You May Laugh at Me a Little is a film about a glassblower in Hebron—a place historically known for its glass production, which dominated the region for centuries. Each family in the business had their own traditional recipe. A couple of years ago I interviewed the last glassblower in Hebron’s old city, and filmed him during a regular day at his studio.
Yaqoub Al-Natsheh (Abu Waheed) has been working with glass since he was a child: his family’s history of glass work can be traced back to the 13th century. To maintain their practice and sustain the family business after Israel’s apartheid wall carved up and sealed the West Bank, secret family recipes were replaced by melting down recycled glass, which is collected by youth and sold to the remaining factories.
Abu Waheed’s studio is located 50 feet from Ibrahimi mosque, where in 1994 an American Jewish settler massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim men while they prayed. Since then, 600 Jewish settlers have illegally moved into the heart of Hebron. They are guarded by 600 soldiers and an Israeli-controlled check point, which Palestinian children and adults have to cross daily on their way to school, work, or in order to visit their families.
I filmed Abu Waheed on May 10th, 2022 with a small crew, one of them was a friend named Fadi Abu Akleh. At the end, Fadi drove me back to Bethlehem, we hugged and he said “I think things are gonna be ok”, and the next morning his cousin, journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered by an Israeli sniper as she reported on a military raid in Jenin, wearing her Press uniform, a bullet proof vest, and a helmet.
The title You May Laugh at Me a Little (pointed out by friend and artist Nour Bishouty) refers to an expression Abu Waheed used as he described his work process:
Now the designs,
you may laugh at me a little...
The shape comes to my mind
mostly when I'm back home,
and I’m about to fall asleep.
I have a cup of coffee and a cigarette,
and think about what I shall make the following day.
Next day at the furnace,
I begin to shape what I imagined.
Made with support from the Canada Council for the Arts
