Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat with his cameras A Lens For Healing Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers behind 5 Broken Cameras look beyond their anger. George Robinson Special to the Jewish News S een together, filmmakers Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi could be one of those cliched "odd couple" pairs so beloved of unimaginative con- temporary Hollywood action comedies. Davidi is Israeli, tall, thin, weedy and mercurial. Burnat is Palestinian, shorter, solid, graying and insistently sober in demeanor. The peculiarly theatrical atmosphere of a morning with them earlier this year is amplified by the central object in the chic quiet of their Midtown Manhattan hotel — a large cylindrical aquarium filled with exotic fish. Burnat and Davidi are as far as can be imagined from Bil'in, Burnat's West Bank village and the location of their film, 5 Broken Cameras, which premiered the- atrically in May (though not in Detroit). The film, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, lost to Searching for Sugar Man (see page 50 for related story) at this year's Oscars. 5 Broken Cameras can be seen at 10 p.m. Monday, Aug. 26, on Detroit Public Television-Channel 56 as part of the POV documentary series' 2013 season. Not surprisingly, the film is as far from a Hollywood action comedy as the hotel's round aquarium and atmospheric lighting are from Burnat's modest West Bank liv- ing room. The distances can be measured in style, intent and quality of thought as much as in miles or kilometers. Burnat is a Palestinian freelance cam- eraman and photographer who bought a video camera when his fourth son, Gibreel, was born in 2005. Since then he has become a frequent source of footage for Israeli TV, Qatar-based Al Jazeera, Palestinian Television and many filmmak- ers documenting life on the West Bank. Since acquiring that first video camera with no intention other than chroni- cling his youngest child's growth, Burnat gradually became an informal historian for Bil'in. When his small village found itself pressed back by rapidly encroaching development from the Israeli settlements and a separation barrier that claimed much of the land, including olive groves that had been cultivated by the local population for generations, Burnat found himself not only covering the story but living it as well. Burnat describes himself at the film's outset as "just a peasant:' but his under- standing of the tensions and passions in his community is considerably more sophisticated. So is his perspective on the dual role he has taken on. Like other filmmakers who specialize in documentaries that straddle the line between diary and history, he frequently finds himself torn between the urge to keep filming and the needs of the people around him. Over the course of the half- decade covered by the film, we see him Lens for Healing on page 51 Courting Controversy Documentary raises thorny questions about the court system in the occupied West Bank. George Robinson 2013 season. Special to the Jewish News Alexandrowicz's name will be familiar from the powerful one-two punch of his he legal system of the occupied first two U.S.-released films: The Inner Tour West Bank is something of a (2001) and James's Journey to Jerusalem conundrum. The tenets of inter- (2003). national law that govern the actions of an The year after filming James's Journey, occupying power are fairly straightfor- Alexandrowicz was an observer at the trial ward, but they weren't designed for a situa- of one of the younger subjects of his 2001 tion that has lasted 45 years. film, a documentary about a busload of For all that time, the law has been Palestinians visiting former homes in Israel. administered by the Israeli military, with The young man was tried in one of the military judges and prosecutors in the military courts, and the filmmaker became courts, but with the possibility of appeal fascinated by the unhappy hybrid that to the Israeli Supreme Court. Decisions allowed someone to be tried in a democracy regarding Palestinians are handed down in under a legal system over which he had no those courts, but comparablae legal deci- influence as a non-citizen in his own home. sions regarding Israeli settlers usually come The experience sent Alexandrowicz on a from Israeli civilian courts. journey of his own, researching the Law of It's a jury-rigged system, if you'll pardon Occupation and its history, reading through the pun, which inevitably produces unsatis- more than four decades of court cases and factory results. rulings, not to mention a great swath of That is a mild version of the conclu- international law. sion reached by Israeli filmmaker Ra'anan He then arranged interviews with nine of Alexandrowicz in his award-winning docu- the men who shaped this particular corner mentary, The Law in These Parts, which had of Israeli history, a roster of distinguished its U.S. theatrical premiere last fall (the film military jurists that includes a former was not released in Detroit). president of the Supreme Court and three The winner of the world cinema jury former military advocate generals. The film opens with the film crew prize for documentary at last year's Sundance Film Festival, The Law in These constructing a desk, much as these Parts can be seen at 10 p.m. Monday, Sept. men constructed a legal system, while 2, on Detroit Public Television-Channel Alexandrowicz explains that "a documen- 56 as part of the POV documentary series' tary [supposedly] depicts a part of reality:' T Filmmaker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz He continues, noting dryly that this defini- tion is insufficiently precise, omitting a salient fact, namely that it is a filmmaker's construction of reality. For the remainder of the movie, he will periodically remind viewers that what they are seeing is not an unmediated slice of "the real world:' but his interpretation of it. That interpretation emerges from his close questioning of his nine subjects, few of whom seem to have qualms about the efficacy or fairness of the system they put in place. The Palestinians, he notes, are repre- sented only indirectly in the film, through the use of "images from documentaries from the past 40 years, mostly shot by Israeli filmmakers:' which are projected on a green screen behind the judges. The result is an insistent and almost constant dialectical tension at work visually in the film, subtly inflecting Alexandrowicz's statement that "this film is not about those who broke the law, but those who administered it:' Unsurprisingly, the issues at stake are thorny at best. What is the status of the land? Is there a legal justification for the settlers seizing great chunks of it? Is there legal justification for house demolitions, administrative arrests, the use of secret evidence that the accused are unable to examine, witnesses they cannot confront? Merely by presenting such questions, The Law in These Parts draws atten- tion to the terrible disparity between Israeli courts and the occupation courts. Alexandrowicz's rather dry delivery of his narration, and the methodical, analytical and unemotional tone of his interviewees, creates another stark dialectic between law and justice. By the time the film is over, one cannot help but be moved by the comments of retired Lt. Colonel Jonathan Livny, who spent 23 years as a military judge, when he asks Alexandrowicz: "When it goes on for 40 years ... how can it be just?" ❑ Detroit Public Television airs the POV documentary The Law in These Parts at 10 p.m. Monday, Sept. 2. JN August 15 • 2013 49