Opened in 1948, Aida is a Palestinian refugee camp located very close to the city of Bethlehem, on Palestinian territory. Its residents come from over forty-three villages that were destroyed during the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, and during the Six-Day War in 1967, which opposed Israel to Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. The first and second intifada [1] (in 1987 and 2000) radically transformed life in the camp.

“I asked the residents of the Aida camp in Bethlehem to sketch out maps of their surroundings. The sketches were recorded on video as they made them, along with the stories behind these subjective geographies.” It was with these instructions that Till Roeskens constructed this presentation. Consisting of six chapters, this film in black and white leads the spectator into the alleyways of the Aida camp. On the surface of the screen, a black line traces the contours of houses and the movements of a resident who, as he draws, talks about his life in this place, shunted about to the rhythm of wars. The contrast between the naive drawings in black felt-tip pen and the violence of the stories told is captivating. Basic signs retrace movements on the white sheet of paper, punctuated by lives broken by soldiers destroying a farm or forbidding access to roads, preventing all commercial activity and thus any semblance of a livelihood. Since the speakers are all of diverse ages and backgrounds, the whole story of this place is told here through brief slices of life.

Patricia Maincent

[1] Meaning uprising in Arabic, the term intifada is used to refer to the two powerful movements of popular opposition against the Israeli army present in the occupied territories.