Palestinian
cinema provides contextual, honest imagery to whole world
Ra'fat Aldajani |
Aug. 25, 2015
Movies
have always played an important role not only in breaking through cultural
taboos but also in helping shape the identity of a people to themselves and to
the world at large. The film "Exodus" starring Paul Newman and based
on the 1958 book by Leon Uris, had profound and lasting effects on American
Jewry, and American public opinion.
According to Israel's Haaretz newspaper, the book and movie
succeeded in "tailoring, altering and radically sanitizing the history of
the founding of the State of Israel to flatter the fantasies and prejudices of
American Jews." Israel's
founding Prime Minister David Ben Gurion admitted as much. " As a literary work it isn't much.
But as a piece of propaganda, it's the best thing ever written about Israel."
"Exodus" validated Jewish peoplehood, swelled American Jewish pride
in Israel and "Americanized"
the causes of Zionism and Israel.
On
the other hand, according to prominent Jewish-American journalist Jeffrey
Goldberg, "it created the impression that all Arabs are savages. This
was most unhelpful, and the lingering effects of [the book's]
sometimes-cartoonish portrayal of Israel's
founding can still be seen in the opinions of the more unthinking among Israel's
supporters."
Palestinian
national cinema did not even exist at the time. It is a relatively young cinema
and it wasn't until the late 1980s that Palestinian movies started to make an
appearance on the international movie market. Palestinian cinema is unique in
that it exists in the absence of statehood. Yet, in the absence also of any
semblance of a peace process with Israel, Palestinian cinema
continues to make huge strides in providing a more nuanced, contextual and
honest image of Palestinians to Israelis and the world at large.
Palestinian
filmmakers are now shooting Palestinian films in Palestinian cities with
Palestinian actors (with the occasional Israeli Arab, Egyptian and Algerian)
who speak the Palestinian dialect. With Israel (as some of the films are
joint productions) or without it, they are bringing a Palestinian story to the
entire world.
Israel has provided some pushback. In 2002, the Academy
Award-nominated film "Divine Intervention" generated international
interest because of controversy over whether it could qualify for an Oscar
submission for Best Foreign Film, due to Palestine
not officially being a nation state. However it was considered for an Academy
Award the following year when the Academy decided to treat Palestine
in the same way as Hong Kong.
The
following five movies provide different examples of how Palestinian cinema has
tackled some very serious topics related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The movies are thought provoking and intense, raising as many questions as they
provide answers. In addition, they deserve special recognition for their
maturity in not acting as vehicles for cartoonish or prejudiced portrayals of
Israelis.
"Paradise
Now" (2005) was the first Palestinian movie to achieve international fame
by winning the Golden Globe for best foreign language film in 2006 and
getting Palestine its first-ever foreign-language Oscar nomination. Directed by
Israeli-born Palestinian Hany Abu-Asad and produced by Palestinian, Dutch,
French, German and Israeli producers, the film tackles the emotionally charged
issue of suicide bombing.
Director
Abu-Asad knew full well he was stepping into a political minefield by making a
feature film on this subject, risking either being accused of glorifying
terrorism or of betraying resistance to the Israeli occupation. His solution is
to tell the story from a human point of view, describing an action rather than
justifying it.
"Paradise
Now" is the story of two Palestinian childhood friends who have been
recruited for a major operation in Tel Aviv, centering on what is presumably
their final day on earth. Leaving their families completely in the dark, the
two friends cross over into Israel
with the bombs attached to their bodies. The operation does not go according to
plan and the two friends are forced to reconsider their stances after a woman
comes into the picture. She provides the voice of reason about the futility of
armed resistance. Ultimately only one of them goes through with his mission.
The
film shows the seeming deception that goes into recruiting a suicide bomber and
the emotional trauma that goes with it, portraying confused recruits struggling
with the justification of armed resistance.
Abu-Asad dismisses the simplistic analysis that suicide
bombers are "brainwashed automatons." Instead, his research showed
that people acted out of conviction. "The daily humiliation is so big that
people just agree to it," he said. "The biggest motivation is the
feeling of impotence. You are captured in your own city; you can't do anything
about it; you are nothing." He adds: "The official censor in Israel saw it
and approved it for release. There are enough people in Israel who are
open-minded and curious about this phenomenon and will want to see it to judge
for themselves, not to be led by propaganda."
Rating
the movie a "must-see", in the Jewish Virtual Library, David Krusch writes: "Paradise
Now does open the door for meaningful discussion of the issues surrounding the
conflict. It goes against the grain of a commonly held Western notion of
suicide bombers -- that they are soulless and programmed to kill without
emotion or regret. Instead, Khaled and Said are flesh-and-blood human beings,
caught in between religious extremism, nationalism, and the will to live."
Another
movie that deals with the issue of suicide bombing is "The Attack"
(2012). Directed by Lebanese-born Ziad Doueiri, the film is about a successful
Israeli-Arab surgeon whose wife blows herself up in a crowded Tel Aviv
restaurant. The doctor is a well-integrated and apolitical man whose friends
are mostly Jews, and his wife's act explodes his life. Determined to understand
why, the doctor travels to Nablus
and traces the threads of his wife's secret life.
Reymonde
Amsellem, the Israeli actress who played the female suicide bomber, told the Jerusalem premiere's audience that "to me, she
was a very mysterious character. … I saw that the biggest reason for her
helpless feeling was that you can have a husband, a life, everything, but you
don't have a place you can call home," she said, adding, "It's about
people on both sides of the conflict, how similar they are, and how illogical
the conflict is."
The
film airs issues that Israelis too have grappled with. "It's a difficult
one," said Oren Barak, a Jewish political science professor at Hebrew University.
"I don't support suicide bombings. But it showed the emotional side, the
perspective, from different angles."
"It
gave the feeling that the characters were real and that you could identify with
them, although, of course, not always with their actions," he added. That
"was quite unusual, since filmmakers in the two countries — Israel and
Lebanon — more often than not present the other side, if at all, in a
'caricaturist' way, which tells you more about them than about the other
side."
The
2013 film "Omar" came after the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly
voted to upgrade the Occupied Palestinian Territories
from an observer entity to a nonmember observer state in 2012, thereby allowing
the Academy Awards to label "Omar" a film from "Palestine."
The
$2 million film was funded almost entirely by private Palestinian
investors, it was directed by a Palestinian citizen of Israel, its actors are Palestinian, and it was
filmed in the Palestinian city of Nablus and in Nazareth.
"Omar"
earned its director Hany Abu-Asad and Palestine a second Oscar nomination in the
best foreign language film category. The film tackles an extremely sensitive
among Palestinians, collaboration with Israel. The film centers on a
Palestinian man caught up in the violence surrounding him and imprisoned by the
Israelis, who pressure him mercilessly to betray his childhood friends, using a
love triangle to secure his cooperation.
Ab-Asad's
interest in the story of "Omar" came from his sense that he was being
watched while filming "Paradise Now", reminding him of what a former
Shin Bet director said was the agency's ultimate goal as leaving Palestinians
uncertain they could trust anyone. "You start becoming insane," Abu-Assad
recalled. "You start not to trust anybody, because this feeling became
so intense."
"Bethlehem" (2013) is
another movie that deals with collaboration and the relationship between
handler and his collaborator victim. The movie is a joint Palestinian-Israeli
production, directed by Yuval Adler, and is co-written by Adler and a
Palestinian journalist. Adler describes the phenomenon of collaboration as one
that "makes you want to recoil from it. What we are trying to do is find
ways to access it without recoiling."
Adler
achieves this by making the informant in "Bethlehem" a kid: Sanfur, slang for
"Smurf," was 15 when he was recruited by a Shin Bet field officer.
The story revolves around the fraught and emotional relationship between the Israeli
handler who becomes close to Sanfur, while at the same time pressuring him to
inform on his older brother, the leader of a suicide-bombing cell during the
Second Intifada.
"Bethlehem" galvanized
Israeli audiences by focusing not on one side of the conflict, but on the
morally hazardous middle ground where intelligence is gathered. Its realistic
attention to detail even earned it a Shin Bet screening to its agents.
"The
atmosphere reminded me of my life," said
Gezer, a retired field officer with Shin Bet. "I loved a source when
at the end of the meeting I had a few pages of good material. I hated him when
at the end of the meeting, I didn't. After all, the source is a tool. And
everybody has to remember it."
The
final and most recent internationally acclaimed Palestinian film is "The
Wanted 18" (2014). Co-directed by Palestinian Amer Shimali and Canadian
Paul Cowen, it is filmed as a documentary and woven from a variety of film
materials (animation, news footage, home movies, interviews, reenactments).
"The
Wanted 18" brilliantly exposes one of root causes of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the economic dominance of one nation, Israel, over another, Palestine. It demonstrates the power of mass
mobilization and nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation during the
First Intifada, an era that is too often simplistically depicted as
stone-throwing Palestinian youth facing armed Israeli soldiers.
"The
Wanted 18" tells the true story of a Palestinian committee in the town of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem,
that purchased a herd of cows from a nearby kibbutz so that the community could
get fresh milk during Israeli curfews. Their venture is so successful that the
Israeli army takes note and declares the farm an illegal security threat and
the cows as "dangerous for the security of the state of Israel."
The
dairy is forced to go underground for four years with the Israeli army in
pursuit. To the Israeli occupation, the cows represented economic
self-determination, which if left unchecked could lead to more and more
economic independence for Palestinians.
Palestinian
movies demonstrate how intertwined the lives of Israelis and Palestinians are.
Many films are filmed in both the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel.
Many films have an Israeli and Palestinian (or Arab-Israeli) director. In fact,
the cooperation between the two sides and the sensitivity with which they
tackle very serious issues shows how far ahead of the political process they
are and how Palestinian and Palestinian-Israeli movies may serve as pioneers of
a future peace.
[Ra'fat
Aldajani is a Palestinian-American writer and commentator.]
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