The Great Book Robbery

Event information

15 MAY 2013, 7.30pm

TICKETS £5, BOOK NOW

“Farewell my library! Farewell mansion of wisdom, temple of philosophers, institute of science, council house of literature!” ~ Khalil al-Sakakini

The Great Book Robbery - chronicles of a cultural destruction, tells the story of 70,000 looted Palestinian books during the 1948 war by the newly born State of Israel. The film employs a multifaceted approach to tell a multi-layered story: dramatic location filming, eyewitness accounts, archival footage, pictorial material, C.G.I.—computer generated images, documents and culture critiques, that place the book plunder affair in a larger historical-cultural context.

The Great Book Robbery sheds new light on the Palestinian tragedy of 1948, also known as the Nakba (or 'catastrophe'), when some 725,000 Palestinians were dispossessed to make way for a Jewish-majority Israeli state. In the intervening years, Israel has constructed a moralistic and heroic narrative of the 1948 war. The film aims to deconstruct this imperial history and to prevent this story from fading into oblivion by passing it on to future generations.

The Great Book Robbery was produced and directed by Benny Brunner, 2911 Foundation, and Xela Films in association with Aljazeera English. Watch the teaser here.

Read an article about the film in The Economist here.

Buy now or reserve a place and pay on the door by emailing rsvp@mosaicrooms.org