Edward Said: Between Worlds
Edward Said was brilliant. And Between Worlds is a fitting introduction to his brilliance.
The Boston Palestine Film Festival runs in person across various venues from October 16 through October 25. Click here for the schedule and ticket info, and watch the site for continuing coverage.
Edward Said was one of the last rockstars of literary criticism. Born in Mandatory Palestine in 1935, he lived through the Nakba, the Six-Day War, multiple Israeli invasions of Lebanon, and the 1st Intifada (and part of the second) before dying in 2003. His entire adult life witnessed the shrinking map of Palestinian territory and the increased subjugation of his people. Like many Palestinians, including the ones in Boston watching this film through the Boston Palestine Film Festival, he spent most of his life in exile from his homeland. Trained as a scholar of English literature from Ivy League institutions, Said became a household name in the humanities through his 1978 book Orientalism, which systematically looked at Western depictions of the East to argue that their “orientalist” depictions were intractable from imperialism.
Said was a man from two worlds. His father, a Palestinian, also became an American citizen after leaving Palestine to avoid the Ottoman draft. He eventually returned after the war, and brought his new citizenship with him. Edward Said first moved to the United States to attend a private boarding school in New England, fell in love with the great English canonical novels, and became a life-long student of (Western) classical music. At the same time, he was an important political activist around Palestine and even was a member of the Palestinian National Council.
Director Maiken Baird’s new documentary Edward Said: Between Worlds traverses the space between these multifaceted worlds to make a tapestry of the life and work of the academic at its center. Marketed as the first documentary “made with full access to the Said family and estate,” a process probably made easier through the production support of his daughter Najla Said, the new release is entirely composed of archival footage.
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