Arab Film Heritage Project

We have found over 800 cans of film in Amman, Jordan! With a small grant from King Abdullah, we were able to digitize 10 of them and found some very interesting content. The most exciting find was a film produced in Palestine in 1968, just after the Six-Day war. It has been confirmed by scholars and persons affiliated with the PLO that this film is the only surviving copy from what was the PLO film archive before it disappeared in 1985.

My goal is to make this project collaborative, and to form a sort of collective consisting of scholars, filmmakers, students, and citizens with an interest in preserving and distributing visual heritage of Arab countries. The final product would be an interactive database that brings to life the story of these films, the people who made them, and their place in the history of the region and cinema at large.

Kay Dickinson of the University of London is the first to be involved and will be travelling to Jordan in the winter of 2011/12 to conduct research related to the project. Mai Masri, the Palestinian documentarian has expressed his support along with many other influential persons in the film industry in Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, UK, and US.

Project Proposal and Summary available upon request.

UPDATE: Our main objective now is to translate the Russian canister labels. If you or someone you know has translation experience, please contact me.