Five Broken Cameras

2011

Director Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi

Cast Emad Burnat and family, the village of Bil’in and Nil’in, The soldiers and residents of Israel and occupied territories

Doc Palestine, Israel, France 2011; 90 min *****

Original version: Arabic, Hebrew

Continuing the theme of Palestinian docs.

In 2005, Emad Burnat, Palestinian resident of the town of Bil’in, bought a camera to document the birth of his fourth son Gibreel. Just as he did so, the Israeli army moved in and took his villagers land, so he spontaneously chose to document what happened, politically, geographically, but also the impact to his villagers and the next generation growing up with the troubles.

Credit: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125423/?ref_=mv_close

Five Broken Cameras swept festival awards across the world, from Sundance to Sheffield, Durban to Jerusalem. It is a film that could not have been made by anyone other than a local, living through it as it happened. The footage is amazing.

There is no reconstruction, nothing staged. It is completely different to footage one might witness on the news or a news related programme of the self-same struggle, where M16 sub-machine guns, Humvees and tear gas come up against peaceful demonstrations, orchestrated with courage, heart and even humour.

Burnat, armed with nothing more than his camera and a deluded sense that it gives him immunity from the injustice and carnage around him, continues to film in ever escalating, ever more difficult circumstances. This documentary evolved of it's own accord, as Burnat began to think only in hindsight of the images that he had; the story that lay in the footage he had gained and at such cost.

This is at once, both an astonishing and a humbling film, which throws into sharp relief the everyday fortitude of a people connected for millennia to the soil upon which they live and the iron fist of occupying Israel. As you view, there is a sense of disbelief that this can actually be happening and that it is allowed to continue unabated by the watching world…

One cannot help but be moved by these two extraordinary, intertwined stories; that of a man trying to do the right thing under extreme provocation and with such a love for humanity in an environment devoid of much and of his son growing up beside a fence, where antagonism is a everyday occurrence and death a daily possibility.

Sadly still so relevant.

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