Animating the Present, Palestine, ca.1985

ABDEL RAHMAN AL MUZAIN (1943—present)

Translated: “The Palestinian Cinema / Recording the Past / Animating the Present / Illuminating the Future”

Al Muzain was born in 1943 in the village of Qubayba. After the Nakba, al Muzain was displaced to Khan Younis and received an education in Egypt. Later he became a prominent academic, critic, and political activist, founding the Arab Union of Plastic Arts and the Studio of Revolutionary arts in Damascus. Al Muzain’s work uses nationalist iconography to illustrate the intersection of culture and resistance.

In Animating, al Muzain depicts a woman in an embroidered tatreez dress holding a cinema camera. Behind her, another woman in a keffiyeh mimics her poster but holds a rifle with doves flying out of the tip. The bottom text describes the intimate relationship cinema and armed struggle in shaping a revolutionary future.

poster: https://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/animating-the-present 

citations: https://dafbeirut.org/en/abdelrahman-al-muzayen