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The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing
Mandatory Palestine, circa 1940. Three ladies in picnic attire stroll smilingly through fields of flowers and mountain landscapes. They gather a bouquet of native flowers: hollyhocks, blue lupines, bismarck irises, and red clover. They uproot what does not belong to them. The Scottish missionary accompanying them captures this with wonder. A caravan of camels passes by. In the background, Palestinian locals observe curiously.
Eighty years later, Theo Panagopoulos sheds a bitter light on this archival footage. The director builds a dystopian bridge between the harbinger of the Nakba in 1948 and today’s genocide. He zooms in on the grainy faces of Palestinian women, men, and children and muses via text on screen about the land his grandparents were expelled from. Where are the plants and the people now? Do they still colour the regions? A boy wearing a keffiyeh walks through a field of poppies, and the image freezes.