Pandemic Stasis and Nonlinear Memory in Palestinian Short Films

When the COVID-19 lockdown was introduced in Palestine-Israel in 2020, it changed how the everyday was negotiated with stricter control on movement, access, and contact with family members. As the pandemic progressed, the lockdown restrictions layered over an existing framework of structural violence that determines individual movement, remembrance, access to health care, and living conditions. In the two short films analysed in this article, Lifting the Mask (سقط القناع (by Najwa Najjar (2020) and MAY (أیار (by Maha Haj (2020), the lockdown stimulated a collision between the past and the present with ongoing, and at times increased, restrictions on movement and memory work in the West Bank. In each piece, the unhomely is presented uniquely, but the subject matter – memory, the occupation, and the pandemic – remain constant features. Due to the lockdown, the opportunity to create art outside was curtailed and the link between the political and the personal was strengthened as the home became the backdrop for
explorations of social, political, and historical issues. As the viewer is transported (and yet also confined) to the home in both films, this article is concerned with the ways that the unhomely enhances the connection between the personal and the political in Occupied Palestine. Key to this is time and memory, and this article considers the question: how does the unhomely emerge
through the collapse of time in the films? And, in what ways does memory become nonlinear as it simultaneously envelopes the ongoing Nakba, which began in 1948, and the impact of the pandemic and its accompanying lockdown? The article concludes that the pandemic is but one strand to narrative that braids memory, movement and nonmovement, and the broader political
circumstances into a tapestry of inequalities that pre- and postdates Covid-19.