zed” and “Missing”, saw me in a play when he was in Palestine, and after auditioning chose me for the movie. We filmed for a week in Jericho and Jerusalem and after that moved to Calabria in the south of Italy, due to its resemblance to Palestine. The trial and court scenes were filmed in the north of Italy. In total, filming took six weeks. Seven years after my graduation, I had already made dozens of short films with film students, but I got my break working with Costa Gavras. The experience of working with him was unique due to his experience and standing as a world-class director. In addition, the main cast were either stars, like Jill Clayburgh, or on their way to stardom, like Jean Yanne, and Gabriel Byrne who played the Israeli prosecutor. In the film, Salim, my character, sneaks back from Lebanon into his village in Palestine only to be caught by the Israeli authorities. His case is taken up by Jill Clayburgh’s character Hanna K. As both Salim and Gabriel Byrne’s prosecutor are vying for her affection, she becomes the battleground, just like the land itself.

That film was a tough experience for me, because in it I represent the right of return for Palestinian refugees, a topic that still no one dares to address, fearing the Israeli reaction. I was twenty-eight at the time and had the feeling that I was presenting the cause of the Palestinian people and representing the Palestinian refugees all over the world in the movie. I felt I was carrying something sacred, and did not want to cause it any harm or damage. It was the feeling you would have if you were carrying your day-old baby while walking a tight-rope, and beneath you is a valley with a fire raging in it, and you want to cross from one mountain to another on that rope. Add to that my apprehension of working in my first major role with experienced and established movie stars, and then, to top it all, the movie was in English. The movie was one challenge after another and I was very afraid, although it was a delicious kind of fear; the kind that forces the asking of existential questions and fills one with a spirit of defiance to rise to the challenge.

The first time I ever entered a Palestinian refugee camp was during the filming of that movie: I entered Ayn Al-Sultan camp, which is near the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp. The people of the former camp were exiled to Jordan during the 1967 war, and it has been deserted ever since. We filmed the scene between Salim and his lawyer there. Being in a camp for the first time made me understand the true meaning of the term “refugee camp”. Its walls were covered with graffiti, mostly slogans against Arab rulers. In that camp I felt the presence of my exiled people; it was a slap in the face for me, as I came to see the real meaning of humiliation and exile. “Hanna K.” raised my political awareness and made me more Palestinian. In that regard, it is similar to “The Day of the Land”, which commemorates the 30 March 1976 uprising against Israeli occupation by Palestinian Arabs of the Galilee and the Negev, the first uprising from within the borders of the Israeli state since 1948.

That movie was an expression of my feelings and identity as a Palestinian. We demand the right of return to our homes and our land, and because of that we become terrorists in the eyes of the world. If a refugee in Ayn Al-Hilwi camp in Lebanon demands the right to return to his homeland, he is accused of being a terrorist. Were he not to do that and give up that right, in the eyes of the West he would be seen as a good boy. Of course, from the Arab world, as a Palestinian, I expect neither praise nor damnation, just the usual apathy. “The Day of the Land” came as a wake-up call for me as it showed the villagers of Arraba and Sikhnin being killed by the Israeli Army and Police.

It was then that I realized I was not a citizen of this state, as the Israelis claim and this made me question my identity from an early age. When I was a college student, tensions between the Israelis and Palestinians were very high. However, on campus, the relationship between the two groups was much better. There, one was dealing with professors and students who were artists, most of whom were leftists, although I do not believe much in the Israeli left, which again and again has proved its failure and moral bankruptcy. Throughout my ordeal, starting from the banning of my movie “Jenin Jenin”, and through the trials that ensued, their support for my case has, at best, been very weak. Actually, since the massacres of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut in 1982 and the demonstrations against Ariel Sharon, the Israeli left has done nothing; their actions and protests changed nothing – Sharon became King of Israel. Ever since, the Israeli left has been as silent as the dead; it has disintegrated with many of the old leftists later joining right-wing parties . . .

How did “Hanna K.” affect your career?

“Hanna K.” did not open doors for me anywhere. The Israelis launched a campaign against the film and succeeded in having it blacklisted, preventing it from being shown in major festivals throughout the world. In France, Le Monde and Liberation managed to undermine it and destroy any chance of success on its own merit. In the United States, it opened to almost universally negative reviews in the few places where it did open. The New York Times described it as “A large soggy dud” (September 30, 1983). The campaign to undermine the movie succeeded and now it is not even available on DVD. Some VHS copies can be found here and there but that’s about it. For a long while after, Jill Clayburgh did not have a substantial role and Costa Gavras atoned for making that film by directing two movies that had to do with the Holocaust.

After “Hanna K.” doors closed in my face all over the world. I finally got the chance to work in an Israeli prison drama called “Beyond the Walls” (1984) directed by Uri Barbash. The movie was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1985. I played Ihsan, a Palestinian freedom fighter who is sentenced to 50 years in prison and who resists all the prison warden’s tactics to break him or reduce his resolve to fight. After that film I was not able to find work even in Israel, a country that was not so welcoming to its Arab minority to begin with, regardless of profession, be it doctor, lawyer, actor or artist. So I found myself working as a construction worker to help provide for my family. On the eve of the Oscars in 1985, while “Beyond the Walls” was competing for Best Foreign Film Oscar in Los Angeles, I was lifting cement on my shoulder at a construction site. That might seem odd or strange, but that’s Israel for you. And that is when I made the decision to fight and to prove to the Israelis and to the world that I do not need anyone’s help to make good theatre. For me, it was an existential challenge that brought with it more challenges; out of it came “The Pessoptimist”, a play that shows and denounces irrefutably the savagery of Israel. The work on that play was an artistic, political and personal challenge, and at the same time a literary one as I needed to turn Emile Habiby’s masterpiece“” into a play of equal merit. Until then, I was only known as a film actor, so first I had to prove to myself that I was an theatre actor, not just a cinema actor.

What other films did you appear in, or direct?

After “Hanna K.”, I played in “Beyond the Walls” and in the film “Cup Final” (1992), which was directed by Eran Riklis about the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. I also appeared in Rashid Mashharawi’s film “Haifa” (1996), and “Desperado Square” (2001) directed by Benny Toraty. But one of my favourite films to work in was “Private” (2004), directed by the Italian Saverio Costanzo with whom I also worked in the film “The Child of Bethlehem”, about the four Italian journalists who were trapped inside the Church of the Nativity during the Israeli siege of that church. In 2006 I worked with the brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani on the film “The Fate of Nonik,” starring Paz Vega and Arsine Khanijian. It was adapted from Antonia Arsalan’s novel The Lark Farm about the Armenian Genocide and I played Nazim, a Turkish beggar who used to be looked after by a wealthy Armenian family, and who then tries to save the women of the family after their men are killed by the Turks. Nazim guards the women as they walk all the way from Armenia toward exile in Syria.

Then in 2008, I played the cab driver Abu Layla in Rashid Mashharwi’s “Layla’s Birthday” and the following year I had the privilege of playing the main character in “Zindeeq”, the Palestinian director Michel Khleifi’s first feature film in 14 years. Since 1983 I have directed four films – “1948” on the 50th anniversary of the Nakba, “Jenin, Jenin” (2002), “Since You Left” (2005), an ode of sorts to Emile Habiby, and finally “Zahra” (2010), about the life of my aunt Zahra who, in 1948, was amongst those exiled to Lebanon, but, just like my character Selim did in “Hanna K.”, she secretly returned to Palestine and, in doing so, saved our entire family.

How did “Jenin, Jenin” come about?

I was participating in a demonstration with hundreds of other people against the Israeli invasion of the Jenin refugee camp, when an Israeli soldier started firing at us. He hit the woman standing right next to me, Palestinian actor Valantina Abu Oqsa. She was hit in her left arm and, two years and six surgical operations later, lost the use of her left hand. It occurred to me right there and then that, if that was the way the Israeli army was dealing with peaceful demonstrators, then how were they behaving inside the camp. So, accompanied by a cinematographer and a sound engineer, I sneaked into Jenin. The camp was still considered by the army to be a military zone, and we could have been killed any time. We stayed in the camp for four days and filmed everything we saw there, without any plans or script or preparations, and then we edited the film in Rome.

The problems started with the first screening of “Jenin, Jenin”. The Israeli right protested and held demonstrations against the film, and that influenced the Israeli censors, who banned the movie. I sought legal recourse and the Israeli Supreme Court decided to lift the ban on showing the film there. But that took two years, during a campaign was launched against the film, and against me personally. I was portrayed as a terrorist, and the film as nothing but false terrorist propaganda. Most Israelis had not seen the film, but they went with what the media there told them over those two years.

Three years later, five Israelis soldiers sued me for defamation, claiming that the film “slandered the soldiers who fought in Jenin and all Israeli soldiers”. Listening to their claims, one would believe Israeli soldiers are saints or angels who would not do what the film showed they had done in Jenin. The judge dismissed the case because the five solders were not personally portrayed or mentioned in the film at all, and therefore had no claim to sue. However, the court considered the film a slander against the Israeli army, which gave the five soldiers a chance to appeal, which they did. The court’s claim that I slandered the Israeli army is unjustified, because all I showed in the film is what I actually saw in Jenin, and what people in the camp spoke about on camera. They told what happened to them during the attack on their camp. Suddenly, the court had become the authority on what happened inside Jenin, although that is not within its jurisdiction, nor in its job description. People have their own truth; they told me what they went through and what they saw, without adding or editing anything. I did not bring anything to the film. I simply recorded what they told me. I did not manipulate anything in the editing or change anything at all.

And when they found nothing to accuse me of, they claimed that the word “genocide” was used intentionally in the subtitles, when no one used it in the interviews with the people of Jenin. But I was not in charge of the subtitles and if the word was used, I had had no hand in it. During one of the court sessions, the judge suggested I apologize to the soldiers, but I refused. The soldiers also refused the judge’s suggestion. They asked that I not only apologize, but that I should also re-edit the film according to their liking. But I was not worried as I knew it was a win-win situation for me. If I won, then truth won, and if I lost, it would have been no more than a political kangaroo court, stifling an artist’s right to freedom of expression.

The lawsuit also demanded 2.5-million shekel ($514,000) compensation for the soldiers, which would have meant me selling my house and all I owned to pay it as well as cover my legal costs. Legally, they did not have much of a claim at all to sue me, but they did it because in Israel, the army is a sacred cow that cannot be touched. When some Palestinian students tried to screen “Jenin, Jenin” at the Hebrew University, they were suspended – and that happened in the so-called only democracy in the Middle East. However, the libel suit was dismissed by the Supreme Court, although the court’s decision was posted online and not delivered in court. That way they were able to hide the ruling and deny me the chance to emerge victorious from the courtroom.

However, the court’s decision made it possible for me to travel and to work overseas without having to interrupt my trips in order to return to Israel for court sessions. I always dreamed of being able to travel to Arab countries, and especially to Lebanon, to discover that country and meet its people as well as to meet the Palestinian refugees there, most of them being from the Galilee region of Palestine. I had been thinking of going there for some time, but was not able to, because that would have given the Israeli prosecutor the chance to add the charge of “aiding the enemy” to the other charges, as we have seen happen to the Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, Azmi Bishara. I would love to screen some of my films in Beirut, and to stage “The Pessoptimist” there, especially after Nidal Al-Ashqar, the founder and artistic director of Beirut’s Medina Theatre, has welcomed the idea of staging it. However, that all depends on getting a permit from the Lebanese government to enter the country, with the hope that I wouldn’t face any problems at the hands of the Israelis on my return home.

How do you as a Palestinian cope with life under Israeli rule?

Living under the conditions that we do in Palestine, puts the onus on oneself to develop cultural and political sensibility and awareness. In that regard, the Palestinian Communist Party was instrumental in developing a nationalistic sense amongst the people, and in igniting the spirit of resistance in them, through encouraging them to at least protect their cultural identity, since they were in no position to wage an armed resistance. The contribution of poets and writers to that sense of nationalism and patriotism was immense. And no less was the role of the schoolteacher: the Arabic language teacher, history teacher, and even the maths teacher, not only taught their subjects, but also went beyond and helped instil in us a nationalistic sensibility. They taught the right politics without ever speaking a word of politics. I recall especially Shakib Jahshan and Hanna Abu Hanna, who taught us to love, or even worship, the Arabic language, and that in turn taught me to love my country, to worship the Palestine that was and that I never had the chance to know. Our language was our last trench, or as Mahmoud Darwish called it “the last refuge”.

For that same reason, most Israelis refuse to learn Arabic, although it is mandatory in the Israeli school curriculum. The Israelis prefer to learn English over Arabic, not necessarily because they prefer English, but because rejecting the Arabic language is a way of refusing to accept the Arab presence in Israel. Back in the 1960s, we used to whisper when we spoke Arabic in public places. Nowadays, we speak Arabic loud and clear because the fear barrier has been shattered, which is something we did not experience in my childhood and youth. The generation of our fathers spoke Arabic in low voices in public places, because the Arabic language and its speaker were personae non grata by the Israelis. At the same time, that generation did not know how to speak Hebrew. Now we speak Arabic without the slightest fear, whether the Israelis like it or not. And that is in great part thanks to our teachers, who taught us patriotism through language.

Translated by Ana Klicic and David Rigo

The second part of the interview is online here: https://www.banipal.co.uk/selections/83/277/mohammad-bakri/

Mohammad Bakri talks about life under occupation; meeting the singer Sheikh Imam in Cairo; working with Emile Habiby and Michel Khleifi; and what kinds of films he would like to be making.

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