Heart’s Rooted Dove

Synopsis
A 30‑second stop‑motion short created in a single travelling notebook, celebrating Palestinian resilience and cultural beauty through delicate, hand‑painted imagery.

Social Media Caption
Heart’s Rooted Dove (30s) – A stop‑motion short made in a travelling notebook, celebrating Palestinian resilience and cultural beauty. Created for @ac4pal and @joannaquinn’s To Gaza with Love, in support of @animator_haneen and the young filmmakers she mentors. More info and donations at @ac4pal.

For Palestine
Made for @ac4pal and @joannaquinn’s To Gaza with Love in support of @animator_haneen and the young filmmakers she and her team mentor. All project details and donation information: @ac4pal

Film Specifications
	•	Director & Animator: Kim Noce
	•	Length: 0:30 sec
	•	Format: 1920×1080 HD 16:9 H264
	•	Sound: Real pot‑banging demonstration
	•	Colour
	•	Website: https://kimnoce.wordpress.com

Director’s Statement – Short
Heart’s Rooted Dove is a 30‑second stop‑motion and mixed‑media film, created entirely within a travelling notebook and filmed in multiple locations. Using watercolour, stop‑motion, and pixelation, the work embodies resilience and creativity emerging from limited means—culminating in the final image of a dove drawn in sand.
The film draws inspiration from Palestine, where creative expression becomes a form of survival. Its imagery reanimates tangible elements of Palestinian culture—traditional patterns, textiles, dance, and daily life—restoring visibility to their beauty and strength amid ongoing trauma. The soundtrack is the rhythm of heartbeats, built from the real sound of a pot‑banging protest, echoing resilience and solidarity shared by all of us who hold them in our hearts.
Created for To Gaza with Love, the film offers hope to young Palestinian filmmakers, showing that art can arise anywhere, with whatever materials are at hand, as an act of love, remembrance, and quiet resistance.

Director’s Statement – Long
Heart’s Rooted Dove is a 30‑second stop‑motion and mixed‑media short film created entirely in a single travelling notebook. The film carries the essence of resilience, hope, and cultural memory, reflecting the strength of the Palestinian people through visual poetry.
I approached the film as both an artistic act and a gesture of solidarity. The soundtrack features the real sound of pot‑banging protests, layered as heartbeats, evoking lives persisting under duress. This heartbeat‑like rhythm is an echo of what cannot be fully expressed: the grief, the love, the endurance of a culture under threat.
The imagery of the film draws upon tangible and symbolic elements of Palestinian heritage. I studied traditional textiles, patterns, dance, and fragments of everyday life, recreating them in watercolour, stop‑motion, and pixelation. By reanimating these cultural artefacts, I wanted to bring life back to what the world is in danger of forgetting amid the overwhelming documentation of destruction. It is a celebration of continuity—of children caring for cats, of shared meals, of patterns sewn by generations—showing that beauty and identity endure even in times of immense suffering.
The final image of the dove drawn in sand is a gesture of impermanence and faith. It represents a form of creativity that survives without studios, tools, or resources—art made from what is at hand, ephemeral yet powerful. This is how many young Palestinian filmmakers and artists work: from necessity, but also from an unbreakable will to create.
Heart’s Rooted Dove is created for @animator_haneen and the young filmmakers she mentors—a dialogue with them, to support them emotionally, and to honour their strength, resilience, and creativity. It is my gesture of respect for their rooted hearts and the hope that carries them, like wings, into the future.