MENA Films & Documentaries

[Beauty for Ashes 257]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mrXCQTG5pI

Checkpoint

Directed by Yoav Shamir

Review by Maureen Clair Murphy

“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.

Filmed during 2001-2003, this cinema verité exposé on the subjugation of ordinary Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints doesn’t spend time discussing the historical context of the conflict. Instead, the intent is to show viewers, without much meddling by the voice of the filmmaker Yoav Shamir, the power dynamics enforced at the checkpoints that choke the infrastructure of Palestinian society.

The simplest of activities are made impossible by Israeli soldiers, who are documented in the film as sometimes denying Palestinians movement just because they can. Palestinian men, women, and children - healthy, frail, old, and young - are forced to wait in bitter thunderstorms, snow, and the heat to get to hospitals, schools, funerals, jobs, and their homes.

Because the film focuses on just this one aspect of the conflict - the checkpoints - the full horrors of the Israeli military occupation, like the violence that usually makes the news, aren’t readily apparent. But it vividly demonstrates the banality of the occupation - the waiting, the frustration, the struggle of wills between the Palestinian population and the barely out of high-school Israeli boys who operate the checkpoints - the only Israelis most Palestinians will ever meet.

An annoyed but patient Palestinian man attempts to drive his truck through a checkpoint at Jenin’s southern entrance. He tries negotiating with the Israelis, who tell him that a curfew has been placed on Jenin because “you guys are making trouble.” The Israelis tell the man that he can sleep in his truck that night.

An Arab-Israeli man near Hebron tries returning through the checkpoint he was at a half an hour ago, as he was told earlier he was allowed to do, but finds that the Israelis have changed their mind, for no apparent reason. Responding to the Israeli who says, “I’m just a soldier at a checkpoint,” the young man says, “Okay, but that’s not fair. … If you were in my place, what would you do?”

After the man has finally has driven off, the soldier says to the camera, “Try to make me look good, not like the bad guy.” The filmmaker replies, “How can I?” The soldier answers, “Blame it on the higher-ups.”

Israeli border police working in Palestinian Bethlehem brag that they “break” the Palestinians by humiliating them at the checkpoints. To clarify any confusion, one of the officers says, “What do I mean by ‘break them?” [i mean] make them suffer. … Let the world know. This is the Bethlehem Border police.” The officer is soon distracted by an attractive 15-year-old Palestinian girl across the road, whom he harasses despite her polite efforts to show she isn’t interested.

Perhaps feeling safe because there is a filmmaker to provide witness to the Israeli soldiers’ actions, a young man at a checkpoint near Nablus gets in a shouting match with a soldier, who promptly detains him (one wonders what the soldiers do when there isn’t a camera around). In the same scene, a trembling older man in a keffiyeh holds out his bags to the soldiers and explains in broken English, “Food for my wife for Christmas tomorrow. Meat for my family,” and begins to tear up when the soldiers deny him entrance despite his declaration of friendship to the young Israelis.

The audience experiences with the Palestinians at the checkpoints the rage that bubbles under when a jaded Israeli, armed to the teeth, doesn’t let a Palestinian mother accompany her crying grade-school aged sons through a checkpoint at Khan Younis. Viewers nearly get goosebumps as a Palestinian man shivers and rubs his hands together for warmth during a winter thunderstorm at a checkpoint near Nablus.

We celebrate the small victory the Palestinians achieve when they storm through a checkpoint at Ramallah, led by a middle-aged Palestinian woman who yells to the Israelis that they can shoot her if they want, undeterred by the warning shots they fire into the air. As one soldier shouts that he’ll “break her bones,” a Palestinian shouts, “Is this the freedom you promised us?”

It is clear in the film that the Israelis have the upper hand in this conflict. Watching nineteen-year-old Israeli soldiers decide when and where and how Palestinians must go about their daily activities causes American and Israeli criticisms that Palestinian leadership must “do more” to improve the situation of the Palestinians to ring hollow. Seeing Palestinian kids having to empty out of a schoolbus at the behest of gun-toting Israeli soldiers causes little wonder that some of them might grow up to become militant. The children are fresh-faced and goofing off for the camera now, but how long can they go, passing tanks on their way to school and watching their parents be humiliated at checkpoints, before they attempt to wrest back their dignity and self-determination from the hands of their occupiers?

In a not particularly optimistic but entirely poignant conclusion, a group of young Palestinian men sit in the dark at a checkpoint, in the pouring rain and thunder. One of the men protests that he has been sitting there for ten hours, and when he asks when he’ll be able to pass through, the Israeli soldiers keep on telling him “soon.” As he is explaining this to his peers also waiting at the checkpoint, the video goes black, and the credits begin to roll as the men continue to speak in Arabic. It’s an apt ending - the Palestinians have been waiting for justice for decades now, and all they are hearing from the rest of the world is, “soon.”

I lived in ramat gan in 1984 85 and i went to jericho...but the most weird place i went, the most beautiful was golan.. you could feel the tension every minute every day. I was in the golan heights...its not s shock that to a pali land is everything..its such beautiful and precious land.. and jericho is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been

Edited May 27, 2012 by Beauty for Ashes

[Ihavequestions 419]

I just saw the trailer - looks excellent:

Thank you for pointing this out.

The whole movie is on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_LHvd6hYaY&feature=related

No subtitles, but they're not really necessary.

It's good.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Thank you for pointing this out.

The whole movie is on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_LHvd6hYaY&feature=related

No subtitles, but they're not really necessary.

It's good.

The credit goes to 100% Al Ahly Fan - she was the one who suggested this film (I just dug up the trailer.)

But thanks for finding the entire film - awesome !

[SaharaSunset 165]

MUTLULUK ("BLISS") - This is a Turkish movie about a girl in a rural village who is raped and then sent away by the village elders to be "honor" killed...but the man commissioned to kill her is an old childhood friend. Its such a beautiful and powerful movie! And you can watch the whole think on Youtube.

Here's a link to the trailer on youtube:

LEMON TREE - I saw this in a University film series, and then again on Cable TV...it is soooo good. It's an Israel/Palestine conflict movie, shown from the perspective of a Palestinian widow whose lemon grove is basically being rendered "unsafe" as it borders a Israeli official's new home. And she tried to fight the system. Here is a youtube link to the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SdhiEyhfjo

Although neither are documentaries - both tell powerful stories, and both have that bit of romance that I always love in a good film.

[Ihavequestions 419]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcJ5DCotpRA&feature=related

The story of two Egyptian women, both of them a'anis (a "spinster," or, women who are past "prime" age for marriage), and their quest for happiness and marriage.

English sub-titles.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

MUTLULUK ("BLISS") - This is a Turkish movie about a girl in a rural village who is raped and then sent away by the village elders to be "honor" killed...but the man commissioned to kill her is an old childhood friend. Its such a beautiful and powerful movie! And you can watch the whole think on Youtube.

Here's a link to the trailer on youtube:

LEMON TREE - I saw this in a University film series, and then again on Cable TV...it is soooo good. It's an Israel/Palestine conflict movie, shown from the perspective of a Palestinian widow whose lemon grove is basically being rendered "unsafe" as it borders a Israeli official's new home. And she tried to fight the system. Here is a youtube link to the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SdhiEyhfjo

Although neither are documentaries - both tell powerful stories, and both have that bit of romance that I always love in a good film.

These look nice

I loved the book called The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan... I wish they would make that into a film.

[sandinista! 1,816]

These look nice

I loved the book called The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan... I wish they would make that into a film.

I think they are one and the same. Isn't the film with Hiam

Abbass based on that book?

[Beauty for Ashes 257]

MUTLULUK ("BLISS") - This is a Turkish movie about a girl in a rural village who is raped and then sent away by the village elders to be "honor" killed...but the man commissioned to kill her is an old childhood friend. Its such a beautiful and powerful movie! And you can watch the whole think on Youtube.

Here's a link to the trailer on youtube:

LEMON TREE - I saw this in a University film series, and then again on Cable TV...it is soooo good. It's an Israel/Palestine conflict movie, shown from the perspective of a Palestinian widow whose lemon grove is basically being rendered "unsafe" as it borders a Israeli official's new home. And she tried to fight the system. Here is a youtube link to the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SdhiEyhfjo

Although neither are documentaries - both tell powerful stories, and both have that bit of romance that I always love in a good film.

oh my god bliss looks amazing

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

I think they are one and the same. Isn't the film with Hiam

Abbass based on that book?

No. The film with Hiam Abbass, about the Palestinian lady trying to save her lemon grove from being destroyed, is based on a plot idea developed by the director, Eran Riklis.

The book by Sandy Tolan is about a dispossessed Palestinian who goes back to visit his former home, now occupied by Jewish immigrants, and the relationship that develops between the two.

[sandinista! 1,816]

No. The film with Hiam Abbass, about the Palestinian lady trying to save her lemon grove from being destroyed, is based on a plot idea developed by the director, Eran Riklis.

The book by Sandy Tolan is about a dispossessed Palestinian who goes back to visit his former home, now occupied by Jewish immigrants, and the relationship that develops between the two.

too many lemons for me to keep track of apparently

yes then, there needs to be another. and with some way to include hiam abbass, because i like her very much.

[Tunisia216 2]

Two of my favorite Tunisian films are Halfaouine: Boy of the Terraces (1991) and The Wedding Song (2008). Both are a little older but great films. Neither are for kids as they have nudity. Halfaouine is about a boy's coming of age in Tunisia and a lot of it takes places in the hamam (bath house) and The Wedding Song is about the Nazi's in Tunisia and how it affected both the Jewish and Muslim populations- it is fictional centered on two girls - one Muslim and one Jewish who are/were the best of friends.

Halfaouine is on youtube in good quality with English subtitles. It's also cheap on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Halfaouine-Boy-Terraces-Mustapha-Adouani/dp/B00019G4VE

The Wedding Song trailer :

(Available on Netflix)

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Where Should the Birds Fly?

In December of 2008 Israel launched a devastating attack on Gaza. A month of bullets, bombs, rockets, white phosphorus, tanks and bulldozers left 1400, mostly civilians, dead and this section of Occupied Palestine in rubble. Where Should the Birds Fly? is a compelling and moving Palestinian film based on the story of two remarkable young women, the future of Palestine, who personify the struggle to maintain humanity, humor and hope, to find some degree of normality in the brutal abnormality that has been imposed on them and Palestinians.

FIDA QISHTA is a Palestinian filmmaker/videographer who was born in Rafah, Gaza. She began her video work as a wedding photographer in the Gaza Strip, and then began accompanying human rights observers in Gaza, documenting their work.

The film follows Qishta’s own development from the girlhood experience of seeing her house destroyed by bulldozers to the discovery of her vocation, work as a wedding photographer that leads in turn to her documenting the slaughter of the Israeli operation called Cast Lead in 2009. Then Qishta finds the other focus of the film, the softspoken 10-year-old Mona al-Samouni, who when asked how many of her family were killed in the al-Samouni massacre of Cast Lead, says, “Not many,” before reciting a list beginning with her mother and father. The film will give pause to anyone who dares to write off an entire society as terrorists or fundamentalists.

[MARINAH 0]

very nice topic ,thx