Revolutionaries Never Die

“Archives are not to be preserved, but to be activated.” The final words of REVOLUTIONARIES NEVER DIE encapsulate one of the guiding convictions of Mohanad Yaqubi’s practice, both as an archivist and a filmmaker. In earlier projects, he searched for, recovered and restored Palestinian films long presumed lost, returning them to circulation so that they might ignite the struggles to come. Here, after leaving a message from the great Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab unanswered three months before her passing, Yaqubi immerses himself in 113 reels of 16mm film she made between 1973 and 1983. Yet his engagement with these celluloid memories is directed not towards the past, but towards the future. Mediated by Saab’s committed gaze, Yaqubi’s film journeys across her native Lebanon, as well as Iran, Egypt and elsewhere. Always close to the fronts of resistance—whether armed struggles or the everyday lives of people under attack—Saab composes an inventory of faces, movements and gestures of defiance. At a moment when the history captured on those reels seems to be repeating itself offscreen, the latent energy embodied in those images demands to be unleashed. This film is a form of liberation. (Victor Guimarães)

See also the film program for Jocelyne Saab. 

Mohanad Yaqubi: INSOMNIES (2005, K), OFF FRAME AKA REVOLUTION UNTIL VICTORY (2015), R21 AKA RESTORING SOLIDARITY (2022)