Please join us for Mediterranean snacks and a film screening and discussion of 1948: Creation & Catastrophe with the director Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb on Thursday, November 3rd at 5:00 PM in the Visual Arts Complex Auditorium (VAC 1B20). Please RSVP here.
The event is organized and sponsored collaboratively by
- Center for Media, Religion, and Culture
- Mimesis Center for Documentary and Ethnographic Media
- Department of Media Studies
- Department of Communication
About the Documentary
Through riveting and moving personal recollections of both Palestinians and Israelis, 1948: Creation and Catastrophe reveals the shocking events of the most pivotal year in the most controversial conflict in the world. It tells the story of the establishment of Israel as seen through the eyes of the people who lived it. But rather than being a history lesson, this documentary is a primer for the present. It is simply not possible to make sense of what is happening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today without an understanding of 1948. This documentary was the last chance for many of its Israeli and Palestinian characters to narrate their first-hand accounts of the creation of a state and the expulsion of a nation. Hear stories from the Israelis and Palestinians who personally lived through events in Haifa, Jaffa, Dayr Yasin, Acre, Jerusalem, Ramla, Lydda, and more. These shocking and dramatic events reveal the core of what drives the conflict today.
About the Director
Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb is a professor of media studies at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB). She is the recipient of the 2020 CSUSB Outstanding Scholarship, Research and Creative Activities Award and was one of the 2019-20 Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Faculty Mentor Awardees. She has an M.A. in Journalism and a Ph.D. in Digital Communication from the University of Memphis, Tennessee. Her research interests include digital communication, digital resistance & decolonization, social justice and diasporic communities. Her research has appeared in national and international publications, such as the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication and Arab Studies Quarterly, and has been presented at national and international conferences. Her documentary 1948: Creation & Catastrophe was screened at over 20 film festivals and at universities and community organizations throughout the world. The film, co-produced and co-directed with Andy Trimlett, focuses on the year 1948 and its catastrophic consequences for the Palestinian nation which has originated from her field work in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. She won the 2019 Rebuilding Alliance “Storyteller” Award. The film also won the Jerusalem International Film Festival’s 2019 Special Jury Award in the Feature Documentary category. She is working currently on a study of Palestinian digital resistance and decolonizing digital spaces, and on a documentary on the three young Muslims murdered in Chapel Hill in 2015.