Day Two - Always Have a Plan B

The first night of film screenings at Al Ma’mal opened with an apology that the films on the programme were not actually going to be shown after all.

Full Bloom had been due to arrive in Jerusalem that day along with its Director, Sandra Madi, but she hadn't been able to get a visa despite coming from next door neighbour Jordan. Is there some ‘deny film maker’ clause in the 1994 Peace Agreement between Jordan and Israel that I don’t know about? The only relevant clause I remember was a ban on 'hostile propaganda', whatever that means but I don't think it means a film about a boxer.

So the audience had arrived and were waiting for the film that wasn't there to begin. Al Ma’mal had to find a fast and appropriate alternative….. which it did.

In 2004 British Artist Phil Collins approached Al Ma’mal with an idea for a video in which he would film a dance marathon in Ramallah. He worked with a group of Palestinian teenagers and the idea was that they would dance for 8 hours solid or until they were so exhausted they couldn’t continue. The resulting video has since been screened extensively around the world.

However, the original idea came from a 1969 film directed by Sidney Pollack called They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? The film is set during the great depression of the 1930s and is the story of a dance marathon near Hollywood in which people participated either for the prize money, to be noticed by Hollywood talent scouts or just for the free food. As the marathon turns into weeks, the spectacle becomes ever more macabre as exhaustion and desperation initiate the physical and psychological disintegration of those remaining. When the main protagonist discovers there are numerous hidden deductions from the prize money, she abandons the marathon, begging her equally desperate and exhausted dance partner to shoot her through the head, which he does.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? communicated something deeply disturbing about the human condition in its own era but repositioning the obvious parallels in the context of Exhaustion and Jerusalem was an inspired Plan B.