Reviews

Documentary film review: "Israeli Wall in Palestinian Lands"

Maureen Clare Murphy 15 December 2004


The new documentary The Israeli Wall in Palestinian Land is a prime example of how low-cost digital technology has great potential for activists - with a small camcorder, and some decent video editing software, one can make a finished film that can be cheaply burned onto DVDs or put up on a website. Like cheap 35 mm, Polaroid, and disposable cameras democratized photography, video as a medium is now highly accessible. But whether one makes the most out of the medium is another matter. EI’s Arts, Music, and Culture Editor Maureen Clare Murphy reviews the new film for EI. 

Review: The Shouting Fence

Arjan El Fassed 29 November 2004


The Culture Park Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam provided a natural setting for an unique performance of The Shouting Fence. This musical expression of emotions about the Separation Wall built in the occupied Palestinian territories was performed by at least 1,500 voices. Between what resembles concrete parts of the wall and the audience in the middle, between a fence and barbed wires, on two sides of the arena two large groups of singers shout, sing and whisper. Shouting Fence is a vocal story of a community split in two. EI’s Arjan El Fassed went to the premiere in Amsterdam and reviews this unique musical event. 

Documentary film review: "Mur" (Wall)

Arjan El Fassed 21 November 2004


Winner at festivals in Marseille and Jerusalem, Simone Bitton’s Franco-Israeli “Mur” (Wall), is about Israel’s Apartheid Wall. EI’s Arjan El Fassed saw this documentary during the seventeenth international documentary filmfestival in Amsterdam (Netherlands) which opened on 18 November. Mur (“Wall”) is nominated for the Amnesty International-DOEN Award, one of the awards presented at the festival. After the screening the audience got to ask Bitton some questions. “The moment I heard about the barrier going up, June 2002, I had to make this film,” she said in Cinerama 2 in Amsterdam. 

Documentary film review: "Checkpoint"

Maureen Clare Murphy 15 October 2004


“When the Palestinians come we put on our show,” says a youthful Israeli soldier manning a checkpoint at Nablus’ Jericho road. This “show,” as it is richly documented in the new Israeli film Checkpoint, serves a seemingly dual purpose. First and foremost, it is intended to remind Palestinians just who is in power; and secondly, it serves as a form of entertainment to the young Israelis whose compulsory military service finds them wasting their time and talents at these roadblocks in the occupied Palestinian territories. 

Book Review: Bethlehem Besieged

Arjan El Fassed 19 August 2004


Palestinians should have the permission to narrate their own lives, their own hopes, their own history. Putting tragedies, events and experiences into words help ease turmoil and defuse the terror. Writing provides a sense of control and a sense of understanding. For some, writing is a struggle, a matter of survival. As eyewitnesses of tomorrow’s news, we cannot hope to understand what is going on without access to alternative information resources. The compelling stories of Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian Christian pastor of the Evangelical Christmas Church where he ministers to his people in Bethlehem, gives us a window not only into what it is like to have grown up under occupation but also into his soul. 

Film review: "Aftershock" exposes IDF soldiers' psychology

Victor Kattan 23 July 2004


“Whilst I was there, I lost all my faith in the Israeli army. They put it right in your face: ‘Go be the oppressors for your people. Force yourselves upon them.’ They told us … ‘take these bats wrapped up in plastic and … calm things down’ … We had skulls on our helmets, dude. We walked around with machetés, all kinds of crazy stuff. Sheriff badges. We’d improvise some very unique solutions.” This is Ehud, speaking 12 years after having served in the occupied Palestinian territories. Like the thousands before him, he was a paratrooper in the Israeli army during the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993). 

Review: "Death in Gaza"

Victor Kattan 1 July 2004


The 77-minute HBO/Channel 4 production Death in Gaza is a story about the last moments of the life of award-winning British cameraman James Miller, 1968-2003. Miller travelled to the occupied Palestinian territories to make a film on children and was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier when filming in Rafah. The film’s commentator, Saira Shah, is an award-winning journalist of Afghan-Scottish decent. Miller and Shah had collaborated on other award-winning documentaries such as Beneath the Veil and Unholy War (Channel 4 / CNN), both filmed in Afghanistan. 

Review: Elias Chacour: Prophet in His Own Country

Maureen Clare Murphy 19 June 2004


Rolling hills unmarred by the hands of man, the water of the Jordan river trickling along its way, olive trees rustling in the breeze — this is the land of the Galilee that Melkite priest Elias Chacour so loves, and this is the imagery he says Jesus enjoyed when he was living in what is now referred to as the Holy Land. To understand Chacour’s background is to understand his connection, and his family’s ties, to the land of the Galilee, and so it is appropriate that filmmaker Claude Roshem-Smith opens with beautiful scenes of Galilean pastoral greenery in his biographical film Elias Chacour: Prophet in His Own Country. 

Documentary film review: "Keys"

Maureen Clare Murphy 17 June 2004


“Mafateeh,” or “keys,” is a word that holds symbolic meaning for Palestinians, and refugees in Rafah, Amman, and Jenin alike can show you the keys to their houses that they temporarily fled or were expelled from during the time leading up to and during the 1948 war. And like Ali Nimer Harami does in the film Keys, these refugees can show you well-preserved pieces of paper that prove their legal claim over land that is currently inhabited by Jewish Israelis in what is now Israel. Maureen Clare Murphy reviews the beautifully shot film for EI. 

Review: "A Stone's Throw Away" and "The Children of Ibda'a"

Maureen Clare Murphy 15 June 2004


Both of the films A Stone’s Throw Away and The Children of Ibdaa investigate the thoughts and lives of a handful of children from the Deheisheh refugee camp, an impoverished refugee town on the outskirts of Bethlehem. Together, they illustrate that what drives Palestinians to commit violence, and how children need something to make their lives meaningful given the humiliation and lack of opportunity that come with living under Israeli military occupation.