Censored Voices by Mor Loushy

Today is 48 years since the beginning of the Six Day War.  

Following the euphoria of winning the war, a group of kibbutzniks, led by Amos Oz, interviewed soldiers who had recently returned from the battlefield.  Although mostly censored by the military censor, the sound recordings of these interviews were published in a book called The Seventh Day (in hebrew: Siach Lochamim), edited by Avraham (Patchi) Schapira.   

Now, so many years later, the censorship has been lifted and the rest of the recordings have been made available.  Filmmaker Mor Loushy has taken these soundtracks and created a fascinating documentary film, Censored Voices ( שיח לוחמים ), which raises issues of morality during wartime.  This is not an easy film.  We see the soldiers today, men in their 60s and 70s, sitting and listening to themselves talk about their experiences, about their emotions, and about some of the terrible things that they did at that time.  In a very open interview, Avraham Schapira talks about the fact that these acts during the Six Day War -- and the ongoing atrocities by soldiers against Arab citizens of the West Bank -- is "a betrayal of the Zionist vision." 

The film was shown at the Jerusalem Cinematheque this week, and has received a lot of publicity, mainly due to the controversial nature of the material.  

Recently, my husband and I had the chance to preview the film.  For an in-depth look at some of the issues, see my husband's blog posting on The Times of Israel site. 

The film Censored Voices (documentary, 87 minutes) is distributed by Dogwoof  (ana@dogwoof.com).

Mixing the Personal and the National

Israel: A Home Movie (Eliav Lilti and Arik Bernstein)כך ראינו  is a stirring documentary that uses home movie footage collected from attics and storage spaces. The filmmakers have created a mosaic that is the history of Israel from the 1920s until the end of the 1970s, a mosaic that combines the personal and the national.  The family scenes and scenes of everyday life are interspersed with footage of national events and footage of people on the move -- survivors arriving, evacuating children during the War of Independence, Arab refugees during the period of the establishment of the State, and new immigrants arriving from Yemen. 

Not only is the footage unique and rare, but the soundtrack is not your typical narration.  It is made-up of people telling their stories, commenting as their footage is shown -- here is my father, here you can see me 50 years ago, this is my uncle going off to war -- singing songs and relating personal memories, commenting about those days filled with nostalgia, about people who are no longer with us, and asking how things might have been different. 

I found the section of the film during the period prior to and following the Six Day War to be the most compelling.  We see Divided Jerusalem and shots of the Old City before the city is reunited.  Following the war, a special event is documented when eight couples get married at the Cave of the Machpelah.   We see Udi Dayan filming photos of his iconic father which he found all over the Arab market after the War. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a tremendous amount of footage of wars -- tanks, downing of planes, battlefields, military parades and the not-so-humane treatment of POWs.  The film concludes with the victory of the Likud in 1977 and the visit of Anwar Sadat. 

It seems to be a common downfall of documentary filmmakers that they are unable to part with their footage!  Perhaps this film is also a bit too long (100 minutes)!  I would recommend watching it in two sittings!

Israel: A Home Movie (100 minutes, 2012, documentary) is available from Go2Films