Revolution Art Poetry
The full movie now available online

When the Palestinian Liberation Organisation was created in the 1960s, the government of Israel was claiming that there was no such thing as a Palestinian people with its own particular culture and traditions. The Palestinian resistance movement, therefore, always paid great attention to supporting and developing the existing forms of artistic expression, as they were proof of a national identity that brought together the different areas of the country and reconnected the people with their past and their identity. Palestinian popular poetry was arguably the most widespread of these arts, its rich tradition used as proof against anyone who would claim Palestinians to be a fabricated identity. Poems were often nationalistic and spoke about economic, social and political problems, providing a relief valve for the anger that all occupied people feel towards the occupying power. Today hip hop and rap are spreading among young Palestinians as a new means to express their feeling. A gap is forming between the older, disillusioned and often compliant generation and the young that still live with great anger to the conflict, the ever-spreading Israeli settlements, the rerouting of water supplies and the astonishing imbalance in resources and the use of violence. Rap is not well seen, older people often see it as a product of foreign cultural colonisation, an alien, rude and offensive form of art that has no place in Palestinian culture. And yet, Palestinian rappers today feel the need to speak out and use their own form of expression to awake awareness and denounce criminal behaviour just as previous generations felt when declaiming, writing, reading and listening to poetry.

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