Malek Rasamny — documentary filmmaker, co-founder of "The Native and the Refugee" and one of the original afikra presenters — on his critical work juxtaposing the societies, struggles and lived experience of settler colonialism by looking at Native Reservations and Palestinian refugee camps through a spatial lens.
Taking his film "Spaces of Exception" as a starting point, we talk about reservations and refugee camps as uniquely dual spaces that are all at once akin to prisons, yet a territory where it is possible to practice native sovereignty. He points to the very power of Indigeneity in calling nationhood into question, the potent transnational solidarity that exists between Native Americans and Palestinians, and why it is possible to be a settler colonizer without a sponsor state.
0:00 Introduction
1:19 “The Native and the Refugee”
3:56 Settler colonialism: comparing Palestinian and Native American experiences
8:18 Settlers without a sponsor state
12:27 Similarities between Native American reservations & Palestinian refugee camps
16:31 Common imaginaries of reservations and refugee camps
20:07 Making “Spaces of Exception”
24:38 Background on Palestinian refugee camps
32:49 Filming locations
37:02 Area A & Area B in the occupied West Bank
39:28 Transnational solidarity between Native Americans & Palestinians
46:49 Audience reception in different places and contexts
Malek Rasamny is a documentary filmmaker, researcher and writer. He was also one of the first afikra presenters when we first launched. He is the co-founder — along with Matt Peterson — of "The Native and the Refugee" which is a multi-media research project that compares and contrasts the societies and struggles of both Native American reservations and Palestinian refugee camps in the Middle East. Much of their work and research culminated in their feature film "Spaces of Exception" which was shot between 2014 and 2017 in Arizona, New York, South Dakota, Lebanon and the West Bank.
Connect with Malek 👉 https://www.instagram.com/malekrasamny/
Hosted by:
Mikey Muhanna 👉 https://www.instagram.com/mikey_mu/
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