5 cameras
This is essentially a Palestinian film made with the
assistance of an Israeli filmmaker and funded by companies in nine different
countries, developed through a European media project. It fits well into the
concept of ‘Imperfect Cinema’. The film is constructed from the footage that
the main protagonist, Emad Burnat, recorded on a series of domestic video
cameras. Burnat lives in the Palestinian village of Bill’in. The village is
over looked by the Zionist settlement of Modi’in Ilit and was a target of the
so-called security wall which is encroaching and stealing Palestinian lands in
the occupied territories. The film is similar in topic to the 2009 Budrus,
another Palestinian village threatened by the wall. In fact, both were able to
achieve some re-routing of this monstrosity. However, whilst Budrus tended to
celebrate this as an unconditional victory, Five Broken Cameras is much clearer
about the limitations of what was achieved.
Burnat has bought six cameras: the first five were smashed
in confrontations with Israeli security forces and Israeli settlers. We get a
very personal view of five years [2005 to 201] of protest and conflict as the
Palestinians defend their lands, their rights and their livelihoods. Burnat’s
film focuses on his experiences and that of his fellow Palestinians. These
include his family and his two friends: Adeeb and Bassem. Both the later are
active in the protests, which are supported by fellow Palestinians,
international volunteers and the small minority of Israeli’s who oppose the
state’s neo-colonial occupation.
What the film offers little of is the wider context: among
Palestinian forces, of the larger Zionist project of Israel, or of the
international aspects including the media. Such subjective limitations restrict
any analytical discussion of the situation but it does present a powerful and
emotive presentation of the conflict. We see repeated violence by the Israeli
military, and also by Israeli settlers. Emad is arrested and jailed: Adeeb is
shot in the leg and Bassem is killed by a gas grenade. And there are other
Palestinian fatalities including children. This is emotive material, but only
part of a much larger picture of a brutal occupation and expropriation.
The film has won wide praise and a nomination for an Academy
Award for Best Documentary at the 2013 Hollywood event. There has also been
some interesting criticism: one can discount the ‘gnashing of teeth’ by Zionist
supporters. On The Case for Global Film Roy Stafford expresses the following
reservations:
“What is slightly sinister is the film’s depiction of the
settlers – Orthodox Jews who are perhaps the least ‘humanised’ by the camera’s
gaze. The Israeli settlers seen here trouble me deeply – I can’t think of
anything about them that would attract my sympathy – but I don’t want to feel
that way about anybody and I wonder if the filmmakers’ decision not to invite
them to speak or not to attempt to present their perspective, somehow damages
the strength of the film’s polemic. I’m not asking for ‘balance’ – the settlers
are in the wrong, that’s the starting point. But we’ve got to try to treat them
like human beings, otherwise they are trapped behind their fences in the same
way that they have deliberately put the Palestinians behind a fence/wall.”
In part Roy appears to be arguing that Israelis, including
settlers, should be given a voice in the film. This is a valid point in many
cases: I have argued that a serious problem with Israeli films like Waltz with
Bashir (2008) or Western films like One Day in September (1999) is that the
Palestinians are mute victims in the films. However, I would argue that this is
not a universal requirement. In Waltz with Bashir the lack of a ‘voice’ for the
Palestinian s and Lebanese is part of the films refusal to confront the actual
social actions taking place: the invasion which is not only illegal under the
laws of bourgeois states but which is a blatant suppression of what are
generally accepted as basic human rights. This is part of a general
conventional approach in Israeli films and the mainstream films from Hollywood,
which support Zionism.
It seems to me that Five Broken Cameras is a different case
and needs to be judged somewhat differently. The film follows an artistic form
which has resonated powerfully fore centuries: most notably in Goya’s great and
famous painting: The Third of May 1808. These are agitational artworks which
dramatise both the oppression and the resistance of a people. Emad’s narrative
is presented as a ‘representative story’ for Palestinian resistance. Hence
there is a clear awareness [absent in Budrus] of the need for the struggle to
continue.
It is worth pointing out that the Israelis in Five Broken
Cameras do have a voice, both the military and the settlers. They appear
frequently on camera barking out orders, threats and insults. Their voice is as
revealing of their standpoint as are their actions. And the ‘voice ‘ they
present in this film is typical of the actions of the larger Israeli State.
Juan García Espinosa writes:
“Should we ask for a cinema of denunciation? Yes and
no. … Yes, if the denunciation acts as
information, testimony, as another combat weapon for those engaged in the
struggle.”
My differences with Roy Stafford also turn in part on the
language one uses. Rather than ‘less than human’ I would use ‘inhuman’. That
is, ‘brutal, unfeeling, barbarous’. In fact, such actions treat the recipients
as ‘less than human’.
“There is a widespread tendency in modern art to make the
spectator participate even more fully. If he participates to a greater and
greater degree, where will the process end up? Isn’t the logical outcome – or
shouldn’t it in fact be – that he will cease being a spectator altogether?”
My more serious concern with the film’s lacunae is the
absence of a larger contextual aspect. The policies of the Israeli State are
absent: and more importantly, the complicated nature of the Palestinian forces
and resistance is not presented.
“We maintain that imperfect cinema must above all show the
process which generates the problems. …To show the process of a problem … is to
submit to judgement whiteout pronouncing the verdict.” And, in fact, Five
Broken Cameras ends with the historical verdict remaining open. But its
powerful presentation of Palestinian struggle makes it a very effective
agitational work. The film is definitely a key expression in the increasing
catalogue of Palestinian film.
Quotations from For an Imperfect Cinema by Julio García
Espinosa, translated by Julianne Burton.
Posted in Arab Cinemas, Films of Liberation, Palestinian
films, Writers and theorists
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia / Bir zamanlar Anadolu’da
A friend identified this film [directed by Nuri Bilge
Ceylan] and the 2011 Iranian film Nader and Simin A separation as the
outstanding releases of the last two years. I was so impressed with Once Upon a
Time in Anatolia that I saw it three times and I now think it is the
outstanding film so far of the century. Like Nader and Simin it is a film about
the human process: beautifully crafted and full of complexities that repay
several visits. However I think Anatolia has the greater complexity of the two
films, especially in its address of class. The film comes out of the director
Ceylan Bilge own experiences in the area of Anatolia in modern Turkey. However,
it is not actually set in the past [even if the time is indeterminate}: a
misapprehension created by the UK trailer for the film.
The plot is simple: we follow a Prosecutor with a police
team and army personnel as they drive round the countryside with two prisoners
seeking the grave of a murdered man. The drive is interrupted at one point when
the men stopped at a village for rest and refreshment. When the body is finally
found the group return to the nearby town where the suspects are imprisoned and
an autopsy is carried out on the body.
These events in the plot are the occasion for a close
scrutiny of the main characters, who themselves offer a reflection on the
larger Turkish society. They include Doctor Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner), who has
moved from larger city to work in this relatively remote area. He talks
frequently with Prosecutor Nusret (Taner Birsel), the most important official
here, and a man who we learn is haunted by the past. The Police Commissioner
Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan) also has a burden, a son with an unidentified but serious
illness and disability. Naci has an assistant Arap Ali (Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan),
who has married a woman from the village that they visit. And there are the
prisoners, two brothers, Kenan (Firat Tanis) and Ramazan (Burhan Yildiz):
Ramazan is clearly slow-witted. There are several assistants and a jeep of
Gendarmes. Finally there is the corpse Yasar (Erol Erarslan), about whom we
learn quite a lot in the course of the search.
This group offers a cross-section of the local society –
bourgeois, petty bourgeois entrepreneur, state functionaries, urban and rural
proletariat. Class differences clearly impact on their relationships, though
these are also affected by ethnic and regional factors. There is deference
shown, but social antagonism also seep into actions. But parallels also cross
the class divide: there is a potent shot of Kenan in the rear sit of the police
car which is matched in framing and lighting by one of Prosecutor Nusret much
later in the film.
And gender is another potent factor. For what is immediately
apparent is that the main characters are all male. Women do appear, and in
fact, they are central to the focus of the story. But they are always presented
as subordinated to the men. In fact, the four important women in the narrative
hardly speak at all. The only words by a woman are from the wife of the
murdered man, Gülnaz (Nihan Okutucu): a yes and a couple ‘ah-hums’ in response
to questions at the autopsy. All the other women are kept both completely
silent and mainly hidden from view. Cemal’s love, from whom we learn he is now
divorced, is seen only in some old photographs. Nusret’s wife appears merely in
his reminiscences, though he tells Cemal [and us] what she said and did. And
Naci’s wife is only a voice on the other end of a cell phone.
The one other woman that we actually see is Cemille (Cansu
Demirci), the daughter of the Mayor or Mukhtar (Ercan Kesal) of the village
where the team and their prisoners stop for refreshments. They [and we] see her
only by the light of a lamp as she serves drinks: then briefly in the dark
outside. She is beautiful but mysterious. She is in fact the first woman seen
onscreen in the film. And her appearance launches and demonstrates how potent
is the suppressed femininity of this society. Following her appearance Kenan
sees an apparition of the murdered man. This is followed by a fuller confession
by him to the Prosecutor and the Police Commissioner. A sort of motive emerges
here for the crime, as Kenan claims that he is the father of the son born to
Yasar’s wife. Ceylan’s film offers seemingly unrelated incidents that are full
of allusions: during this sequence Arap sits by a fire, behind him a moth
circles and then flies into the lamp previously held by the mayor’s daughter.
Similar opaque allusions occur during the drives and search
for the corpse. At one point Cemal walks up a hillside as thunder and lighting
crackle overhead. The flashes reveal a large carved headpiece on a small rock
wall. All we learn is from Arap, who remarks that they are common in the area.
At another point the convoy stops above a slope with several trees and a small
stream running through them. After an important conversation between Cemal and
Nusret [in term of the plot] the Prosecutor has to upbraid Naci who loses his
temper with the prisoners. Meanwhile Arap surreptitiously picks apples from one
of the trees. His actions cause several apples to fall to the ground: one
slowly rolls down the slope and a little way along the stream. The camera
carefully follows its roll: it is an exquisite shot, which seems to speak
volumes on the protagonists and their activities.
Whilst the film is extremely serious, it also offers moment
of humour and irony. Early in the drive Naci and the other policemen discuss
the qualities of ‘buffalo yoghurt’. At the place where they finally find the
corpse there is an argument over who has forgotten the body bag, resulting in
it being wrapped in a car blanket. The team has a struggle to fit it into the
boot of one of the cars. Then, Arap who has picked up some melons in the field
nearby surreptitiously places these alongside the corpse in the boot.
The Sight &Sound review remarked that the film was more
‘talky’ than Ceylan’s earlier work. And the conversations between the
characters are absorbing and extremely important in interpreting the film.
However, Ceylan and his team also raise ambiguities about these. There is an
extended conversation between Cemal and Arap at one of the sites searched.
Cemal sits by a car door, Arap stand alongside the vehicle. When I saw the film
again I realised from the camera angles that they do not actually appear to be
talking to each other. Is this a reverie by one character: are there two
separate internal monologues: or is Ceylan positioning us to have to rethink
our response. There is a similar moment at the hospital. Cemal is waiting to
commence the autopsy and he is remembering times past. Suddenly, with a cut to
a new shot, he is talking with Nusret who sits opposite him. Is this an
ellipsis? Is Cemal really talking to Nusret? By the end of the film it is the
past that haunts Nusret that seems to figure largely in the film’s resolution.
However, it is clear from the sequence where Cemal looks at old photographs
that he is too haunted by a past. The line that elides the memories of Cemal
and Nusret seems rather ambiguous.
This is not to suggest that Ceylan’s film offers a
resolution that can be read innumerable ways. During the autopsy there is a
discovery by the technician Sakir (Kubilay Tunçer) and Cemal that alters their
[and our] perception of the crime and the perpetrators. Yet this is followed by
a series of relatively long takes as Yasar’s widow and her son leave the
hospital and return home. Whatever the men have decided has to be seen against
the context provided by gender and class. This ending has all the resonance
that was also created in the final long take of Nader and Simin: an ending that
positions the viewer to consider carefully the story and characters they have
watched over two hours.
The film is also graced by exceptionably fine anamorphic
cinematography and sound design: Gökhan Tiryaki and Thomas Robert respectively.
The films open with a pre-credit sequence, the only scene where we see Yasar
alive, drinking and socialising with Kenan and Ramazan. The sequence of shots shows us the trio
through a window, then an interior mid-shot, and then exterior long shots. The
dark gloomy atmosphere is depicted in shadowy twilight images with the
ever-present thunder rumbling on the soundtrack. A passing lorry on the road
effects a cut as the credits roll. Then the main narrative opens as the
headlights of the convoy are picked out in a dusky road and darkened landscape.
The effect is luminous. The film is shot on 35mm though some reviews suggest
digital: in fact the film has circulated on DCP in the UK.
If the style of the film illuminates the landscape and
setting’s then the scripting illuminates the characters and their situations.
The screenplay was written by Ercan Kesal, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and the latter’s
wife Ebru Ceylan. I find it difficult to believe that the film could deal so
directly but deftly with gender with out her input. All the major characters
face a crisis of emotion and conscience in the film: in particular Nusret and
Cemal find that the past is inextricably connected to their actions in the presence.
Ceylan in interviews has mentioned his admiration for the writer Anton Chehkov.
In fact, whilst watching the film I was reminded once or twice of one of
Chekhov’s masterpieces, The Seagull. Late in that play Kosta tells Nina “You
have found your right path, you know which way you are going – but I’m still
floating about in a chaotic world of dreams and images, without knowing what
use it all is …” [translation by Elisaveta Fen]. One feels that several of Ceylan’s characters
could utter this line, though by the resolution there is a suggestion that one
or more has found [like Nina] the ‘right path’. The reviews of this and earlier
films clearly place Ceylan as an auteur. However, it should be noted that his
films cross over strongly with other work from Turkish cinema. Kosmos [2010]
shares the terrain with Ceylan’s earlier Climates (2007): and there are
parallels in it exploration of region, class, gender and ethnicity. Both these
films also seem to reference the work of Yilmaz Güney, in particular his 1982
film Yol. Turkey is a society involved in rapid change and development where
social contradictions and social values are thrown up in the air: I feel sure
that this is one factor in the quality of much of its recent cinema.
I want to discuss this Tunisian film with some comparisons
with a Senegalese film. Moufida Tlatli’s film appeared 20 years after Ousmane
Sembène’s Xala. The changed context is clearly responsible for many of the
differences. Silences is a French / Tunisian co-production and has circulated
in the European and North American art cinema circuits. Tlatli herself studied
at the IDHEC, the Paris film school. In her interview [see Sight & Sound,
March 1995], whilst the film is obviously seen a part of Arab cinema there is
also a concern with the western audience. The last is a funding factor. From
critical responses it would appear that many people have perceived it not as a
Third Cinema film but as a feminist text.
Ella Shoat writes; “Moufida Tlatli’s Silences of the Palace
… break away from the earlier meta-narrative of anti-colonial national
liberation. Rather than a unified, homogeneous entity, these films highlight
the multiplicity of voices with the complex boundaries of the nation-state.”
[In Givanni, 2000]
She goes on to draw critical comparisons with The Battle of
Algiers. The exploration of feminist readings of the film is a fertile area,
but other readings would equally address the national and class dimensions
found in the film.
The film open with the main character, Alia, beset by professional
and personal problems. She is living with, but not married to, a member of the
nationalist elite, Lotfi: she is also pregnant. Her memories take us back to
the 1950s, when Tunisia is still under French colonial rule, though this is
exercised partly through the traditional ruling family of the Bey. The central
narrative charts Alia’s exploration of her early life and the rediscovery of
her mother’s. She was raised by her single mother, Khedija, in the Palace of
the Beys. Khedija is a prime example of the double oppression of the Palace
serving women, economic exploitation, in her case she was bought as a slave:
and sexual oppression. It is clear in the film that Khedija co-operates, at
least in the early stages, in her sexual exploitation. Alia herself is divided,
as Lotfi points out, partly attracted and partly repelled by the world of the
Beys: she thinks her father was Sidi Ali, head of the ruling family. The film
evocatively uses sound and silence to chart the changing positions and
relationships within the Palace. Likewise, mirrors provide visual metaphors for
the two worlds, opposite but totally interlocked.
mother and daughter
These enclosed worlds are only faintly invaded by the
turbulent events outside [a growing nationalist movement], but these contacts
provide poetic comment. Lotfi’s, a nationalist and activist, hides out in the
Palace where he provides a contact for Alia with powerful repercussions. It is
his influence that causes her to launch into a banned nationalist song at an
engagement function. Alia’s nationalist song provides a musical accompaniment
to Khedija’s tragic end, resulting from an amateur abortion. The metaphor is
clear? The liberation that should free her destroys her?
Khedija’s fate in the film stems from two contradictory
impulses. Firstly her co-operation in her own exploitation, which would appear
fuelled partly by the favours it produces, but also partly by the status she
supposes it awards her. But the increasing likelihood of her daughter sharing
this fate makes her conscious of the negative side of her situation. Desperate
because of her new pregnancy, [possibly due to the rape by Si Béchir, brother
of Sidi Ali] she resorts to traditional remedies. In one sense her estrangement
from the liberation movement is her downfall. Walled up in the Palace, and in
traditional mores, she has access to no other options.
Alia, in post-independent Tunisia, suffers from the same
imprisonment. Her singing at the wedding reception which opens the film is a
reprise of her position in the Palace. She is subject to the same condescension
as then. And the insults that stem from her unmarried status replicate her
mother’s experience. Notably, Lotfi appears not to suffer the same problem.
And, finally, she is about to repeat the tragic experience of her mother in
having an abortion. The sense of liberation at the end of the film is Alia’s
decision to take a stand and change things.
The central thrust of the narrative posits the continuing
problematic for women. Oppression under colonialism, oppression under
independence. However, such a position leaves unanswered questions about the
actual independence situation. Silences concentrates on the world of the women.
The viewer’s portrait of the world of the Beys is the subjective view provided
by Alia. We know even less about the nationalist world represented by Lotfi.
Intriguingly, the reception that opens the film appears a mirror image of that
which closes it. If Alia’s position appears to have little changed, neither has
the world in which she moves. The parallel movement by the camera towards the
viewing of Alia’s singing by both Sidi Ali and Lotfi at the engagement party
are a part of this. Yet the film is clear about the class divide that exists
between the Bey family and their servants. Just as vicariously we become aware
of the gap between the colonialists and the nationalist Tunisians. To
adequately read Alia’s position under independence we need a statement of the
class alignments. This is only suggested by the parallel condescension by the
two sets of guests for whom Alia’s sings and, by, for example, the fact that
Lotfi has to wait outside in the car to take Alea home. In Xala Sembène also
deals with gender politics. And in these, as in the class depiction’s, the film
explores both worlds. So we, as viewers have a strong sense of the world of
male and female: of bourgeois and proletarian. Sembène’s narrative is Brechtian
in its invitation to the viewer to both understand and evaluate the conflict of
these worlds. It is an ‘epic’ and symbolic cinema. Silences of the Palace is
much more subjective film, and closer in its psychological portrayal to art
cinema [auteur’s cinema].
This is apparent not only in the form and narrative of the
film but also in its style. Whilst the characters and some of the mores the
film are unfamiliar to a western viewer, the form is accessible. The film’s
reliance on close-up, directed lighting and constructed mise en scène is most
similar to art cinema conventions. The differences from these conventions, the
editing and the soundtrack, both work to re-inforce the subjectivity of the
narration and the linearity of the narrative.
Silences of the Palace does provide a critique of both
post-independence Tunisia and gender discrimination. It certainly goes beyond
the ‘content to recall’ category posited by Fanon. But it does share attributes
with the first category posited by Solanas and Getino, auteur cinema and with
the second or national cinema. I would suggest this is not to do with the
film’s feminism, which makes point also made by Sembène [for example] in Xala.
It is that this film is less clearly demarcated from the conventions of western
art cinema, most especially in the subjectivity of its stance.
Some sense of this divide can be found in the interview
taken from Sight & Sound. Most revealing is the comment by Laura Mulvey in
the introduction to the Tlatli interview,
“The polarisations of gender, which had formerly co-existed
with a world divided by class, have once more risen to the surface.” [Though
Mulvey’s stance in the interview is not neutral, she awards herself a final
comment after Tlatli].
This would appear to suggest an expectation that class is
not relevant in the neo-colonial society. Whereas, as Sembène clearly shows,
neo-colonialism restructures class divides, it does not rise above them.
Silences of the Palace would appear to adhere to the western feminists’
aphorism, ‘the personal is political’. Xala illustrates the converse, the
political is personal. And this is Lotfi’s failure in the film, the political
has not become personal.
father and daughter
SUMMARY.
There is no doubt that both Xala and Silences of the Palace
are challenging films. They confront dominant ideologies and their
manifestations, and at the same time [to different degrees] they work against
the conventions of the dominant cinemas.
So, how do they fit into the systematic and worked out model offered by
Teshombe Gabriel in his study of Third Cinema [Towards a Critical Theory of
Third World Films in Questions of Third Cinema edited by Jim Pines and Paul
Willemen, 1989].
Gabriel’s model is complex and multifaceted. It really
requires a hologram so that the different ways of regarding Third Cinema are
clear. He posits several interlocking sets of concepts, including:
Film / text Production Audience
Assimilationist.
Remembrance.
Combative.
Whilst the film text, Xala, can be placed under combative in
an unqualified manner, the positions of Production and Audience are more
contradictory. Xala was produced in a period when Senegalese cinema was
unusually productive. This was due to the introduction by the state of the
Société de Cinéma. However, whilst his providing funding, it did not develop
production resources and the increase in films was short-lived. This meant,
that as was the norm, Xala was dependent on production support from the French
Aid, the Ministère Coopération. Equally, as Senegal had not taken control of
exhibition and distribution, the film relied on foreign control to circulate to
an audience. Ad additional barrier was the censorship imposed on the film by
the State: a later film Ceddo was banned. Sembène himself has been involved in
rural screening so some of these films, which seem to include discussions with
the audience. But in the early 1990s he was still meeting young people who had
not heard of Xala until then.
Silences of the Palace is one of those films dependent on
western finance and the western system. It is clear that even now, Africa has
not been able to develop a self-sufficient cinematic apparatus, and Tlatli
relied on the same Paris-based film school, as did the pioneer African
filmmakers in the 1950s. The production itself was reliant on the French
Ministries of Foreign Affairs and of Culture, Canal and Channel 4. Canal, in
particular, is increasing dominant in that sector of the art cinema market
where ‘Third World’ films circulate. Like Channel 4, through Canal-plus, it is
a major consumer of such films for its television channel. The increasing range
of Film Festivals provides a circulation for such films. The varied awards a
marketing device for such as Canal. It can be argued that films in this
situation, whilst critical in the way that western independent films often are,
lacks the direct and combative stance found in directors such as Sembène.
Unlike the situation in Cuba [for example] the African arena
appears to rely heavily on the individual artist. Senegal cinema’s own
development would appear to be disproportionately influenced by individuals.
The question need to be put as to wherewith the combative phase has been
achieved in the arena s of production and audience. Certainly despite the work
of FEPACI and the collective work at the Festivals, African cinema still
appears in the west as a cinema of auteurs.
The Silences of the Palace – Les Silences du palais – Saimt
el qusur 1994.
Direction, screenplay and editing by Moufida Tlatli, who
earlier had worked as an editor. Adaptation and dialogue Nouri Bouzid. Director
of Photography Youssef Ben Youssef. Music Anouar Brahem. 127 minutes, in
colour, with English subtitles.
Cast: Ali – Ghalia Lacroix and Hend Sabri as her younger
self. Khedija – Ahmel Hedhill. Lotfi – Sami Bouajila. Sidi Ali – Kamel Fazaa,
Si Béchir – Hichem Rostom.
Source: filmsite.org
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