Love and Resistance in the Films of Mai Masri

This book covers Mai Masri’s three decades documenting iconic moments of Palestinian and Lebanese linked history. Her films, unique for giving agency to her subjects, tell much about the untold, unseen people, namely women and children, who lived these experiences of war and occupation. Former Lebanese political prisoner Soha Bechara praised her feature film 3000 Nights as “the ‘Lest we forget’ of Palestine." Her focus on the social and political climates of the vivid lives of unseen people connects to the deepening violence in Palestine today.

“This book is accessible for a general audience interested in the lives of everyday Lebanese and Palestinians during the last five decades of resistance and is an excellent supplementary text for college courses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Lebanese Civil War, the First Intifada, refugee issues, women’s studies, and filmmaking.” (Laurie King, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 50 (4), 2021)  

“A panoramic primer on the films of Mai Masri, renowned for their sensitive and honest visualization, through the eyes of women and children, of the everyday intimacy, dignity, courage, and fragile humanity amidst the searing pain of war and the relentless grinding of structural violence. In sparing prose fortified by long periods spent with Mai and her closest collaborators, Brittain’s walk-throughs of the films create an irresistible urge to (re)experience these extraordinary works of art.”

--Professor Beshara Doumani, Brown University

“The trailblazing Palestinian cinema of Mai Masri is at last introduced to the English reader in this riveting homage by journalist Victoria Brittain. In chronicling films produced since the 1980s to the present, the book offers a much-needed overview of Masri’s engaged documentation of war in ways that reveal its intimate dimension of loss and grief, highlighting the ‘poetry of everyday life.’”

—Ella Shohat, author of On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements

“All Palestinian voices are important, and Mai Masri’s is among the most eloquent, through her beautiful films. Victoria Brittain is supremely qualified to tell her story.”

--Ken Loach, film director

“I love Mai’s work. In fact, she is one of the reasons I became a director myself.”

--Hany Abu-Assad, film director

“This book pays tribute to renowned Palestinian film-maker Mai Masri whose films across Palestine and Lebanon tell (his)stories of unheard people in the two countries. The book is an intimate account of Masri as an artist, a woman, a friend and an activist whose work evolved over time, but never faltered in telling the story of those forgotten by history, the Palestinians. Relying on deep analysis of some of Masri’s work, research as well as extensive interviews, Victoria Brittan brings to life the ambitions, the struggles and the rootedness of one of the Arab world’s most important contemporary female film-makers. It is an important and relevant resource for those interested in culture and film as well as scholars of the Arab world.”

--Dr. Dina Matar, Head, School of Interdisciplinary Studies and Chair, Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS University of London

“In this stunning rendering of Mai Masri’s filmmaking achievements, Victoria Brittain vividly depicts the harrowing realities of Palestinian existence that form the backdrop for these works of cinematic artistry. Best of all, this book will make readers passionately eager to experience Masri’s films for themselves.”

 --Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus in International Law, Princeton University

“In this book, Victoria Brittain has managed to capture not just Mai's remarkable life and cinematic achievement but also the intensity of daily reality and the struggle for justice that characterised the life of a whole generation.” 

 --Haifa Zangana, novelist and editor of Party for Thaera: Palestinian women writing life (2017)  

“This book provides a welcome account of and introduction to Mai Masri’s valuable opus, much of it produced with her late husband, the Lebanese filmmaker Jean Chamoun. It is a visual history of our Palestinian times over more than 30 years, both at home in Palestine and in one of the Palestinians’ dearest homes away from home, Beirut. Mai is nothing if not courageous in her work, facing danger to capture stories of every-day survival and challenges to adversity in haunting images. Essential reading for those who care about justice and the future of this tortured part of the world.”

--Nadia Hijab, Board President, Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network

Victoria Brittain, a former foreign correspondent and Associate Foreign Editor of The Guardian, has reported from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and contributed to many media. Her latest book was Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror.