Palestinian Women Filmmakers and the Cinema of Liberation
Introducing Sulafa Jadallah, Khadijeh Habashneh, and Annemarie Jacir
Even during its most militant periods, women filmmakers have played a major role in the development of Palestinian cinema. The biography of filmmaker Khadijeh Habashneh, creator of the film Children without Childhood (1979), is a case in point. Together with other Palestinian women, Habashneh helped to found the General Union of Palestinian Women in 1965, which remains active today.
The General Union of Palestinian Women aimed to increase the role of women in the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) political activity. In her own words, it was “an open popular union actively working among all Palestinian women for social and political mobilization to raise awareness about women’s issues.” In 1974, Habashneh became a founding member of the Palestinian Cinema Institute, itself a successor to the Palestine Film Unit (PFU), founded in Jordan after the Arab-Israeli War in 1968. The PFU and its successor expanded the GUPW’s remit to the arts.
Creating militant Palestinian cinema
In her memoir of the Palestine Film Unit, in which she was also closely involved, Habashneh described the organization as “the first cinema unit to work hand in…
