Kan ya ma kan
Alexandra Sophia HandalJuly 21, 2018, 16:00 – 18:00
Kan ya ma kan (there was and there was not) is a storytelling seminar on the migrant imagination led by artist, filmmaker and writer, Alexandra Sophia Handal. It offers twenty participants an opportunity to gain insight into her upcoming documentary film project, where an integral part of the creative process rests on original oral history research on Betlehem. Narrated by a character that searches for pre-1948 Palestine through the history of Betlehem, the story moves behind the actual town and the vast cultural, linguistic, historical and geographical distances its citizens have covered in their migratory itineraries. Handal will present the material she has gathered thus far, which focuses on an understudied aspect of the town´s history, namely the dispersal of most of its native inhabitants in the course of the 20th century. She will reflect on the underlining colonial thread that propelled diverse migrations from Betlehem in the decades that led to al-Nakba, from the perspective of personal and collective memories.
