Silk memory |
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Collection title
Heritage
First broadcast date
2008
Abstract
The program introduces Mrs Widad Kawar who was born in Bethlehem but lives in Amman.She plays an important humanitarian role in saving the Palestinian-Jordanian heritage by collecting and documenting it.This heritage concerns the dress, sculptures, colors and home decoration.
The program includes interviews with Jordanian personalities who comment Mrs Widad’s works in the field of heritage. Among the personalities are: the Jordanian historian Dr Abdulkarim El Gharaibah and the fashion designer Lana Becharat, as well as the journalist Zahia Anab. They talk about their relationship with Mrs Widad and their interest in her works.
Production companies
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Television - Own production
Broadcaster
JRTV - Jordan Television
Audiovisual form
Documentary
Primary theme
Society and way of life
Secondary themes
- Society and way of life / Women
- Society and way of life / Festivals and traditions
Credits / Cast
- Abanda Fakher - Speaker
- Zoghbi Arwa - Author of original work
- Ramhi Mohamed - Director
Map locations
- Jordan - Transjordan Plateau - Amman
- Palestine - West bank - Bethlehem
Additional information
Costumes - home decorations - archives photos of Amman and Betlehem - interviews
Context
The memory of silk
Norig Neveu
This documentary is a portrait of Widad Kawar, a well-known collector. In Jordan, collectors are often women belonging to Amman's upper or middle class. The title of this documentary, Memory of Silk, is the name of an exhibition organized by Widad Kawar in Amman in 2001.
Like many in Jordan, Widad Kawar has Palestinian roots. She was born in Tulkarem Palestine and grew up in the town of Bethlehem. Coming from a Christian family, she went to school in Ramallah and then to Beirut to study at the American University. In 1955 she got married, and is now based in Amman with her husband, who is from a Jordanian family.
In 1948 her work as a volunteer for the Red Cross brought her into contact with a large number of Palestinian refugees. It was then she realised the threat to Palestinian culture and began a collection of dresses from different regions. Her concept of Palestinian identity and heritage was of a piece with that of the national movement, highlighting a rural Palestine and the figure of fallah. In 1967, with the arrival of the second wave of Palestinian refugees following the Six Day War, she bought a lot of dresses from women in need. These hand-embroidered dresses were a way of differentiating women both in terms of their social status and their geographical origin. Widad Kawar thought of her collecting as a militant act to save the material culture of Palestine.
In the 1960s, while working as a volunteer in the Palestinian refugee camps at Wahdat and Jabal Hussein in Amman, she also began to take an interest in Jordanian clothing and Bedouin carpets, all the time continuing her collection of Palestinian dresses. Her approach was evolving, and she began to collect the history of the pieces she had acquired and the oral traditions relating to them. In the 1980's she documented and scientifically classified her collection. Since the 1970s, several major exhibitions of her collection, one of the largest in the world, have been organized in Jordan and abroad. She also lends pieces to the Jordanian government. Faced with the impossibility of opening a museum to showcase her pieces, she stores them in a space reserved for this purpose in her home.
Widad Kawar's activity is interesting in terms of Jordanian heritage policies, to which she has often been opposed. At first, these policies encouraged the dismantling of Palestinian cultural identity in favour of unifying the cultures on both sides of the river Jordan. In the 1960s, Jordan, despite recognizing the autonomy of Palestinian culture, wanted to represent it. On a national scale, the heritage strategies wanted to take precedence over a Trans-jordanian identity, seen as basically Bedouin. Palestinian dresses thus became symbols of the Palestinian identity and claim for political existence.
Bibliography:
Irene Maffi, Politiques du patrimoine et politiques de la mémoire en Jordanie, entre histoire dynastique et récits communautaires, Dijon-Quetriny, Edition Payot Lausanne, 2004.
Nadine Picaudou, Territoires palestiniens de mémoire, Paris, Karthala ; Beyrouth, IFPO, 2006.
Kawar, Widad, Threads of Identity: Preserving Palestinian Costume and Heritage, Rimal Publications, 2011.
Kawar, Widad et Tania Nasir, Palestinian Embroidery, Traditional "Fallahi" Cross-Stitch, Munich, State Museum of Ethnography, 1992.