Edward Said was a rarity in the United States, a public intellectual who engaged in political debates as well as academic ones. His book Orientalism (1978) blew apart the standard approaches that the Western establishment had towards cultures in Asia and the Middle East. He opposed the exotic stereotypes that portrayed the societies of an entire continent as a monolithic set of backwards if romantic people who needed to be schooled by a Western imperial order. His rigorous theoretical and historical approach exposed Western colonialism for its ignorant and rapacious mentality. Even more controversial than Orientalism was Said’s The Question of Palestine (1979), which espoused the cause of the people he grew among in the 1930s and ’40s, having been born in Jerusalem in 1935. Said’s family were among those ejected by the new Israeli regime in 1948 and he spent the rest of his days in exile from his homeland as his family first moved to Egypt before relocating to the USA during his studies.
A brilliant writer and thinker, Said taught for decades at Columbia University in New York City. In the 1980s and ’90s, he became the public face for the Palestinian cause, giving countless interviews and lectures when he wasn’t teaching or writing or organizing the marvelous West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Palestinian and Israeli ensemble created by Said and the acclaimed conductor and musician Daniel Barenboim.
Now Danish-American director Maiken Baird and Palestinian-American producers Sarah Mowaswes and Razan Ghalayini have made Edward Said: Between Worlds, a compelling documentary about the great intellectual who first stood up publicly in the U.S. in support of Palestinian liberation nearly 50 years ago. Exclusively using archival footage, their documentary shows the life and career of a thinker and activist who worked ceaselessly for the Palestinian cause at a time when few people in the West agreed with him. Looking at the historical record in this documentary shows that Said was a humanist and intellectual whose words are just as thoughtful and appropriate now as they were back then. Now, perhaps they will be heard.
POV’s print editor Marc Glassman spoke to director Maiken Baird and producer Sarah Mowaswes as they were preparing for their journey to TIFF, where the film had its world premiere. –Marc Glassman
MB: Maiken Baird
SW: Sarah Mowaswes
POV: Marc Glassman
POV: How did the film happen? Can you take me through the steps of how it was made?
MB: After October 7th, I was thinking about Edward Said and wishing that he was still here. I was really missing his voice, his wisdom on the Middle East and his humanism—his way of talking truth to power and his whole way of speaking about the situation as a Palestinian himself. Having lived and worked at Columbia University for 40 years, he was very versed on both sides.
I reached out to his daughter, Najla Said, who lives in New York, and his widow, Mariam. We decided to collaborate on this venture of making a film. I wanted to make it very much in his voice, and so I needed the family’s support, their access to his archive and Columbia’s, and their stories. I hired Sarah shortly after reaching an agreement with the family.
SM: The conceit was always to make a film on Edward, but it wasn’t always necessarily to make it a fully archival film. That didn’t come about until we started really digging and working with the family. There was talk of interviewing the family and [peers] as talking heads, as many documentaries do. But as we started working with the family, we discovered troves of archives that were just so beautiful and mesmerizing that it became clear pretty quickly that the only choice for the film was to make it entirely in Edward’s voice, and to use the phrase he coined, “the permission to narrate for Palestinians.”
POV: Did it become obvious that you had two or three interviews that were just superb and would be used a lot in the film?
MB: There were definitely some interviews that were superb. Some were surprises. There was this Dutch interview that you see a lot that his family didn’t even know about. He did so many interviews, and travelled so much in the Arab world, as well as in Europe and here, in America, that the family really didn’t know all of them.
A few really stood out, such as the Salman Rushdie interview, a few on Charlie Rose, and the Dutch one, which was more academic and where he may have felt freer to talk because he was in Europe.
POV: Said was a musician, and I was wondering whether you ever thought about emphasizing a little bit more about the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and his collaborative relationship with Daniel Barenboim.
SM: The orchestra wasn’t in early cuts of the film, but it became clear very early that we were sanitizing Edward in a way by not including it. It was such an integral part of his life and process. As you see in the film, he learned to play piano at a very young age and had a love for music, which he got through his mother. She was a big inspiration for him, so leaving that out was leaving a part of Edward out and the way he approached humanism. We had a lot of conversations with Mariam Said, his widow, who is now the Vice-President of the Said-Barenboim Foundation, overseeing its educational projects, about music and the goals of the Orchestra.
POV: What was your reaction when you saw the pre-Nakba footage in the archives, of what Palestine was like before 1948?
MB: My favourite part of the film is that footage. I found it so moving to see Edward Said with his siblings in Jerusalem in the house that they grew up in. It’s an extraordinary thing that Palestinians were literally evicted out of their homes.
POV: And you have that moment, decades later, where he goes back but can’t even step into the old house. It’s just emotionally impossible for him.
MB: Yes. He’d spent his whole life working on the cause, and yet, when he got back to his own home, he couldn’t even bring himself to go back into his childhood bedroom, where he was as a baby… it’s very moving.
POV: I think that Said’s Orientalism is one of the most significant books of the last 50 years. It really critiqued the West’s chronic misreading of people from Asia and Africa whose thinking and heritage isn’t European in outlook. It’s profoundly anti-imperialist. I was surprised that you didn’t emphasize it more but chose to concentrate on The Question of Palestine, which was, of course, his other major book. Why did you do that?
MB: We could have done a whole film on Orientalism and another on his love and activism through music! Edward Said was a Renaissance man. There wasn’t enough time in one film to entirely cover his life and work.
I read The Question of Palestine when I was 15 years old and it totally changed my European perspective on the post-World War II immigration of Israel. It’s so important for people to understand the resistance that there is in America in particular to the Palestinian cause, and to the questioning of Israel, the questioning of any of it. The archival footage in the film shows that way before October 7, there has been resistance to Palestine even when it was represented through this eloquent, sophisticated, gorgeous man. We show that Said was called a terrorist back in the ’80s and ’90s. I’d like to bring it all out to the mainstream, where people can understand the full story, but obviously we’re going to get a lot of resistance with distribution in America.
POV: What responses are you getting for getting the film distributed and streamed?
SM: The thing about distribution is, we’re a documentary that has its own innate challenges. We are not immune to that. And we’re telling a story on Palestine, an added layer.
Streamers say that they want to appeal to people from the diaspora community, and tell stories from underrepresented voices, but when push comes to shove, no one makes an offer. Our friends who are in the fiction world making Palestinian films, and our friends in the doc world are all in this boat of trying to figure out what distribution looks like in this new world.
Thankfully we’re in it together, but it is an uphill battle. For us, it’s not necessarily about the perfect partner, it’s more about working with someone who believes in the things that we believe in, which is making this issue accessible to as wide an audience as possible. We don’t want it to just go on a streaming platform where there’s no marketing and no one can find it. That to us would be a loss in many ways.
MB: We know that this topic is something that is very, very difficult to get distribution for in America. This is a resistance film, right? We want to get it out in theaters before it streams.
POV: We get a really good sense of Edward Said as a boy, as a student, and even his early years at Columbia, but when he gets married and has children and becomes a professor, we see a lot less. Is there less footage after that or was it a conscious decision to not deal with his personal and family life as an adult?
SM: Edward could be quite private; parts of him were kept tight to his chest. He wasn’t very personal when he went on news channels or gave larger interviews. He didn’t often talk about his family, and in many ways, I understand that. As a Palestinian, he wanted to keep his family safe. It’s not in the film, but Edward was under surveillance by the FBI and his phone was tapped for many years. That was very hard for him and his family.
There is more footage of him with his family and more on music. We have an amazing archive, and we want to make it accessible to other filmmakers who can explore different parts of Edward’s life.
POV: Are Edward Said’s books being promoted in any way?
SM: The Wylie Agency, which worked with Edward on all of his books and now works with the family has made sure that all of his major books are in print. There’s a beautiful redesign on all of the covers of new editions of the books. We’re making those books accessible at different screenings, so that the different parts of Edward Said are coming together. The film and the books are imbued with each other.
POV: Are you working with communities in Toronto and New York to support your festival screenings?
SM: We are. I must say that as much as there is resistance, there is so much love for the film, especially now. People want to help us in so many ways.
POV: You two are very committed to the Palestinian cause. What is your hope or assessment now with the dire situation that’s going on in Gaza?
SM: I will speak first as a Palestinian American who grew up in New Jersey, in a huge Palestinian diaspora. My mom is from Gaza. She grew up there and members of our family are still there. We’ve watched that part of the family be subjected to genocide and killed for the past three years.
I believe that there should be self-determination and freedom for Palestinians. Edward Said wanted Palestinians to be part of the conversation to determine their future. We’re seeing a plan for Gaza now via Trump where not a single Palestinian is even part of the conversation. That’s ridiculous. So, for me personally, it would be to obviously stop the genocide, but also to make Palestinians part of the conversation of what the future looks like.
POV: Maiken, what do you think?
MB: I would love for this film to build more awareness of what is happening in Palestine. I think a lot of people don’t know the story, not just of Edward Said, but of the Palestinians and what has really happened to them since the creation of Israel. I hope the film will bring both awareness and [stimulate] conversation and dialogue about the whole situation there.
