Institute For Middle East Studies

Terrace of the Sea was shot in 2008-9 in an unofficial Palestinian Bedouin gathering in south Lebanon. Structured around a collection of family photographs taken over three generations, this film examines the experiences of the Ibrahim family not simply or primarily through the prism of nationalist politics, but through their relationship to their work as fishermen and to the beach camp on which they are living. With the political dimension decentered other overlapping attachments become apparent – in particular the tension between a love of home and the land on which it is built, and the ties that continue to bind refugees to their country of origin. A meditation on the distances between memory, photography and film, Terrace of the Sea explores the relations between past and present, home and homeland, and between seeing and being seen.