Edward Said: Between Worlds

Edward Said war im Brotberuf einige Jahrzehnte Professor für Literatur an der Columbia University in New York. Seine Studie über Orientalismus zählt zu den Klassikern der Kulturwissenschaften. Zu einer öffentlichen Figur von Weltgeltung aber wurde er wegen seines leidenschaftlichen Engagements für Palästina: In Jerusalem in eine christliche Familie hineingeboren, die 1948 vertrieben wurde, sah Said sich zeitlebens als Anwalt eines Volkes, dem ein Staat verweigert wurde. Mit zahlreichen kostbaren (auch privaten) Archivbeständen und Interview-Ausschnitten lässt Maiken Baird das Profil eines maßgeblichen, engagierten, charismatischen Intellektuellen entstehen. (Bert Rebhandl)

For decades, the public face of the Palestinian cause belonged to Edward Said. The Jerusalem-born and American-educated intellectual appeared in countless interviews on broadcast television, and some of that footage appears in Maiken Baird’s EDWARD SAID: BETWEEN WORLDS, a richly archival account of Said’s personal and political transformation. Said witnessed the violent and systematic dismantling of his homeland firsthand—he was born in Palestine in 1935, and forced to flee in 1948. But it was not until 1967’s Six Day War that he became one of the movement’s most prominent figures. Baird patiently tracks the experiences that shaped his thought. The flower-lined steps to the family home, where a young Said plays in early home movies, return in footage from a 1992 trip. The building is now an office for a Christian Zionist organization, and he cannot bring himself to knock on the door. As an exile, he explains, he belonged nowhere, but could speak to the desire for home shared by displaced people everywhere. Said’s voice carries the film; in lectures, news clips, and sometimes as quoted from his writing, it is clear, precise and urgent. His brilliance, then as now, is undiminished. (Genevieve Yue)

Maiken Baird: VENUS AND SERENA (2012, KO-REGIE), GHISLAINE MAXWELL: FILTHY RICH (2022)