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COURIER LIFE, MARCH 25–31, 2022
OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
Community
at ‘Home’
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
Freedom Dabka Group has
been celebrating Palestinian heritage
and culture in Bay Ridge
for nearly 10 years, and now their
passion and joy are being shared
far and wide in a new short documentary
that premiered at South
by Southwest this week.
“Coming Home,” directed by
filmmakers Naim Naif and Margot
Bowman, follows the members
of the Palestinian folk dancing
group through the streets of
Bay Ridge, in and out of their favorite
neighborhood niches and
into the family home of the group’s
founder, Amer Abdelrasoul.
The film’s associate producer,
Ali Rosa-Salas, lives in New York
City and is heavily involved with
the music and art scene, Naif
said, and told Bowman about the
group when she discovered them.
Bowman, in turn, spoke to Naif,
and the two decided to partner up
and make a documentary about
the team.
“We wanted to make something
that had a sense of gravitas about it,
and like, historical significance,”
Bowman said. “And to contribute
to the record of New York City
and the community that the film
is about. It felt important to make
something that would last.”
Tens of thousands of Palestinians
call Bay Ridge home.
Last spring, as the documentary
was being filmed, thousands of
Brooklynites and supporters
marched through the streets to
protest violence against Palestinians
in Israel and commemorate
Nakba Day — the beginning
of the Nakba, or the catastrophe,
when the Palestinian state was
erased and many Palestinians
were permanently displaced.
“When I’m in Bay Ridge, I feel
closer to who I am,” Abdelrasoul
says in the film. “I’m not going to
say closer to home, but closer to
my culture, to my people.”
Naif himself is Palestinian-
American and spent four years of
his childhood living in the West
Bank with his family. When he
moved to New York from his
longtime home in Florida a few
years ago, he didn’t know about
the size and strength of the Palestinian
community in Bay Ridge.
“I felt like a part of me was
just not existing, and that was
my Arab-ness,” he said. “I think
I was craving that environment,
so it was so amazing to be able
“Coming Home”’ a new documentary by Naim Naif and Margot Bowman, features members of Bay Ridge’s Freedom Dabka
Group, who celebrate their Palestinian heritage through traditional cultural dancing. Margot Bowman
to make this film and create connections
with other Palestinian
people and families in New York
City, where I live.”
Naif met up with the dance
crew — who he refers to as “the
boys” — to scout for filming locations
on the day President Biden
won the election, he said, and Bay
Ridge was lively. They showed
him around the neighborhood,
bringing him to the park they
grew up playing in, which features
in the opening shots of the
film, the grocery store where
they know the owner, the tire
shop owned by a friend.
“All these locations were
these pieces of their lives that are
very in their cycle of day-to-day,”
Naim said. “And we just kind of
followed them. They love hanging
out at their friend’s tire shop,
and they love hanging out on the
streets of Bay Ridge.”
Shots of modern-day Bay
Ridge are cut through with clips
and stills from modern day and
historic Palestine from The Palestinian
Museum’s digital archives.
Naif said they wanted to
use the archival footage to represent
the past, present, and future
of Palestine and the Palestinian
diaspora, which is scattered
across the world.
Their experience parallels
Naif’s and that of many Palestinian
Americans, who find themselves
unable to visit their family’s
homeland or even to visit
relatives still living overseas.
For Palestinains watching, Naif
said, he hopes the film feels familiar
and beautiful — and for
Westerners, it’s a welcome shift
in the most popular narrative.
“Westerners or non-Palestinians
only hear about Palestine
through traumatic events on
the news,” he said. “We kind of
wanted to disrupt that narrative.”
Bowman and Naif sent the finished
film to the boys ahead of its
showing at South by Southwest,
and though they haven’t been able
to watch it together yet, they’re
hoping to organize screenings in
Brooklyn sometime soon, where
cast and crew can all attend.
New documentary brings Bay Ridge’s
Palestinian community to big screen