1. Write a précis of the following and suggest a suitable title:
Nizar Hassan was born in 1960 and raised in the village of Mashhad, near Nazareth, where he has lived with his family. He studied anthropology at Haifa University and after graduating worked in TV. Starting in 1990, he turned to cinema. In 1994, he produced Independence, in which he pokes his Palestinian interlocutors about what they think of the bizarre Israeli notion of their “independence”. They have stolen another people’s homeland and call the act “independence”! Hassan dwells on that absurdity.
As the world’s attention was captured by the news of Israel planning to “annex” yet a bit more of Palestine and add it to what they have already stolen, I received an email from Nizar Hassan, the pre-eminent Palestinian documentary filmmaker. He wrote to me about his latest film, My Grandfather’s Path, and included a link to the director’s cut. It was a blessing. They say choose your enemies carefully for you would end up like them. The same goes for those opposing Zionist settler colonialists. If you are too incensed and angered by their daily dose of claptrap, the vulgarity of their armed robbery of Palestine, you would soon become like them and forget yourself and what beautiful ideas, ideals, and aspirations once animated your highest dreams. Never fall into that trap. For decades, aspects of Palestinian and world cinema, art, poetry, fiction, and drama have done for me precisely that: saved me from that trap. They have constantly reminded me what all our politics are about – a moment of poetic salvation from it all.
Nizar Hassan’s new documentary is one such work – in a moment of dejection over Israel’s encroachment on Palestinian rights and the world’s complicity, it has put Palestine in perspective. The film is mercifully long, beautifully paced and patient, a masterfully crafted work of art – a Palestinian’s epic ode to his homeland. A shorter version of My Grandfather’s Path has been broadcast on Al Jazeera Arabic in three parts, but it must be seen in its entirety, in one go. It is a pilgrimage that must not be interrupted.
Solved Precis of CSS 2021
Topic: A Cinematic Tribute to Palestine
Nizar Hassan, a Palestinian filmmaker from Mashhad, has long used cinema to expose the contradictions of Israeli claims about “independence” and the continuing theft of Palestinian land. As Israel planned further annexation, the narrator received Hassan’s latest film, My Grandfather’s Path, which served as a reminder not to let anger at Zionist colonialism overshadow the ideals and aspirations that inspire resistance. For decades, Palestinian and global art have offered the narrator poetic refuge from despair. Hassan’s new documentary continues this role, presenting a patient and beautifully crafted tribute to Palestine. Broadcast partially on Al Jazeera, the film is best experienced in full, as a moving cinematic pilgrimage to the filmmaker’s homeland.