Event

5 Broken Cameras

Real-to-Reel: Documentary Film Series
Sponsored by Stuart & Ginger Polisner

An extraordinary work of both cinematic and political activism, 5 Broken Cameras is a deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements

Guest Speaker: Pastor Khader El-Yateem of the Salam Arabic Lutheran Church in Brooklyn

Some works of art reflect on crucial issues of our timein this case, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict such as Jewish settlements on the West Bank and the building of the security wall on disputed landand reveal fresh humane perspectives. Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi's documentary 5 Broken Cameras is one of these works. No film to date illuminates the human impact and human costs, the courage and dilemmas of the Palestinians, as poignantly and poetically as 5 Broken Cameras. Given a video camera to record the birth of his fourth son Gibreel in 2005, Emad Burnat began to record his family and the crisis impacting their lives. As his son entered the world, Israel erected a barrier fence right through his village of Bil'in on the West Bank. Over the next five years, as Gibreel grows from infancy to childhood, villagers organized non-violent protests. In turn, Israeli settlers burned olive groves and Israeli security forces used tear-gas canisters, rubber bullets and arrests to end the peaceful protests. How would the chaos impact Emad's child? In this remarkable documentary, the conflict loses its abstract nature and becomes deeply personal. Filming both his son and the protests, augmented by Burnat's direct, lyric commentary, we see the impact on real people. -Marty Haas (France/Israel/Palestine, 2011, 90 min., color, Blu-ray)

"A rigorous and moving work of art." A. O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES

"Both a moving first-person essay and an artful exercise in political advocacy, 5 Broken Cameras is about the experience of West Bank protests from the inside." -Liam Lacey, GLOBE AND MAIL