This Week at Movies About Something: 5 Broken Cameras – Alps

5 BROKEN CAMERAS

A Film by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi

Winner: Sundance Film Festival

World Documentary Directing Award

IDFA

Special Jury Mention & Audience Award

Opens in Toronto at the Hot Docs Bloor Cinema

Friday, June 22, 2012

“I feel like the camera protects me, but it’s an illusion”

-Emad Burnat

An extraordinary work of both cinematic and political activism,5 Broken Cameras is a deeply personal, firsthand account of non-violent resistance in Bil’in, aWest Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements.  Shot almost entirely by Palestian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, the footage was later given to Israeli co-director Guy Davidi to edit.  Structured around the violent destruction of each one of Burnat’s cameras, the filmmakers’ collaboration follows one family’s evolution over five years of village turmoil.  Burnat watches from behind the lens as olive trees are bulldozed, protests intensify, and lives are lost.

When demonstrations against the wall started in 2005,Emad got his first video camera and started filming what was happening in the village.  He also filmed his personal life and family,not thinking that this footage would become a feature film.

Other filmmakers made films around the resistance in Bil’in and many of them utilized Emad’s footage as he was the only cameraman in the village.  Among other things,he was one of the few who filmed the soldiers and raids at night.  These events were sometimes violent,and Emad was often in great danger,capturing these moments on camera.

In 2006 Emad was arrested and accused with throwing rocks.  He spent weeks in jail and house arrest,and one of his first cameras was broken soon after.  Peace activists and donors helped Emad get new cameras,so that he could continue filming and documenting what was happening.

From the beginning,Israeli and international peace activists helped and participated in the movement against the separation wall.  Filmmaker Guy Davidi came to Bil’in in 2005 as a sympathizer and media activist in the Indymedia group.  He knew Emad,as several others did,because he became an important figure in the Bil’in movement.

While working on his feature doc “Interrupted Streams”, Davidi stayed in Bil’in for several months and the villagers called Guy to bring his cameras and film what was about to happen. During these nights Emad and Guy found themselves filming side by side.

In 2009 Emad approached Guy with the idea of making a film together.  “When I first looked at the footage,” said Guy Davidi,“I wasn’t sure I wanted to make another film on the subject of the resistance.  I knew Emad had a visual natural talent,but I wasn’t sure how we could create a new story.  Then I saw an image of an old man climbing on a military jeep and blocking it from moving.  I asked Emad who that was and what he was doing.  Emad explained that the man was his father,and that he was blocking the jeep from taking his brother to jail.”

“Then it struck me,” Guy continued,“that from this moment,we had the makings of a new film that would tell the events the way Emad experienced them as a cameraman and a family man.”  “Making a personal film was a very difficult decision for me,” said Emad Burnat. It means exposing some difficult moments,like my arrest or my accident.”

In the next two years,Emad’s footage – 700 + hours of video) became the basis of 5 Broken Cameras.

A film by Yorgos Lanthimos

 

Opens Friday, June 22nd

Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox

 

Following the immense success of Kynodontas (Dogtooth) which won Un Certain Regard at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar™ at the 2011 Academy Awards, acclaimed director Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film Alps (Alpis) will open in Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Friday, June 22nd.

“Landing on the global movie scene like an über-talented extraterrestrial, Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth) has been crafting a cinematic product all his own. This time around he engages with the idea of substitutes — though we all know no one could walk in his shoes.

Picking up where his first solo feature Kinetta left off, Alps is a game of elaborate reenactments. Only this time it’s more busi­ness than pleasure, since the activity is being used to alleviate pain. Consisting of two men and two women of varying ages, “ALPs” is the name of an underground group that offers a most unusual service: they inhabit the role of your dearly departed, adopting their mannerisms and wearing their clothes, until you can find it inside you to accept that they’re gone. A few two-hour sessions a week seem to do the trick. The funny thing is, physical similarity is not an issue. Using props (a much-worn hat, a favourite wrist­band) to trigger memory, the members of ALPs allow their clients’ imaginations to fill in the rest.

The group’s name is no accident. According to their leader Mont Blanc (Aris Servetalis), no geographic formation could possibly fill in for the majestic Alps, whereas the Alps could stand in for any other moun­tain range in the world.

Lanthimos ingeniously populates Alps with one-dimensional characters, whose lack of complexity allows them to slip effort­lessly into other people’s personalities. That is, except for Monte Rosa (Aggeliki Papoulia), a hard-working nurse who insti­gates an imaginary friendship with one of her patients that eventually leads her to take action without informing the rest of the team. Lanthimos drops a few hints about her background: a stagnant home life, a demanding father. Or does he? Who’s to say that this nameless father figure isn’t just another one of her clients? When a director has the ability to make you question your own perception, you know you’re witnessing greatness.”

- Dimitri Eipides, TIFF 2012

Via Kinosmith

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