Ismail Shammout

Ismail Shammout

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Most Known for...

Movie Picture

The Urgent Call of Palestine 1973

Ismail Shammout, an artist who is primarily known for his paintings, also served as director of the Cultural Arts Section of the PLO and worked with the organization’s Film Unit in the 1970s. In this short film, Shammout records a solidarity song by the Palestinian Egyptian singer Zeinab Shaath to announce the most urgent call of Palestine. The song and the words of Kamal Nasser that break through the ballad continue to hold striking relevance today. Lyrics by Lalitha Punjabi.
Movie Picture

Glow of Memories 1972

This film focuses on an old Palestinian man who is the subject of artist Ismail Shammout’s painting Memories and Fire. The film unravels his memories using archival photographs and Shammout’s own paintings to tell the story of Palestinian experience and resistance. By simply using a montage of visuals and sounds and avoiding narration, Shammout adopts a style that was used by early Soviet filmmakers who wished to communicate across language boundaries, creating a film that offered an non-verbal narrative of the Palestinian cause. The film was screened at a variety of festivals in the former Soviet Union and won a prize at the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week for Cinema and Television in 1973. Recently restored and digitized.