Amos Gitai is a prolific filmmaker – his filmography
includes many award-winning feature films and also documentaries. His latest film, which premiered at the
Jerusalem Film Festival this past week, West of the Jordan River, is
about the Occupation. Framing the film
with an interview with Yitzhak Rabin which provides a look at his strategy and
his vision of moving forward with peace, Gitai sets out to interview a wide
array of personages who are involved either politically or on a human rights
level with issues dealing with the Occupation.
He travels with Ha’aretz journalist Gideon Levy to a
tent of mourning in Hebron, he visits a Bedouin school near Kfar Adumim, and he
attends meetings of the Parents Circle.
The resulting film unfurls a fascinating mosaic of a reality which
simply must not continue! According to a
few of the people interviewed if the reality is not changed soon, the ongoing
growth of the settlements and the terrible moral issues will cause a
destructive future reality.
Amos Gitai says he was looking to make a visual diary. But the film is more of a mix of interviews,
many of them shot in a studio, combined with visits to many places in the West
Bank, and some in the Gaza Strip. We speak
with Yuli Novack of Breaking the Silence who questions the moral price of the
occupation and warns that we are losing the democratic nature of the
state.
Even though the film is mostly about anti-Occupation
activists, Gitai tries somewhat to be evenhanded -- not all of the interviewees
are leftwing – there is a government minister who talks about the historic
right of Israel to the land and Ben-Dror Yemini, a journalist from Yediot
Achronot, who firmly believes that the Arabs don’t want peace and
reconciliation.
Together with Gideon Levy we learn that a 15-year-old boy
has been killed by soldiers. The
Palestinians in the tent of mourning ask that Israel ends the Occupation and
stops the killing of children – perhaps the greatest crime of all.
The scenes of women activists were most compelling for
me. We visit a woman’s group of the
Parents Circle (Bereaved Parents for Peace) where we meet Roby and Bushra, both
of whom have lost sons in the conflict.
Roby, one of the main activists of the group, and Bushra made a
connection over their pain. We also visit
a meeting of B’Tselem, an organization which documents human rights violations,
in which a group of Muslim women are being trained to go out with video cameras
to document what is happening on a regular basis. One woman says the camera “gives me
strength.” Another says, “Now they are
afraid of us and they back away.” Some
of the footage shot by volunteers of B’Tselem of the soldiers’ treatment of
local Palestinians is just shocking.
The film concludes with a backgammon tournament in which
both Israelis and Palestinians are participating. Is a shared Middle Eastern cultural
background going to be enough? How do we
mobilize the masses of Israelis to stop the merry-go-round of apathy and
in-action and to stand up and say “enough”!
West of the Jordan River (documentary, 94
minutes) is available from Sophie Dulac Distribution, or contact the Israeli
production company d.elstner@docandfilm.com
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