THE HOUR OF LIBERATION HAS ARRIVED

THE TEN PILLARS OF BEACON: ARMED STRUGGLE

Cinema can be used as a vessel for resistance, a tool to hasten the breaking of chains, a beacon call for global transformation towards new collectively-forged futures.

In the late 60s, Dhofar rose up against the British-backed Sultanate of Oman, in a democratic, feminist guerrilla movement. Director Heiny Srour and her team crossed 500 miles of desert and mountains by foot, under bombardment by the British Royal Air Force, to reach the conflict zone and capture this rare record of a now mostly-forgotten war.

Using archival footage, lyrical pamphleteering, and dialectic montage, Srour’s documentary depicts an armed struggle devoid of testosterone or muscular militarism, where every single aspect of society is patiently subverted. Land and water are collectivized, cooking is no longer the exclusive prerogative of women, and education is not just for men. Rather than religiously waiting for the fateful day of liberation, it is the practice of everyday life that is organically revolutionized. The fight against British neo-colonialism, patriarchal hierarchy, tribal divisions, Arab collaborationism, and cultural integralism is conducted collectively.

Never is a single aspect considered or dealt with separately, something mirrored in the very narrative structure of the documentary, which is in fact devoid of individual protagonists. A polyphony of voices and stances coalesce into a mosaic where the very matrix of domination is questioned and dismantled. There is neither a cute, innocent child with whom the audience can sympathize and cleanse its conscience, nor a hero with whom to identify. There are no cartoonish villains to moralistically simplify the structural nature of injustice. There is not even an ending, except the material one imposed by the film’s length, for however defeated and forgotten by history are the struggles chronicled in THE HOUR OF LIBERATION HAS ARRIVED, they have lost none of their urgency and relevance.