OFF FRAME AKA REVOLUTION UNTIL VICTORY A film by

Mohanad Yaqubi 62 min | Color & B&W | DCP, BluRay, HD, DVD | Arabic, English,
French, Italian | Produced by Idioms Film | Palestine, France, Qatar, Lebanon | 2016

SHORT SYNOPSIS
Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory is a meditation on the Palestinian
people's struggle to produce an image and self-representation on their own
terms in the 1960s and 1970s, with the establishment of the Palestine Film Unit
as part of the PLO. Unearthing films stored in archives across the world after an
unprecedented research and access, the film begins with popular
representations of modern Palestine and traces the works of militant
filmmakers in reclaiming image and narrative through revolutionary and
militant cinema. In resurrecting a forgotten memory of struggle, Off Frame
reanimates what is within the frame, but also weaves a critical reflection by
looking for what is outside it, or what is off frame.

LONG
SYNOPSIS
...and for those who suffer from invisibility, camera would be their weapon.
Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory traces the fragments of a revolution,
splicing images then from a dream for freedom, using films from the Palestinian
struggle cinema, a term used for films produced in relation to the Palestinian
revolution during the period between 1968 and 1982. For the outside world,
these films represented a model of a people in struggle, explaining why they
are fighting and against whom. But for Palestinians these films marked the
transformation of their identity, from a refugee to that of a freedom fighter.
Wither it staged or not, wither its personal or collective. The film borrows
moments from a selection of militant films. These shots were edited together in
one timeline, the only coherent relation between all the shots, clips, sequences
is that they all lay on the boarders between fiction and propaganda, dream and
reality, in order to represent a narrative of a people in struggle. As history is
written/recorded while the camera rolls, the film negative not only captures
what is before the camera, but it also indicates to what is missing from its
cadre. The Palestinian revolution collaborated with filmmakers, actors and
activists from Syria, Italy, UK, Lebanon, France, Germany, Argentina amongst
many others, and made partnerships with institutions in Berlin, Moscow,
Baghdad and Cuba. Despite their prolific output, very few of their works
remain. Yet there is much to learn from revisiting this era and piecing together
the narrative of Palestinian militant cinema. Off Frame aims to fill this gap in
the collective memory, making the past an urgent element of the present day
analysis of Palestinian cinema. The film attempts to bring forth all that was
happening behind the cameras and the creation of these films. Resorting to
cinemas temporal nature and time being an elastic concept, Off Frame
assumes the role of a time machine, transporting the audience back in time, by
opening a portal into the life, hopes and desires of a people living in a
revolution, fighting to be recognised and to reclaim control over their
representation.