Review: Palestine Comedy Club

Review by Nick Revell (comedian and writer)

In a story of six Palestinian comedians doing a tour of Palestine you might expect polemics and agitprop. You’d be entirely mistaken. Whether or not that disappoints you, the film is all the stronger for its ostensibly lighter touch.

Of course, the extraordinary and horrific circumstances of the The Occupation are always present. They have to be. But never centre stage. This is essentially the story of a group of human beings in conditions of great adversity determined to exercise their right to be ordinary human beings. And nothing is going to stop them. They achieve this simply by telling their individual and collective stories. In the telling of those stories, the appalling adversity is acknowledged, but defied and diminished by being consigned almost entirely to the margins, to scenery and background.

It’s the tellers of the stories who are the actors here, who are the stars here.

In the delightful opening sequence we meet comedian Alaa Shehada and his disarmingly charming (and effortlessly funny) mother in a heartwarming and loving conversation about the everyday, which culminates perfectly in an anecdote about watermelons. The tone and approach is shrewd and subtle and continues throughout. Three-dimensional human beings just trying to get on with their lives and their work. Three-dimensional human beings offering acts of resistance by defying their oppressor’s attempts to reduce them to a single dehumanised dimension; and, dare I say, also disabusing many sympathetic outsiders of the inclination to reduce them to one-dimensional victimhood. Oh, and making us laugh and gripping us all the while.

This wonderful film will entertain you, surprise you, and I think, enlighten you.

The hardest thing when you have a big long important story to tell is making it look simple.

The makers do that brilliantly here.

Film, live theatre, story telling and stand-up comedy are all plaited and woven into one coherent documentary. Achieving that is so hard, and they make it look so easy that you don’t see it. The structure is brilliant. I love the structure (I’m a total geek for structure).

It’s not just the story which is so compelling, it’s the telling.

If ever you just wanted convincing of the power of telling stories, watch this film.