It is almost as minimalistic as it can be, this 9 minutes long documentary by Polish Pawel Lozinski, who goes directly in medias res to convey faces and hands, that lift a stone in a forest to start cleaning it so the inscription can be read. Which contains a poem and a name, a tombstone it is, and as a text the information is given that ”the Registers of the Jewish Cemetary in Warsaw was burned during WW II and that 200.000 names have not as yet been recovered”. That’s all, think for yourself when you have finished this very short, as always with Lozinski, aesthetically perfect journey into a moment of tension.

Poland, 9 mins., 2010.

It is a graduation film from a film school, The Sam Spiegel in Jerusalem, it is strictly personal, it is filmed by the young woman, who is the main character of the film, it is very private, and yet it is also personal and universal, because it is so well made, both light in tone and style, and because Orion Barki is like a character in a Eric Rohmer film, une demoiselle, who goes to the beach with her dog, to the disco with her friends, talking with them about sex (”I think that I am the only virgin student at the film school”) and about male relationships, she gets one, it was not good, she has another orientation, she rides her bike in the streets, she buries her dead dog, she is enthusiastic about being in the snow, she has to phone her father to tell, there is this sense for the detail and for the-not-important, which turns out to be important, she finds someone, a girl, for whom she dances like Anna Karina did for Jean-Luc Godard in ”Vivre sa Vie”. Big talent, I met her in Tel Aviv, she wants to make a sequel, please do!

The film is from 2007, plays 26 mins. and has been broadcast by Israeli channel YesDocu.

It was a nuisance to leave Israel as I did this monday morning. It made me sad and angry. Upon arrival on a sunday night a week ago I went straight through the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, got my passport stamp, was picked up and arrived quickly at the Cinema Hotel (see below). Easy. I had a wonderful time in both Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Meeting interesting documentary people and projects.

This morning it was a different story. I left from Ramallah, Palestine. I got picked up at the Red Crescent Hotel at 11am, my flight was at 3pm, should be enough time. The taxi driver from Jerusalem, Arabic origin, chose not to pass through the Kalandia checkpoint, too complicated, too much waiting time, he said, so we took a different itinerary with a view to Israeli settlements and Arab villages. We took a bad road classified as an A road, exclusively for Palestinians, to be followed by a good C road, for everybody, an Israeli built road. The taxi driver told me his story – he lives in Jerusalem and works from there, although he has a house in Ramallah. If he lives in Ramallah permanently, has his address there, he will lose his ID and working permit in Jerusalem. They do everything to make life difficult for us, he said, while we were passing a village where muslims and christians live together without problems, he said. He was right about the difficult-statement. When getting closer to the airport, he asked me whether I wanted to say that we come from Jerusalem or whether I would say Ramallah, the truth, which probably would mean more checking and waiting time at the security point outside the airport. I chose the truth, which meant 30 minutes of check of me and the driver. That

means check of the driver, the car and my passport. The driver had to go to a separate room to half-undress and get checked, I waited outside watching the young guys with machine guns. They are not soldiers, they work for a private security service company. Some of them has watched too many American action films, in attitude and way of talking to people!

My turn for verbal check, contrary to his body check, came later. Two hours of waiting in the airport. Loooong lines, questions about what I was doing in Ramallah and Tel Aviv, who hired me, if I had any presents. I said I had received some dvd’s for my work, I got a green label on my luggage for further check later on. Made by a young girl who talked to me as if I was a criminal. Around 10 people going to Vienna, including me with a transit in the Austrian airport, were taken to another floor as it was getting close to boarding the plane, even if I was there 3 hours before departure!

Yes, I do understand the need for checking for explosives in Israel, of course and I have no sympathy for bombs killing people in Jerusalem, like happened when I was there, but I do not understand why the security people have to be inpolite youngsters, who see this job like were they characters in a bad American B-movie – arrogant, wanting to be tough in approach and look. And why does the airport not have more personnel and equipment for the checking procedure? To avoid the long queues? My small insignificant story, however, is nothing compared to the daily humiliation of my taxi driver and the Palestinian people on the West Bank. I repeat the conclusion from last year’s reporting: this is Apartheid! No other word can cover the situation.

Photo from leading Israeli documentarian Avi Mograbi’s “Detail” (2004).

To make a follow-up on the text above, it goes without saying that this reality, well not for a traveller like me, but for a Palestinian like the taxi driver, for someone who lives in the West Bank, for someone who has no permission to travel freely in Israel, not to talk about the conditions for those who live in a Gaza that is completely isolated – that this is – with a very stupid German expression – gefundenes Fressen for any committed documentarian, Israeli or Palestinian. There were strong human stories from both sides, there were character driven stories, conflict after conflict, a lot of tension in the verbal, written and visual pitches, rough material to be shown. In the workshop in Ramallah and at the individual meetings in Tel Aviv.

But maybe not so many original approaches, call it creative treatments. There is, one feels, a now-or-never feeling of impatience connected to many stories. Many filmmakers or filmmakers-to-be, both Israelis and Palestinians. come from the News. They are used to the saying – we have to get it out NOW, and think less about the aesthetics. Fair enough, some stories have to go out now but actuality and little time mean less creative thinking, and less sense for the detail and for eventual other layers that can be taken out from a story. To say it in a less polite way – we can not keep on watching Israeli soldiers beating the shit out of Palestinians. Or keep on watching victims of suicide bombers. We need distance to the events, analysis, breathing, other approaches. The camera leaves often far too early a face instead of staying and wait for more from a scene, to interpret the pauses, to let a narrative breathe.

Learn from Leacock and his magic moments. Learn from Herz Frank and his emotional analysis.

Both workshops, the CoPro and the Storydoc, are described below and through their websites.

Photo: Nagham Mohanna, who last year presented “Romance in Gaza” at ramallah.doc and took part in the Storydoc sessions. She and her project are now at the Documentary Campus 2011.

www.storydoc.gr

Two of the four Palestinian projects selected for the Storydoc sessions in Corfu, Greece in July and in Athens in November are at a stage between production and postproduction. For these two film projects the Corfu session of Storydoc will be a perfect chance to achieve reactions from filmmakers, including editors, and broadcasters, before reaching the final cut stage. Nahed Awwad (PHOTO) showed us unique material from her 28 minutes long, scene divided disc. She presented what is to be an observational film entitled ”The Mail” that gives us both knowledge and emotion. Knowledge when it comes to the documentation of the transport of ID application papers in a cardboard box from the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank to Israeli authorities, that has its office in a settlement! Emotion, to mention just one scene, when a mother and her daughters watch a clip with the son/brother, who lives in Gaza and can not get a travel permit to see the family unless strong illness in the family is proved! Division, humiliation, what else would you call it – but here shown in a non-agressive manner with big effect. She dares the pauses in her filming, what a relief in a stressed film environment where the idea seems to be to get as much as possible out to the audience as quick as possible.

More aggressive is the story by Khaled Jarrar, simply because its subject is so strong in its visual documentation. Jarrar, a video artist and photographer, and a former 8 year long bodyguard of Arafat, has for years filmed Palestinians who have found their way into Jerusalem. They wander through sewers, they climb the Wall, or they smuggle bread under the wall to a seller waiting on the other side. There are many reasons to break the rules of the occupiers and Jarrar has caught them in what is going to be a character driven, creative documentary, so far with the working title, ”Sneaking”.

At an earlier stage is Wafa Jamil with her ”Coffee for All Nations” about a man who lives in a cave in a village near Bethlehem the whole year round serving visitors from all over, who come to him and his small place to show a sign and wish for peace. The man, however, has a wife and seven children at home, and the wife does not like his self-chosen mission. To put it with an understatement.

And totally at the research stage is Ahmed AlBakri with his proposal to film old Arab men who sit and do nothing or are still active as the three men, he has found and who he wants to film: a taxi driver, a man who wants a new keffiyehs and a farmer who is still, at the age of 74, ready to dance the night through!

www.storydoc.gr

http://nahedawwad.com

Isra’ Odeh is a young Palestinian photographer who is supported by Anis Barghouti, experienced director, producer and teacher, and the man behind The Young Palestinian Filmmakers Society, which is going to arrange a festival for new films in October 2011. Isra’ Odeh presented a project at the seminar in Ramallah, still to be developed, but she also showed us her 2004 film about kids selling chewing gums in the streets of Ramallah, titled ”The Chewing Gum Gang and I”. Which is a quite inventive and playful short film with sweet kids. She made them take the camera to make short interviews with each other. Fresh it was, with a lot of fun and energy.

Odeh has a photographic exhibition running in Al Kahf Gallery in Bethlehem until 4th of May, but if you are not in that part of the world, take a look at her website, adress below.

And if you know about new young filmmakers and their films, contact Anis Barghouti to help him build the festival.

www.openeyephotography.ps

anis@yahoo.com

… is to be recommended if you go to the White City by the sea. They have a nice website, take a look at their YouTube clip. Here is a quote from the site text:

The building was constructed in 1930, in the best tradition of the Bauhaus style, as the Esther Cinema – one of the first theaters of Tel Aviv. The building was recently restored (no cinema any longer!) and renovated to become an elegant and unique hotel… As you browse through the hotel, you will notice some of the projectors, movie posters and theatre chairs. Laurel and Hardy on the wall in the lobby and popcorn to add to the nostalgic armosphere.

http://www.cinemahotel.com/

It is pitching session edition number 13 that is arranged by Orna Yarmut and her crew. Amazing how it has developed, take a look at the site and see the many activities that are offered Israeli filmmakers. Here is a quote for what it is about, from the site:

”Copro is the first and only organization of its sort in Israel that serves as an independent marketing channel for documentary films. CoPro is a registered non-profit organization that promotes the making of documentaries in Israel by arranging for Israeli filmmakers and producers to meet television network executives and producers from around the world, thereby creating a cultural dialogue and encouraging joint productions… CoPro works to pass on to millions of households around the world the message of Israeli and Palestinian documentary filmmakers and their angle on the complexities of Israeli society. This way it provides audiences with fresh viewpoints and understandings of life in Israel…”

I spent three days in Tel Aviv meeting the filmmakers of the 24 projects that have been selected to be pitched to a panel of film fund representatives and broadcasters from all over the world at the ned of May. Many of the projects had a link to holocaust and to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the latter category all with a criticism of the Israeli policy as it unfolds right now, many with quite a courageous attack on the settlement policy or the activities around the checkpoints or interviews with soldiers who took part in the non-media-coverage war in Gaza. Luckily there were also positive, yet conflicted stories, like one that has a young Arab Israeli teacher as the leading character, who teaches arabic language and tolerance to kids in a Jewish school.

Israeli documentaries have been quite strong in the past decade. Compared to many other countries the filmmakers have quite a few options for funding – tv stations like YesDocu and several funds play a role, to put it in another way, there are many doors to knock on for the filmmakers. And with Orna Yarmut and her initiative they have the best promoter they could ask for.

http://www.copro.co.il/ 

Still: A Film Unfinished by Yael Hersonski (2008) was pitched at CoPro some years ago.