I shudder to imagine how people all over the world are currently enduring having to watch their homelands, friends, families and history destroyed in the current atrocities being committed in both Ukraine and Palestine, among so many others. When mixed heritage filmmaker and PhD student Theo Panagopoulos, in his local library in Glasgow, stumbled upon edited coloured almost 100 year old 16mm footage of his ancestral Palestine filmed by Scottish missionaries of a lush and vibrant flower filled country his BAFTA nominated documentary short The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing was born. Panagopoulos, through his observations, long debates on editing and eventual discovery of his own narrative arch, has repurposed these films to reclaim a history that, as we sit here, is being systematically obliterated. Through intrinsic connections between these past images and present horrors The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, guided only by sparse but effectual intertitles and a metaphorically apt sound design and score, is its own delicate masterpiece. Panagopoulos asks us to question the non-linear repetition of mistakes across history and a malignant ignorance of the rightful owners and habitants of land, among so much more. As his film contends for the 2025 BAFTA Best British Short Film award, we speak to him about his process of discovering the language of the film as he focussed on the unearthed, rarely-seen images filled with beautiful melancholy, maintaining a dialogue between the past and present events, and overcoming the challenge he faced in re-editing already completed films to ultimately find his own story, structure and narrative within the original archival footage.

[The following interview is also available to watch at the end of this article.]

We’re here to talk about your film, The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, I know alongside being a filmmaker you’re undertaking a PhD which in part explores archival images, is that how you came to find the footage?

I came across it quite accidentally in the National Library of Scotland, it wasn’t initially part of what I was researching but I immediately felt a calling to the footage of Palestine and I was very intrigued. When I found out that it wasn’t digitized, it became a bigger relationship with the archive and that’s when both the idea of the film began and the focus of my research changed. The film is now an archive essay film that explores the filmings of a Scottish missionary in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s. And I, as a half-Palestinian, reclaim that footage and bring it to today.

Did you then become the lead on the digitisation of the archive?

I collaborated with people from the archive. The way they work is that they would only digitize archives if people came to them with the desire to watch them. But for me, as a Palestinian, having this kind of rich footage right next door to me was something that was so precious I just couldn’t deny the need to do something with it, at least to see it.

There’s always a tension that fed into the film as well, that tension of something so beautiful, but something so forgotten.

It feels serendipitous that you came across this as alongside this archive, it feeds into previous work you have done with curators like T A P E Collective, workshops and the obvious Palestinian connection.

I think there are two sides of it. There’s the exciting side and the creative side when you find something so rich and something so deep in its exploration. But also, there is a sense of disappointment when a document with such rich background history and beautiful images has just been sitting undiscovered for 70 years. So, there’s always a tension that fed into the film as well, that tension of something so beautiful, but something so forgotten. But that drove me to really explore that feeling even further.

At the beginning of the film, you say “This film acts as an intervention of the original footage.” Can you explain in more detail the meaning of that?

The film is made out of two different archival films that present flowers in Palestine, filmed by a Scottish missionary. The films themselves are edited works with a very clear voice and a clear perspective on how both the flowers and the people are seen. I felt that if I made my own short out of those archival films, I had to find my own voice within it. I couldn’t just respond to a colonial way of looking at things, I needed to establish that this is not just the response to the footage, but me trying to explore something new. That’s the idea of the intervention and establishing that quite early on in the film.

The final film you have made has a haunting flow to it. The beginning is a young family having a picnic, you then move onto more images of native people on their land and that observation shifts the mood quite dramatically.

That came from the editing process. It took me six months to figure out what the story would be. You might have your own opinions and thoughts on looking at the footage, but at the end of the day, you need to tell a story. I felt that the way into the story always needed to be the white Scottish people in the footage. That was the tension I felt when I first watched the footage four months after discovering it. What struck me was the disparity of time, how much you get to see Scottish people in the archive, and how the Arab Palestinians in the film are put to the side, they are not part of the narrative that the missionaries are creating.

Once I started looking closer at the Arab Palestinians in the footage, there needed to be some shift within the film in order to pursue the full intervention and reclamation I always wanted to do.

So, I felt that by starting and exploring those moments of the Scottish people in Palestine in the 30s, and then changing that context slowly throughout the film – where they are, timing of the filming and how I looked at it – people could feel how I feel when watching the footage. Once I started looking closer at the Arab Palestinians in the footage, there needed to be some shift within the film in order to pursue the full intervention and reclamation I always wanted to do. That was the three-act structure that was created throughout the process.

You’ve got those beautiful moments where you sort of cut to stills of the Arab Palestinians, especially the children. At the beginning, they’re very blurred and in the background, as you say, through a colonizer’s eye. Then when you focus on them, we see closer, clearer stills of their faces. How did those develop?

That came out of a very organic process through the editing. I went into the footage wanting to find those people. Because I felt they are my ancestors, I want to see them and you rarely get such a clear document of their lives, even if it’s problematic. But just the fact that it was in the 30s and in color, that created a sense of urgency in looking and witnessing. It came organically because I was zooming in through the footage during the edit. There were moments that hit me quite hard, and those are the moments I put in the film. When I was editing and something would happen within the film, either a very harsh cut that the missionary made when a Palestinian person would look at the camera, he would cut. Or there were moments where I found them so beautiful, just in their simplicity, like a boy holding some flowers and walking through a field.

That was the process of discovering the language of the film, of something that feels so beautiful, but also so melancholic because you know what happens later.

There were things that hit me quite hard, especially in a time of grief as well, where you see something so beautiful, but also you’re grieving the present. There is that tension of that beauty and that violence that is constantly within the same frame. That was the process of discovering the language of the film, of something that feels so beautiful, but also so melancholic because you know what happens later. That sense of knowing, because of our present, gives the film a lot more meaning that you wouldn’t have at that time.

How did you feel as a filmmaker and a Palestinian knowing that you can’t go there right now and certainly not film any footage like this, while you were editing the film during this most horrific period?

In a way, I don’t think I’m supposed to be doing this. I don’t think this is supposed to be happening in the first place. So that’s not something humanely possible to even process. But personally, I always want to be making films that are speaking about things that are happening in the present, even if you’re looking 100 years in the past and using films as both an intervention, but also as a way of engaging politically with our life and our world around us. For me, there was an urgency of doing something about it, even though I started the project before October. I had this idea from the summer, but it just had a different angle. But once the violence began, I felt a responsibility to engage with that directly by looking at the past. Time is not so linear and things repeat themselves. There is a cyclical kind of way of unfolding that I also found interesting within the film.

During the edit, I would have my phone on the side and I would have those horrific images from Gaza. Meanwhile, I would be editing these beautiful images of Tiberias where the film is set. There was a constant back and forth between the images and me doing similar things to those currently filming the atrocities in Gaza. There was definitely a dialogue with the present and I think that’s why I felt the need to bring that into the film, even slightly, just through the titles. Just to bring a second level of documentation to the film.

I wanted to talk about the intertitles because there are very few of them, but they’re extremely impactful. Were those written by you and how did you work out the pacing of them?

In the beginning I had this idea of a voiceover that comes through automatically as in my previous films. But I felt I didn’t want to intervene in the way that audiences might experience the images. The images are so rich and they kind of speak so well on their own as well, even though you need to facilitate them in a certain way. The titles had to be extremely sensitive in the way I would place them because I noticed in places if I said something, it would completely change the way you would look at the next image. I realized that I was playing a lot with that idea of looking and how does looking change when you receive information or you get the information of who’s editing that image and what does it mean to have that image edited by me. Or is there certain information that adds to the relationship of the Arab Palestinians to the missionaries without being so direct about it? From 45 minutes of footage, there were just two minutes of Arab Palestinians in the film. I wanted to have this sense of a slow pace that is very specific in its rhythm that leads to an upcoming climax. But I wanted to be also extremely specific in what I say and how I write it as well.

Alongside the titles we’ve got the music. A very gentle, nature-filled melody. Did you know exactly what you wanted to include?

I had a sense of the emotion I wanted to covey. I worked with a sound designer called Hannan Jones on the first two-thirds of the film and a composer called Alexandra Katerinopoulou in the last third of the film. I felt there was a need to explore something that was abstract and not really fully understood. There was something I felt within the archive where I couldn’t really access everything I needed to access. Intellectually as well as spatially, where I couldn’t look right because the missionary looked left.

That was the metaphor that we were trying to create, but in a way that isn’t that clear and even us as an audience, we are not really sure what we are listening to.

So through collaboration we found this language of using the metaphor of the seeds underground as something that people cannot really control. Even when they’re trying to control everything else, that’s something that still has its own agency. That was the metaphor that we were trying to create, but in a way that isn’t that clear and even us as an audience, we are not really sure what we are listening to. Throughout the film, those seeds are very aggressively coming out of the earth, and that’s the music. Working with a really good musician with a ney – which is a Middle Eastern flute – everything was very specifically designed. But for me, the most important was the sense of emotion through all those elements because that’s what makes a film resonate with people, and with myself. I felt that power that the flute had at the end really captured the way I felt when I would see people looking back at me. From the past to the present which I wanted in the film.

How challenging was it to pull out your own three-act structure from those already authored films?

With archive repurposing, I always had the same length of running time I just didn’t really know how to structure it because you essentially start from scratch. There are so many ways and so many approaches that other filmmakers have followed using archives. Through the edit, it was easy to get lost because there were so many voices, even within the archive itself. My challenge was to find my own voice which was quite difficult. For the longest time, the voice of the missionary was stronger than mine because he had edited and filmed it. So it felt like I was the editor to his directing for a long time.

The moment that it shifted was when I realized that his footage had to be engaged with as if they are raw footage. As if it isn’t an edit and it’s just footage that I’ve received through a shoot somewhere. At that point, which was maybe a month before completing the film, it just clicked and then everything fell into place. Which is beautiful when that happens in filmmaking because it’s always in your mind.

The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing was commissioned by Screen Scotland.

It was through the Scottish documentary scheme called Bridging the Gap for emerging documentary filmmakers in Scotland, which is supported by the Scottish Documentary Institute and Screen Scotland. It’s a really great opportunity for Scotland-based documentary filmmakers to get to make a documentary with a very creative and supportive team. It was great to work with them because once I applied to the archive, I didn’t have a really clear idea of what the story was and through the scheme, I found my voice.

This must have been a predominately solitary project. You’ve not got a massive crew or film set. Is that a way you like to work or was that specific to this film?

I tend to be very collaborative and I don’t usually like working on my own but I think this was a very specific type of project where it just needed me to be present with the material. Not just spending time with it, but emotionally being open to it at this very specific time. So it was more of an exception to the rule. But still, I felt I worked in very big ways with a couple of collaborators. Either with the sound design, music composition or script consulting. Even the smallest of contributions really led me to big breakthroughs through the film which I wouldn’t have been able to do on my own. But it was an exception from the way that I normally work which is with many people.

The film is still quite new and just setting out on the festival circuit. You’ve got your North America premiere at Sundance this week. Have you been able to garner any feedback yet? What conversations has this sparked so far?

It is quite early, to be fair, I’ve had only two screenings or two festivals. But it’s very interesting because lots of people have very different perspectives on the film. And they are taking very different things from the footage which I think works perfectly with what the film is saying, which is about looking in different ways. That translates to audiences and how they see it. What’s their background and how do they relate to the footage or with the people in the footage or even with the flowers? I feel this film is bigger than me, I said something in the film, but then the film says much more than what I intended to. So I think this is really a blessing because I can also watch the film as something else and not just as my creation.

I feel this film is bigger than me, I said something in the film, but then the film says much more than what I intended to.

Beyond the obvious, what does the BAFTA nomination mean to you?

To be honest, it was very unexpected. I feel I’m at the beginning of this process of sharing the film and it seems that the film is being seen without me knowing it’s being seen. I’m really excited to have it seen in the cinema with an audience and get that sense of a collective experience of watching it. And also as a document itself, it is always really beautiful to see it expand on a big screen because you normally see it on a computer or a phone.

How is everything going with your PhD? Is that still feeding into your filmmaking?

With my PhD I’m exploring the same collection, but it’s 12 films instead of two. So there’s a lot of material for sure. Right now, I’m in discussions of maybe expanding the film into a longer feature because there’s so much material in so many different parts of Palestine where the missionary was filming and knowing more about his family, what he was doing there, as well as getting more footage of Palestine and Palestinians as well. So I think it’s a long-term project and that this is just the beginning.

Finally, do you know who the missionary is?

Yes, he’s called Herbert Torrance and I think he has some descendants in Scotland at the moment who might be his grandchildren in their 80s. During the filming of that footage, he was already in his 40s. I’m really excited to get to know more about it, but also to share this archive with other similar kind of initiatives, especially as there are a lot of Palestinians in the diaspora who are trying to archive and tell a story that is so fragmented. I feel this is just one initiative out of so many. The ideal thing for me would be to connect with others and just be part of this bigger project.

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