By Yasmin Fedda, Palestinian artist, filmmaker, cultural producer, and academic.
To Make Things Grow is a research-driven film project by Yasmin Fedda.
Deir Amr was a visionary 1940s Palestinian farm school, supporting children orphaned in the struggles against British occupation, run by the director’s great grandfather. This unique film weaves together official archives and personal memories to trace how land, family and community ripple through time. How do these ghosts haunt the remains, and survivors, of empire? With Palestine once again a land polluted by war, and home to thousands of war orphans, what lessons can we learn from the past?
Watching the digitisation process at The CBRL Amman Institute was really fascinating. The light, the camera, and the screen captured the colour balance card and the object in view, turning each image inadvertently into a still life. Eman Shahin, the Amman Library and Archives Officer, took great care and patience with all the materials I had brought in – photos, documents, old bank cheques, even reading glasses. In one old photo, there is my great-grandfather, a teacher from Hebron in a photograph at his first place of work, a school in Najaf, Iraq. Eman turned it over to scan the back, wearing her white gloves, to find the stamp of the photographer which said he was both a photographer and false teeth assembler. Her white gloves somehow resonated with this unexpected connection between dentistry and photography.
Another important object I brought in was the visitors book my great grandfather saved when he escaped from Deir Amr Farm School, which he ran until 1948. It was located west of Jerusalem. Still kept in a beautiful painted wooden box made by Palestinian fine artist and calligrapher Jamal Badran, the leatherbound book is embossed with the logo of the orphanage – a shovel, a plough, wheat, and a tree. The school became well known in the 1940s, and the comments in the book chronicle it’s story from its beginning until its expulsion in 1948. As the pages were being photographed, I could imagine the voices in it. One inspired the title for this project: To make things grow; plants in the ground; ideas in the mind. Nothing is better than this’. Signed in 1942 their impression of the place is palpable. The book is full of comments from people visiting the project regionally and internationally.
Deir Amr was an agricultural school set up for children orphaned during the Arab revolt against British occupation. Opened in 1941, it struggled at first to get the support and recognition from the authorities but the General Arab Orphan Committee of Palestine (Lajnat al-Yatim al-‘Arabiyya al-‘Amma) formed by Ahmad Samih Al Khalidi, persevered and succeeded in opening it. An article published last year in Jerusalem Story highlighted the story of the school. Many of the children were from rural areas across Palestine, from areas that suffered in the 1930s. It was a project of hope – that these children would return to their villages, with an education and knowledge of how to tend the land, a promise for the future of Palestine. I am currently doing research on this subject and making a film about it, and I contacted CBRL for digitising the wealth of archives and materials I have found that my great grandfather kept in Damascus, Syria where he lived after he was displaced from Palestine and until his death in 2010 at 100 years of age. Some objects were already safe with family members- for example the visitors book. But others were filed away in his flat in Damascus, which I managed to finally revisit after the fall of the regime. One treasured family object is the map he had on his wall, worn away from all the years it hung, it maps every village in Palestine. He had also kept his certificates, employment letters and pension documents from the time of the Mandate of Palestine. This collection of personal documents, and photos, is an insight into the long relationship between the UK and Palestine, a subject which I will also probe in this project.
Digitising archives such as these is invaluable for our understanding of the history of Palestine, the interlinked relationship between the UK and Palestine, and its long echoes into the present.
Yasmin Fedda is a Palestinian artist, filmmaker, cultural producer, and academic. Her award-winning films, including Ayouni, Queens of Syria, and Breadmakers, have screened at festivals and TV. Her work has earned BAFTA nominations and awards for Best Film, Director, and Prototype, and her work has exhibited in diverse venues. She has led multi-arts festivals and programmed events, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Film at Queen Mary University of London.
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