The ritual in the roadblock film: The wedding and the birthday in post-Oslo Palestinian Cinema

Abstract

ABSTRACT A form of geographic volatility marked the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the years following the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995. Changes to Israel’s administration of the territory created certain spatial conditions with the establishment of settler roads, checkpoints, roadblocks, security zones, and military violence as forms of civic control. Consequently, this period saw the emergence of what are commonly described as “roadblock films”, whose preoccupations lie partially with the blocking of movement. This article examines the expression of rituals in Palestinian roadblock films, demonstrating how such rituals challenge the spatial orders of occupation through a form of ṣumūd (steadfast resistance). By reading the transformation of the expression of ṣumūd across Rashid Masharawi’s Laila’s Birthday and Hani Abu Assad’s Rana’s Wedding, it argues that cinematic rituals become powerful expressions of national resistance and continuance and also of national critique following the failures of the Oslo Accords and armed struggle.