Palestine Cinema Days Around the World:
Blessed Blessed Oblivion & With Hasan in Gaza
2 November 2026, 4-6pm
LUX and Mosaic Rooms are collaborating for a special screening of Jumana Manna’s Blessed Blessed Oblivion (2010, 21’) from the LUX collection, alongside Kamal Aljafari’s With Hasan in Gaza (2025, 106’) as part of the Palestine Cinema Days Around the World. Presented together, these two films provide a rich portrait of Palestinian daily life, one in East Jerusalem, the other in Gaza. In particular, they have a focus on the manifestations of masculinity in Palestine, looking beyond the stereotypes of Palestinian men that have often circulated in Western media.
Jumana Manna’s Blessed Blessed Oblivion weaves together a portrait of masculine performativity in East Jerusalem, as manifested in gyms, barber shops and body parlors. Inspired by Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), the video uses visual collage and the soundtrack as ironic commentary on stereotyped male “thug” culture in Palestine. Close-up fragments construct an eroticised and parodic montage of bodies, cars and places, intersected by snippets of dialogue and a monologue about the art of a car wash. Simultaneously psychologizing the characters and being seduced by them, the film director finds herself in a double bind similar to the conflicted desire that animates her protagonist as he drifts between abject rants, declamations of heroic poetry and unashamed self-praise.
With Hasan in Gaza looks back at a journey the filmmaker made in 2001, from the north to the south of Gaza, searching for the man with whom he had spent seven months in an Israeli prison over a decade earlier. Kamal Aljafari recently rediscovered the footage in his archive and edited it into this filmic journal of daily life in Gaza, with all of its moments of vibrancy. The film captures children at play, bustling markets, small shops and cafés—but a darker reality looms in images of military checkpoints, demolished Palestinian homes, and the Israeli shelling of a residential neighborhood at night.
Image: Film still, With Hasan in Gaza by Kamal Aljafari, 2025. Courtesy of filmmaker.
RSVP
Organised by Filmlab Palestine, the 4th edition of Palestine Cinema Days Around The World takes place on 2 November 2026 the 109th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. Palestine Cinema Days Around the World is a global platform that transcends borders to bring Palestinian stories to the forefront of the world’s conscience. Palestine Cinema Days have grown into a borderless, community-driven act of cultural resistance to protect our stories against systematic erasure, silencing, and distortion.
LUX is an arts organisation that supports and promotes visual artists working with the moving image. Founded in 2002 as a charity and not-for-profit limited company, the organisation builds on a long lineage of predecessors (The London Film-Makers’ Co-operative, London Video Arts and The Lux Centre) which stretch back to the 1960s.
LUX is an arts organisation that supports and promotes visual artists working with the moving image. Founded in 2002 as a charity and not-for-profit limited company, the organisation builds on a long lineage of predecessors (The London Film-Makers’ Co-operative, London Video Arts and The Lux Centre) which stretch back to the 1960s.
UK Registered Charity No. 1183882
Mosaic Rooms is generously supported by Al-Qattan Charitable Trust.
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