Based on Skype conversations with Gaza-based photographers, fixers, and drivers who were behind specific images that were transmitted from screen to screen in the summer of 2014. The film probes the face of mourning and grief – its digital embodiment, transmission, and representation. It asks how the gaze gets channeled within the digital realm, and how empathy travels. Equally, how the documentary signifier – and its abstraction – operate when viewing suffering. What exactly is viewing suffering ‘at a distance’ – and how many meters or kilometers is that? What is the behavior and political economy of the image of war? Who is the ‘local’ in the representation of war? What is the daily routine of those who represent war?

When Things Occur

Footage shot by the late photographer and cinematographer, Hani Jawharieh, slowed-down, studied, and re-assembled with material from where it was found—piles of film reels discarded by former Soviet cultural centers in Amman, Jordan, accompanied with commentary by literary and film scholar Nadia Yaqub. Via Dolorosa (Latin for the Arabic ‘Way of Suffering’) is itself a processional route that Jawharieh filmed in his birth city of Jerusalem.