Israeli settlements – Frontline Club

Screening: The Process + Q&A

Wotienke Vermeer — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 09:44:13 +0000

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with Joshua Baker moderated by Jonathan Miller.

Journalist and filmmaker Joshua Baker documents the stories of three lives caught up in the on-going Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He highlights the void between the political negotiations around the peace process and the reality on the ground.

This reality is depicted through the life of a 20-something Israeli settler, a seven-year-old Palestinian boy and the ambitions of an over-confident 17-year-old Palestinian. Their stories illustrate the human dimension of the recently collapsed Middle East peace talks.

The Process gives a snapshot of contemporary life inside the conflict, revealing what the politics mean for those who are waiting for peace. It is a tale from the ground, of life governed from above.

Directed by Joshua Baker
Duration: 59′
Year: 2014

Summer Screening: Eyal Weizman – The Architecture of Violence + Q&A

Wotienke Vermeer — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 12:22:18 +0000

This screening is part of our Summer Season exploring walls, barriers and borders today, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and will be followed by a discussion with director Ana Naomi de Sousa and protagonist Eyal Weizman. Prior to the screening, from 5.30 – 7.30pm, the club will be open and serving a Happy Hour menu of sharing platters and summer cocktails.

In a journey across the settlements, the roads and the Separation Wall of the West Bank, Eyal Weizman demonstrates how architecture is central to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and how his work on the architecture of occupation has led him to understand the discipline’s role in modern urban warfare.

Israelis and Palestinians explain how it feels to live in a landscape where everything, from walls and roads, terraces and sewage pipes, to settlements and surveillance are designed to ensure the separation of the two peoples, while simultaneously maintaining control.

This Al Jazeera Rebel Architecture preview screening will be followed by a discussion with director Ana Naomi de Sousa and protagonist and architect Eyal Weizman. Weizman will talk about his latest project Forensic Architecture, which makes innovative use of architectural and visual technologies to present architecture as evidence in the investigation of war crimes and human rights violations.

Directed by Ana Naomi de Sousa
Duration: 24′
Year: 2014

Premiering 18 August 2014, Rebel Architecture features inspiring architects that are using design to tackle the world’s urban, environmental and social crises.

5 Broken Cameras: Screening and Directors’ Q&A

Flora Carmichael — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 13:43:58 +0000

By Jim Treadway

"So many films have been made about the Israel-Palestine conflict", Israeli flimmaker Guy Davidi remarked to an audience at the Frontline Club on Friday night. But the documentary 5 Broken Cameras he made with Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat was "much more important than just another objective film about the movement," he said. It was a personal, emotional story "that everybody can connect to."

5 Broken Cameras relies on Burnat’s footage to chronicle his family’s and friends’ experiences waging non-violent protest against encroaching Israeli settlements into their West Bank village of Bil’in.

"I never thought of making films," Burnat narrates as the film begins. But in 2005, when his fourth son Gibreel was born, Burnat bought his first camera, "to rediscover the world through his [Gibreel’s] eyes."

As Gibreel grows up, he sees his father, uncles, and their friends arrested, imprisoned, and killed by Israeli soldiers. He plays with his brothers in fields where the concrete skeletons of new settlements loom in the distance. Burnat worries about how Israeli injustice has affected his sons.

"I am tired of just dealing with identity issues," Davidi reflected after the screening. "I’m just interested in the politics on the ground." He hoped his film had found:

"a new path, a new emotional path […] even for much of the so-called left wing in Israel, they’ve never experienced this. They’ve never experienced this emotional journey."

Both Davidi and Burnat focused on healing. Of Jews’ and Palestinians’ traumatic pasts, Davidi said during the Q&A:

"If you’re a victim, you have a responsibility to heal yourself, to find a way out."

Burnat’s narration echoed him:

"Healing is a challenge in life. It’s the victim’s sole obligation […] forgotten wounds can’t be healed, so I film […] it helps me confront life, and begin to heal."