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    Re: Gaza - a new film Archived Message

    Posted by Mary on August 8, 2019, 2:23 pm, in reply to "Re: Gaza - a new film"

    There was a discussion on Radio 4 Today this morning about the film including Mishal Husain speaking to one of the directors, Gary Keane, and also to the Palestinian production manager who worked on the film.

    44mins 25secs in on https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0007cv1

    Ms Husain quoted from a review of the film in the Hollywood Reporter!

    From that report - Get the anti-Hamas drift?

    'There's a vainly preening lifeguard and surfer, a seemingly wealthy woman who stages small fashion shows, a paramedic working with no life-saving resources and an aging tailor who is the only person in the documentary to say "Hamas" out loud — Gaza's ruling authority is mentioned in online chyrons — and to calmly say that as long as Hamas is in charge, reconciliation is probably impossible.

    The press notes for Gaza say Hamas is one of the villains of the story, but that's a ludicrous statement. Hamas may be one of the villains of the actual historical record, but it's a non-factor in the documentary. Occasionally we pass by a military-affiliated figure with a rocket launcher or a machine gun, but to watch Gaza you'd think such weaponry was only used to be fired in the air when the Israelis free unjustly imprisoned Palestinians.

    It's not that I'm saying Keane and McConnell were supposed to pretend that violence isn't reality in Gaza just because their intended goal was showing "normal" life. Clearly this is the nightmare of normal life — none of those Hamas figures with their rocket launchers are enough part of "normal" life to be featured characters — and filming was taking place in May 2018, one of the most violent and deadly periods in Gaza's history. There's just a feeling of uncomfortable manipulation in having a film start with Karma complaining, in her unexplained perfect English, "The only thing they give us is sympathy" and then spending the last 30-plus minutes primarily on pulling bodies from the rubble, children wailing in slow motion, accompanied by a Ray Fabi score that permits no beat to play without aggressive underlining.'

    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/gaza-review-1181637

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