If cinema needs props, war uses weapons; if war deploys soldiers, cinema hires extras. For one, the desert is a location, and for the other, it is a warzone. But in both, the desert too often serves as a colonial stage for spectacle. The spectacle is Rambo III, shot in 1986 in the Negev\Naqab desert to simulate Afghanistan. The Israeli military was a key collaborator, providing the film production weapons as props, soldiers as extras, and militarised lands as vast desert locations.

In the 1980s, a Palestinian Bedouin artist, Bashir Abu Rabia, was hired to create special effects for Rambo III. Today, Bashir returns to the desert locations, where he finds material remnants and debris left behind in the sand. In the mute and grainy desert background, Bashir sees the Naqab Desert in the south of Israel\Palestine and a document of his dispossessed tribal land. Once the frames of the film Rambo are cracked and repositioned, they can shed light on erased lives and on intimate relations to land. 

Under a Blue Sun tells how desert lands in Israel\Palestine were converted into military training zones and adopted as locations for big-budget action films. It is about the imaginaries projected onto the surface of the desert land and the possibility of finding a 'Rambo' for Palestine.

The screening on 28 September will be followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Daniel Mann, hosted by writer and programmer Siavash Minoukadeh.