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The collection contains over 130 feature films, shorts, and documentaries about Palestine, or by Palestinian film makers and artists, and is based on Dreams of a Nation, a Columbia University based film project committed to the preservation and promotion of Palestinian cinema. The main curator of the Dreams of a nation project, Prof. Hamid Dabashi explains the background and history of the project and collection in the following words: "[Dreams of a Nation] began early in the 1990s with the acquisition and inclusion of Palestinian films in courses I taught at Columbia on Middle Eastern cinema. The late Edward Said and his assistant Zeyneb Asterabadi were instrumental in facilitating my initial contacts with Palestinian filmmakers, and Richard Pena was extremely helpful in helping me locate Palestinian films. These courses eventually culminated in a major Palestinian film festival we organized in January 2003 at Columbia University, and continued with taking that festival to Palestine in February 2004. The initial collection of the films screened in the course of these two festivals were subsequently expanded into a major archive of Palestinian films, which is now safely housed at Columbia University in New York City. This collection is being carefully preserved, expanded, and digitized for future use by scholars and students of Palestinian cinema. The initial team that organized these two film festival and created this website included my research assistant Fatima Ali, as well as Columbia University students Kareem Fahim, Annemarie Jacir, and Kamran Rastegar, as well as Enas Muthaffar and Luma Shihab-Eldin. Annemarie Jacir curated these two festivals. My edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema (Verso, 2006) was a result of this project."