Coloring Palestine: The Flag Device and Cinematic Motivations in Narrative Movies

Abstract

Abstract This article compares the flag colors device in three films: Paradise Now, When I Saw You, and 3000 Nights. The central question is how Hany Abu-Assad, Annemarie Jacir, and Mai Masri embed the colors red, green, white, and black in their movies, the colors of the Palestinian flag. Three major motivations for the flag device are compared: symbolic rhetoric, artistic play, and narrative composition by examining flag motifs from global cinema (Godard, Kieślowski, and Mehta) and other Palestinian films and paintings. This article argues that Abu-Assad, Jacir, and Masri have used flag colors to structure their films’ form and to cue their narratives.