A Sketch of Manners (Alfred Roch's Last Masquerade)

Jumana Manna

2013

Video, 00:12:00.
Materials: HD video, sound

Based on an archival photograph, A Sketch of Manners reenacts a masquerade in Jerusalem in 1942, hosted by Palestinian National Front member Alfred Roch. The party took place during the most crucial period of the Second World War and shows the Palestinian upper class engaged in theatrical frivolity. A voice-over describes the complex political situation of the time, seemingly so distant from the Palestinian situation today. Manna’s film invokes a forgotten history, where the melancholy faces attending the masquerade point towards the events after the Second World War that would irrevocably change the future of Palestine and its people.

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