Route 181: ..." Documentary: International Response

The other evening I spent 4 and a half hours watching Route 181: Fragments Of A Journey In Palestine-Israel. It is a documentary film in which the directors followed the route of boarder drawn after the UN Resolution 181 in 1947, beginning a two-state society that we have still today. It was an incredible film in which the makers (one Israeli and on Palestinian) talked to hundreds of people along this boarder, Israeli and Palestinian. In their film, they showed patient, face-to-face interviews with the people they came across; asking them questions about what used to be here and what their feelings were about the state of the land. The film focused so much on the sense of place, always showing the surroundings, never leaving out a person's environment as they spoke to the camera. The makers also used many shots of the countryside and the ruins of Palestinian villages. Some of the most interesting interviews for me were those of the Arab Israelis who had such a starkly different approach to nationalism than the descendants of European Jews.

It was hard for me to find much media response because it was a 4.5 hour film and was not shown widely. (The makers clearly made many decisions that would lead to this lack of publicity.) It seems to me what they wanted was to patiently show/represent what they had found and were not to succumb to the "film media norms".

The film was banned and cancellations for political reasons. Here is an article a screening in France that was canceled by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication due to unease and anti-semitism in France. I see this as a parallel to the international sport scene brought up by Stephen. In sport, in film, in art, this political issue is raised in so many different contexts and responded to specifically each time.