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Great reviews of new films about Palestine/Israel in Haaretz
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Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 23:03:06 -0800
Subject: [Btvs-app] Palestinian & Israeli films at Berlin
International Film Festival
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Haaretz February 18, 2005
Scenes from the intifada |
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| By Avner Shapira |
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BERLIN - In one of the scenes of
"Paradise Now," Said and Khaled, two young men from Nablus, are
making the final preparations for their departure to carry out a
suicide attack in Tel Aviv. They get their hair cut, shave, don
elegant suits and explosive belts and record their suicide
declaration several times, because the video camera goes on the
blink. Later on, their dispatchers invite them for a farewell dinner
and explain to them that the strike is an act of vengeance at Israel
for one of its attacks. |
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They are supposed to blow themselves up within a quarter
of an hour of each other. A moment before they leave Nablus, the
dispatcher asks the second suicide terrorist not to look at his
companion as he carries out his mission. Then Said and Khaled toss a
coin to determine who will blow himself up first, and they set out
on their way.
The premiere of "Paradise Now," by Palestinian
filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad, was held Monday at the Berlin
International Film Festival. The film is taking part in the official
competition and is arousing great interest at the event. Shot in
Nablus and Tel Aviv, this is a Dutch-German-French co-production,
and one of its producers is the Israeli Amir Harel.
The plot
follows the two protagonists - played by Kais Nashef and Ali Suliman
- on the day before the scheduled date of the terror attack, and
depicts their wavering after the original plan goes awry. The
daughter of a senior Palestinian official who was killed in an
Israel Defense Forces attack tries to appeal to them. "There are
other ways to oppose the occupation," she says. "Victims must not
adopt the oppressor's modes of action. You are giving Israel a
reason to continue its attacks."
"We tried to rewrite the
mythic story of the hero who sacrifices himself in war against the
enemy, and to illuminate him from a human and realistic
perspective," said Abu-Assad at a press conference in Berlin. "The
film asks what the occupation is doing to people, how it is changing
them and what they think the correct ways are for fighting it. I
present the discussion of these questions the way it is happening
now in Palestinian society."
Abu-Assad, 41, was born in
Nazareth and immigrated to Holland about 20 years ago. He studied
aeronautical engineering and after a few years became involved in
filmmaking. Among his previous works are "Het 14e kippetje,"
"Nazareth 2000," "Ford Transit" - which won the Spirit of Freedom
Prize at the 2003 Jerusalem Film Festival - and "Rana's Wedding,"
which won the Golden Anchor award at the Haifa Film Festival that
same year.
According to Abu-Assad, it is important to him
that "Paradise Now" be screened in the territories, despite the
limitations (of all the Palestinian cities, only Ramallah has a
cinema that operates regularly). "It is also important to me," he
added, "that Israelis see the film, because the Palestinians are
invisible to them. I have tried to make them visible, to give them
faces," he said.
The director of the Israeli Film Foundation,
Katriel Shechori, announced in Berlin that the foundation will give
financial support to the distribution of Abu-Assad's film, if he
finds a distributor in Israel. Amir Harel expressed concern that
distributors and movie theater managers will refuse to screen the
film.
Sexual and political tensions
An attempt
to connect the political conflict to the private lives of Israelis
and Palestinians was also made in the documentary "Zero Degrees of
Separation," which is being shown at the festival through the
International Forum for New Cinema. The film was directed by Elle
Flanders, an Israeli who lives in Canada. She documented two
Israeli-Palestinian couples - a male homosexual couple from
Jerusalem and a lesbian couple from Tel Aviv. The two relationships
that are depicted in the film have ended since the completion of the
filming.
Ezra, a plumber and an activist in the Ta'ayush
Arab-Jewish Partnership movement, lives in Jerusalem with Salim, a
resident of Ramallah; Salim is considered an illegal alien and is
under house arrest in Ezra's home. Therefore, "Pressures develop,
and neither of us has any freedom," as Ezra says in the film. Salim
tells about his repeated arrests and the way he is hassled and
humiliated by soldiers and police, in part because he is a
homosexual. Ezra takes the director on trips around the West Bank,
confronting soldiers at roadblocks. To his questions about their
part in the humiliation of Palestinians, the soldiers reply with
sentences, such as: "I'm just doing my duty," "Those are the orders
I receive" and "Do you think I enjoy doing this?"
The second
couple presented in the film consists of Edit, a social worker, and
Samira, a hospital nurse. The two women, who met at a demonstration,
relate how politics penetrates their lives and affects the
relationship between them. "I can't solve my being Jewish and I also
can't accept responsibility in the name of the entire Jewish people
for the horrible things that are done here," says Edit. "I can't ask
that Edit feel guilt about what she is, about her origins and her
sense of belonging," says Samira.
Flanders' film is bursting
with concern about identities - sexual, national, political,
generational, cultural, class, ethnic and more.
Refuseniks
talk
"On the Objection Front," Shiri Tsur's documentary
film about people who refuse to do military service in the
territories, was first screened at the most recent Jerusalem
International Film Festival and received an honorable mention from
the jury. However, when Tsur applied to the television channels in
Israel and offered them the film for screening, she encountered a
series of refusals. In Berlin, however, Tsur's film has been
enthusiastically received: The tickets for all the screenings were
sold out in advance and Tsur is getting enthusiastic responses and
is giving many interviews to the media.
The film, which is
also participating in the International Forum for new Cinema,
focuses on six Israel Defense Forces reservists who joined the
refusal movement. They speak about the reasons and the
soul-searching that led to their decision and about the price they
have paid as a result.
"What is subversive and perhaps scary
about the film is that all six of them, like many of the refusers,
come from the mainstream of Israeli society - officers, pilots and
soldiers in elite units, and precisely for this reason, their
statement is undermining the consensus more," says Tsur. "In my
opinion, this is the reason for the rejection of the film by the
television channels." The Israeli audience will have an opportunity
to see the film next month during Docu-Lev at the Lev Cinema in Tel
Aviv.
In a discussion held after one of the screenings of "On
the Objection Front" in Berlin, an Israeli spectator accused Tsur of
having made a one-sided film and said to her that it was
"irresponsible to represent the country abroad with a film like
this." A German member of the audience answered him: "Israel can be
very proud of this film and of the people who appear in
it."
Student entries
Two short films from
Israel that are participating in the Berlin festival also deal with
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "Kvish" ("Road") by Nadav Lapid
and "Don Quixote in Jerusalem" by Dani Rosenberg, both of them
students at the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in
Jerusalem.
Lapid's film depicts an Israeli contractor (played
by Nati Natanson) who is abducted by his Palestinian workers. They
hold an improvised trial for him and accuse him of responsibility
for the crimes of the occupation.
Rosenberg's film, which
received a special mention in the short film competition, shows the
arrival in Israel of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (Shmuel Wolf and
Gabi Amrani), and the decision to attack the separation fence in the
West Bank. The second part of the film is documentary and it
presents scenes from the area of the fence. A shorter version of
"Don Quixote" was screened at the European Film Academy award
ceremony two months ago; another of Rosenberg's films, "The Red
Tape," won the Wolgin Prize for a short film at the last Jerusalem
film festival. | |
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