The Institute for Palestine Studies has recently released "The Palestinian Audiovisual Heritage: Origin, Dispersion, and Digital Preservation…Preliminary Studies and Future Aspirations" by Author Bashar Shamout.
In this book, the author seeks to shed light on the rich audiovisual heritage of Palestine "aiming at preserving it with modern techniques, and documenting the collective Palestinian memory facing constant threats amid the hard political and life conditions the Palestinian people live."
The book discusses the topic on three levels: The origin of the audiovisual materials, the places of different collections dispersed in many archives around the world, and how to access them, in addition to some technical fundamentals used in the field of digitization in order to provide help for the people working in this field in the Arab region.
In addition to the objective research based on the digital archival science, the book highlights some of the major causes linked to the nonstop and deliberate attempts of Israeli institutions to conceal the Palestinian identity, kill the collective memory of the Palestinian people, and dominate it.
It also objectively discusses the looting and loss of audiovisual materials in Beirut following the Israeli invasion in 1982. These materials are of great cultural and historical value, as they were inspired by the resistance journey of the Palestine Liberation Organization since its establishment.
