Write a précis of the following and suggest a suitable title. ("Nizar Hassan was born in 1960 and raised in the village of Mashhad, near Nazareth…")

The passage

Nizar Hassan was born in 1960 and raised in the village of Mashhad, near Nazareth, where he has lived with his family. He studied anthropology at Haifa University and after graduating worked in TV. Starting in 1990, he turned to cinema. In 1994, he produced Independence, in which he pokes his Palestinian interlocutors about what they think of the bizarre Israeli notion of their “independence”. They have stolen another people’s homeland and call the act “independence”! Hassan dwells on that absurdity.

As the world’s attention was captured by the news of Israel planning to “annex” yet a bit more of Palestine and add it to what they have already stolen, I received an email from Nizar Hassan, the pre-eminent Palestinian documentary filmmaker. He wrote to me about his latest film, My Grandfather’s Path, and included a link to the director’s cut. It was a blessing. They say choose your enemies carefully for you would end up like them. The same goes for those opposing Zionist settler colonialists. If you are too incensed and angered by their daily dose of claptrap, the vulgarity of their armed robbery of Palestine, you would soon become like them and forget yourself and what beautiful ideas, ideals, and aspirations once animated your highest dreams. Never fall into that trap. For decades, aspects of Palestinian and world cinema, art, poetry, fiction, and drama have done for me precisely that: saved me from that trap. They have constantly reminded me what all our politics are about – a moment of poetic salvation from it all.

Nizar Hassan’s new documentary is one such work – in a moment of dejection over Israel’s encroachment on Palestinian rights and the world’s complicity, it has put Palestine in perspective. The film is mercifully long, beautifully paced and patient, a masterfully crafted work of art – a Palestinian’s epic ode to his homeland. A shorter version of My Grandfather’s Path has been broadcast on Al Jazeera Arabic in three parts, but it must be seen in its entirety, in one go. It is a pilgrimage that must not be interrupted.

Title

Art as Salvation: A Palestinian Ode to the Homeland

Précis

Nizar Hassan, a Palestinian documentary filmmaker born near Nazareth in 1960, studied anthropology, worked in television and turned to cinema in 1990. His 1994 film Independence exposed the absurdity of Israel calling its seizure of another people's homeland "independence". Amid news of further Israeli annexation, the writer received Hassan's latest film, My Grandfather's Path, and found it a blessing. Those who resist an oppressor, he argues, must not let anger make them like their enemy and forget their own ideals; art, poetry and cinema have long saved him from that trap by recalling the higher purpose of politics. Hassan's long, patient and masterly documentary, an epic tribute to his homeland, restored that perspective at a moment of despair and deserves to be watched whole, without interruption.

(Word count: 123 words; the passage has 351.)

Why this works

The passage mixes biography, opinion and film criticism. The précis keeps the short biography because the passage opens with it, but its heart is the writer's argument in the second paragraph: anger at an oppressor can make one like him, and art saves one from that trap. The film is then presented as an example of that saving power. The first person ("I received an email") becomes "the writer", the proverb "choose your enemies carefully" is folded into the argument, and minor details (Haifa University, the shorter Al Jazeera version) are left out.

Other suitable titles: "Art Against Bitterness", "My Grandfather's Path: Cinema as Salvation" or "Remembering Palestine Through Art". "Nizar Hassan's Biography" covers only the first paragraph.

Common mistakes to avoid

Writing a biography of Hassan and stopping there, keeping the first person, adding your own account of the Palestine question, and leaving out the writer's central warning about becoming like one's enemy.