The Zora Dirnbach Screenwriting Program is conceived as a screenwriting development initiative dedicated to the investigative aspect of scriptwriting, with a special emphasis on its social implications. While it primarily focuses on the development of feature film screenplays, the program’s main goal is to open an interdisciplinary research space. This year's edition launched a collaboration between the Screenwriters and Playwrights Guild and Kino Unseen.

This collaboration has led to the organization of a program titled Bridging - In Dialogue with Archives: Oraib Toukan and Diana Meheik to foster a dialogue between women filmmakers and authors working across diverse media and contexts, yet with closely aligned interests. The relationship forged here also bridges spaces of erased memories and those resurfacing before us, thus creating room for images and words from the potential imaginaries of third or fourth cinemas.

Via Dolorosa | Oraib Toukan | 20 min | Germany, Jordan

Footage captured by the late photographer and cameraman Hani Jawharieh is slowed down, analyzed, and reassembled alongside materials found in the same location—piles of film reels left by former Soviet cultural centers in Amman, Jordan. This is accompanied by commentary from literary and film scholar Nadia Yaqub. Via Dolorosa (Latin for the Arabic term “Path of Suffering”) is itself the procession route that Jawharieh filmed in his hometown of Jerusalem.

Oraib Toukan is an artist, writer, and educator. Currently, she is a EUME fellow at the Forum for Transregional Studies in Berlin. She was previously a Clarendon Scholar at the University of Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art, where she completed her doctorate in 2019. Until 2015, she was Head of the Art Department and Media Studies Program at Bard College at Al-Quds University in Palestine.

Diana Meheik: If the Image Were to Explode

The final photographs taken by Hani Jawhariah, filmmaker and cameraman for the P.L.O.’s film division, depict fighters in the mountains near the village of Ain Toura in Lebanon. His comrades and fellow fighters believe he may have filmed his own death, but due to the explosion that destroyed both him and his camera, not all of the footage could be salvaged.
Nearly 50 years later, can we see what he saw if we look at the image he captured just before his death? If the image itself were to explode, would we go blind staring into it? Or would we, only then, begin to see?

Diana Meheik holds a degree in performance dramaturgy from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. She has written the plays The Rose of Jericho and Mania. Her work primarily explores themes of otherness and diversity, focusing on marginalized characters. She is a member of the Guild of Screenwriters and Playwrights and currently works as a journalist and editor at the cultural platform Kulturpunkt.