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Emad Brnat with his 5 broken cameras, Daily Beas |
Of the documentary film "5 Broken Cameras," co-directed by Emad Burnat, a Palestinian, and Guy Davidi,
Israeli,
Gideon Levy
wrote on October 5, 2012 in Haaretz, "This documentary should make every decent Israeli
ashamed of being an Israeli. It should be shown in civics classes and heritage
classes. The Israelis should know, at long last, what is being done in their
name every day and every night in this ostensible time of no terror. Even in a
West Bank village like Bil'in, which has made nonviolence its motto."
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Guy Davidi, director of 5 Broken Cameras, in Bi'lin
Photo by Tomer Appelbaum
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As background for "5 Broken Cameras," the Daily Beast explains that film director Burnat got his first video camera with the birth of his son Gibreel in 2005:
"He
shoots the boy’s initial steps and his first birthday party, but also
ventures out to document Israel’s work on the barrier, which almost
overnight divides residents from their farmland. As the protests get
under way and the Israeli response becomes violent, Burnat goes through
one camera after another: two are struck with live bullets as he’s
filming; a third is hit with a teargas canister. The smashed-up gadgetry
ends up forming a kind of chronology for the Bil’in campaign—and a
symbolic monument to the casualties, including one of Burnat’s closest
friends. 'I got used to filming in dangerous situations.'”
Indeed. This week Israeli human rights lawyer Sari Bashi wrote a piece, also for The Daily Beast, entitled "No to Collective Punishment in Gaza"in which he states: "Creative, responsible leaders know that soldiers and guns will not solve
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and cannot bring lasting security to
the Israelis and Palestinians living between the Mediterranean Sea and
the Jordan River. Only when we stop recycling policies that repeatedly
fail, at great expense to civilians, can we open space to find a
different way. Israelis and Palestinians deserve that." Enough said.
Above view the trailer for "5 Broken Cameras." Below is Gideon Levy's complete review from Haaretz, made all the more poignant given this week's events in Israel and Gaza.
The soldiers arrive in the dead of night. They
kick, they smash, they destroy. They break in, rudely awakening an entire house
and its inhabitants, including children and babies. One officer pulls out a
detailed document and declares: "This house is declared a 'closed military
zone.'" He reads the order - in Hebrew and in a loud voice - to the
sleep-dazed, pajama-clad family.
This young man successfully completed his
officers' training course. Perhaps he even believes, deep down, that someone
has to do this dirty work. And he reads out the order solely to justify why the
father of the household, Emad Burnat, is forbidden to film the event on his own
video camera.
There are no moments of respite or reprieve in
the probing documentary by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, "5 Broken
Cameras," which was screened, among other places, at the Tel Aviv
Cinematheque last weekend after collecting a number of international prizes and
having been shown on Channel 8.
This documentary should make every decent Israeli
ashamed of being an Israeli. It should be shown in civics classes and heritage
classes. The Israelis should know, at long last, what is being done in their
name every day and every night in this ostensible time of no terror. Even in a
West Bank village like Bil'in, which has made nonviolence its motto.
The soldiers - the friends of our sons and the
sons of our friends - break into homes in order to abduct small children, who
may be suspected of throwing stones. There is no other way to describe this.
They also arrest dozens of the organizers of the popular weekly protest at Bil'in.
And this happens every night.
I have often been to this village, to its
protests and to its funerals. Once or twice I joined the Friday demonstrations
against the separation fence that was built on its land to enable Modi'in Ilit
and Kiryat Sefer to rise on its olive groves. I have breathed the tear gas and
the stinking "skunk" gas. I have seen the rubber bullets that wound
and sometimes kill, and the violent behavior of the soldiers and the police
toward the demonstrating inhabitants.
Yet nevertheless, what I saw in this film shocked
me more than all those hasty visits. The apartment buildings of Modi'in Ilit
are swallowing up the village, just like the wall that was built here on their
land. The inhabitants decided to embark on a struggle for their property and
their existence. With a mixture of naivete, determination and courage - and,
now and then, some exaggerated theatricality - the residents undertake various
gimmicks, with the help of a handful of Israeli and international volunteers.
This struggle has even won a partial victory:
Only in its wake did the High Court of Justice order the dismantling of the
wall and its relocation to a different place. Even the High Court, which
usually automatically accepts the positions of the security establishment,
understood that a crime was being committed here. Together with Bil'in and, to
a large extent, inspired by it, more villages began to conduct a determined
popular struggle every Friday - which continues to this day - against the wall,
half an hour's drive from our homes.
This documentary proves that, for the locals, the
reality of the occupation is that there is no such thing as nonviolent
struggle. For the information of those who preach nonviolence (from the
Palestinians ): The Israel Defense Forces soldiers and the Border Police will
ensure that it becomes violent. Just one thrown stone, despite the pleas of the
demonstration organizers, will suffice; just one verbal altercation will also
suffice to open the most advanced weapons arsenal in the world - to pull the
pin, to release the gas, the rubber bullet and the skunk gas, and sometimes the
live fire, and to cut off the impossible dream of a nonviolent struggle.
Anyone who watches this film understands that it
is very difficult to face the wall, the settlement project and the soldiers -
all of which scream "violence" - and remain nonviolent. Nearly
impossible.
Five times Burnat's cameras were destroyed. Three
times by the soldiers, once in a traffic accident opposite the separation wall,
and once by the ultra-Orthodox and violent settlers - the "hilltop
youth," who break into homes even when the court prohibits this. "You
are not allowed to be here," says an ultra-Orthodox settler to a villager
trying to get to his stolen land.
The truth is that Burnat's cameras were damaged
many more times; the film depicts only those incidents in which the equipment
was rendered totally unusable. The cameras' ruined parts are displayed as
evidence.
But something much deeper has been broken here. A
reality has been broken by broken cameras. These cameras documented a reality
unfamiliar to most Israelis. They documented a slice of life, about which most
Israelis prefer to be oblivious. In so doing, they have also proved that, in a
place where hardly any courageous journalism remains, there are at least
courageous and impressive documentaries. In a place where hardly any
journalists remain, there are important documentary filmmakers like Burnat and
Davidi.
After the vast majority of the local media decided
not to report on the occupation any more, films like "5 Broken
Cameras," Ra'anan Alexandrowicz's "The Law in These Parts," and
Mir Laufer and Erez Laufer's "One Day After Peace" - all the harvest
of just the past few months - are filling the role intended for the media, and
excellently.
Anyone who some day wants to learn what was
happening here during these cursed decades will hardly find what he is looking
for in the newspaper and television archives. He will find it in the
documentary movie archive, which is rescuing Israel's honor.
"5 Broken Cameras" has already been
shown in many countries, at festivals and commercial screenings. Davidi and
Burnat documented the routine of the occupation. The IDF and Border Police come
out looking bad. Even understatement and restraint cannot but describe them
except as storm troopers.
Burnat's voice, which accompanies the film, is
one of the most restrained voices you have heard concerning the occupation,
without rabble-rousing and without hatred. This is how they look in reality. Go
see this film and form your own impressions.
There have been other films about Bil'in and
while this one is relatively small scale, it is extremely personal. Burnat's
wife, who wants to keep him away from the camera and danger, and his young son,
who has grown up in this reality, star in it along with the leaders of the
struggle. There is only one person killed here: Bassem Abu-Rahma, a charming
young man, loved by the children, who called him the Elephant - the needless
victim of an alleged murder by a soldier in April 2009.
However, it is the non-deadly routine depicted in
the movie that is so appalling. The camera breakers in it are breakers of the
rule of law and of democracy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has boasted
to the world about how enlightened Israel is, apparently has not seen this
film. Otherwise, he would not be able to talk about enlightenment.
Anyone who behaves this way in his dark backyard
cannot boast about what happens in his enlightened show window, with all that
high tech and democracy. Anyone who knows what is happening in Bil'in and the
other villages understands that a state that behaves in this way cannot be
considered democratic or enlightened. Someone has to make Netanyahu watch this
film, just so he will understand. .
This week I drove to Bil'in with one of the two
directors, Guy Davidi (Burnat was away on another trip overseas ). Davidi once
lived in the village for several months, but prior to our trip hadn't visited
for over a year.
Ostensibly, nothing had changed. A Palestinian
village drowsing in the afternoon. However, one thing was different: A large
hill planted with olive trees has been liberated. In the place where the
security fence had been, there is now only a dirt track. The barrier was
removed and the hill was returned to its owners. The olive trees are dying
after years of neglect, and the soil is scarred by all the earthworks carried
out there. But still, some of the territory has been liberated.
The security fence has been replaced by a high
concrete wall, but this has been moved several hundred meters to the west.
Behind it, cranes continue to build Kiryat Sefer (aka Dvir ). In the liberated
territory, they are already building a tiny playground for the village
children. Only remnants of the burned tires and dozens of IDF gas-canister
shells lying on the ground from the ongoing weekly demonstrations here testify that
the struggle has not ended. It has not been completely successful. But if there
were any justice, it would have been.
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