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http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/oct/21/5-broken-cameras-review
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5 Broken Cameras – review
Injustice, hazard and hope are vividly captured in this defiant one-man chronicle of life in an embattled Palestinian village
5 Broken Cameras: Emad Burnat's mother pleads for the release of his brother, Khaled, who has been arrested.
- 5 Broken Cameras
- Production year: 2011
- Country: Rest of the world
- Cert (UK): 15
- Runtime: 90 mins
- Directors: Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi
grander works that made him famous such as his Decalogue
series and his Tricolor trilogy, Krzysztof Kieslowski made a
succession of films about politics and personal responsibility.
One of the most notable is Camera Buff about Filip, a minor
functionary in a provincial Polish town who buys an 8mm
camera to photograph his baby daughter. Very soon his boss
gets him to make a film celebrating their factory, and thereafter,
for better or worse, film comes to dominate Filip's life. The
obsession breaks up his marriage and, as he makes increasingly
tendentious pictures that threaten the authoritarian regime, he
comes to endanger his colleagues and himself.
This subtle fiction from cold war days has an astonishing
resemblance to a non-fiction movie of today, 5 Broken Cameras,
one of the best, most involving documentaries of the past couple
of years, shot entirely in and around a Palestinian village in the
occupied West Bank. As in Camera Buff, film-making figures
both as a metaphor for social responsiveness and responsibility
and as a daily fact for the director-protagonist of 5 Broken
Cameras. He's Emad Burnat, the peasant and smallholder
who spends his days and nights recording life about him in his
native Bil'in, the township where his family has lived for
generations. Like Filip in Camera Buff, Emad bought his first
camera when his fourth son, Gibreel, was born in 2005. He
initially used it for home movies and then, at their invitation, to
make similar pictures for his neighbours.
But fairly soon Emad developed a sense of empowerment and
a duty to serve his community. His camera became a way of
uniting his fellow citizens, publicising their struggle and becoming
a witness for posterity when the Israeli authorities sent in troops
to deprive them of land to create a defensive barrier of steel and
wire that later became a high concrete wall. Inevitably, seeing
this barrier going up in Israel we think of the wall surrounding the
Warsaw ghetto, the one that appeared overnight in Berlin and the
one separating Catholics and Protestants in Belfast. Emad was
not, however, politicised in the orthodox way. He didn't become
an agent of any political faction and, ironically, he paid for this
when some years later he was injured in a driving accident
while going about his business. It left him in debt to the Israeli
hospital where his life was saved, but he received no
compensation from the Palestinian authorities, which disclaimed
any responsibility for his activities.
Emad made this film over five years, and the title refers to the
five cameras that were variously smashed in action during
that time. At the beginning of the movie they're proudly displayed
as battered souvenirs of the struggle. Over the years they've
recorded the history of his embattled village, both its private
and public sides. Several figures dominate the story that Emad
narrates and comments upon. Up front at the barricades are a
pair of dedicated friends. One is the vocal, not to say rhetorical
Adeeb, risking bullets as he comes face to face with Israeli
troops. The other is Bassem, a cheerful giant, much loved by
the children and nicknamed "el-Phil" (the elephant). Like Emad
himself, both are arrested, see members of their families go to
jail and pay the price of passive resistance. Adeeb is seriously
wounded in the leg, Bassem suffers even worse injuries after a
direct hit by a gas grenade.
Behind this pair, but no less endangered, is Emad, recording
some of the fiercest footage of assaults and atrocities on the
West Bank that I've ever seen, as well as the arson wreaked
on Palestinian olive groves by illegal Jewish settlers. He's
constantly threatened with physical injury and the destruction
of his camera by the arrogant young soldiers, but is always there,
arguing for his rights, though there is little he can say when told he
lives in "a closed military zone" where he can't even use a camera
in his own home. Always hovering around is the little Gibreel,
trying to make sense of what he sees. Some of the earliest words
he learns are "wall", "war" and "cartridge". There, too, is Soraya,
Emad's wife, a handsome woman who ages before our eyes as the
years pass. When once again her husband is threatened with arrest,
she pleads with him to back down and live a quieter life.
But there are gentler, more hopeful moments in the movie, well
brought out by the professional way Emad's raw, direct footage is
edited by Jewish-Israeli film-maker Guy Davidi, who became
involved with the film after visiting Bil'in with other supporters of
the West Bank resistants. There are splendid moments, separated
over four years, in which the village celebrates a legal victory and
its eventual implementation; a lovely scene where the locals are
shown Emad's work-in-progress film to raise their morale; and a
peculiarly moving shot of Gibreel handing a sprig from a bulldozed
olive tree to an Israeli soldier, that's none the worse for being staged.
5 Broken Cameras is a polemical work and in no sense analytical.
It presents with overwhelming power a case of injustice on a massive
scale, and gives us a direct experience of what it's like to be on the
receiving end of oppression and dispossession, administered by
the unyielding, stony-faced representatives of those convinced of
their own righteousness. But it isn't vindictive and has a sense of
history and destiny. Much may be concealed, but what we are
shown and experience is the resilient spirit of one village recorded
by a single observer.
resemblance to a non-fiction movie of today, 5 Broken Cameras,
one of the best, most involving documentaries of the past couple
of years, shot entirely in and around a Palestinian village in the
occupied West Bank. As in Camera Buff, film-making figures
both as a metaphor for social responsiveness and responsibility
and as a daily fact for the director-protagonist of 5 Broken
Cameras. He's Emad Burnat, the peasant and smallholder
who spends his days and nights recording life about him in his
native Bil'in, the township where his family has lived for
generations. Like Filip in Camera Buff, Emad bought his first
camera when his fourth son, Gibreel, was born in 2005. He
initially used it for home movies and then, at their invitation, to
make similar pictures for his neighbours.
But fairly soon Emad developed a sense of empowerment and
a duty to serve his community. His camera became a way of
uniting his fellow citizens, publicising their struggle and becoming
a witness for posterity when the Israeli authorities sent in troops
to deprive them of land to create a defensive barrier of steel and
wire that later became a high concrete wall. Inevitably, seeing
this barrier going up in Israel we think of the wall surrounding the
Warsaw ghetto, the one that appeared overnight in Berlin and the
one separating Catholics and Protestants in Belfast. Emad was
not, however, politicised in the orthodox way. He didn't become
an agent of any political faction and, ironically, he paid for this
when some years later he was injured in a driving accident
while going about his business. It left him in debt to the Israeli
hospital where his life was saved, but he received no
compensation from the Palestinian authorities, which disclaimed
any responsibility for his activities.
Emad made this film over five years, and the title refers to the
five cameras that were variously smashed in action during
that time. At the beginning of the movie they're proudly displayed
as battered souvenirs of the struggle. Over the years they've
recorded the history of his embattled village, both its private
and public sides. Several figures dominate the story that Emad
narrates and comments upon. Up front at the barricades are a
pair of dedicated friends. One is the vocal, not to say rhetorical
Adeeb, risking bullets as he comes face to face with Israeli
troops. The other is Bassem, a cheerful giant, much loved by
the children and nicknamed "el-Phil" (the elephant). Like Emad
himself, both are arrested, see members of their families go to
jail and pay the price of passive resistance. Adeeb is seriously
wounded in the leg, Bassem suffers even worse injuries after a
direct hit by a gas grenade.
Behind this pair, but no less endangered, is Emad, recording
some of the fiercest footage of assaults and atrocities on the
West Bank that I've ever seen, as well as the arson wreaked
on Palestinian olive groves by illegal Jewish settlers. He's
constantly threatened with physical injury and the destruction
of his camera by the arrogant young soldiers, but is always there,
arguing for his rights, though there is little he can say when told he
lives in "a closed military zone" where he can't even use a camera
in his own home. Always hovering around is the little Gibreel,
trying to make sense of what he sees. Some of the earliest words
he learns are "wall", "war" and "cartridge". There, too, is Soraya,
Emad's wife, a handsome woman who ages before our eyes as the
years pass. When once again her husband is threatened with arrest,
she pleads with him to back down and live a quieter life.
But there are gentler, more hopeful moments in the movie, well
brought out by the professional way Emad's raw, direct footage is
edited by Jewish-Israeli film-maker Guy Davidi, who became
involved with the film after visiting Bil'in with other supporters of
the West Bank resistants. There are splendid moments, separated
over four years, in which the village celebrates a legal victory and
its eventual implementation; a lovely scene where the locals are
shown Emad's work-in-progress film to raise their morale; and a
peculiarly moving shot of Gibreel handing a sprig from a bulldozed
olive tree to an Israeli soldier, that's none the worse for being staged.
5 Broken Cameras is a polemical work and in no sense analytical.
It presents with overwhelming power a case of injustice on a massive
scale, and gives us a direct experience of what it's like to be on the
receiving end of oppression and dispossession, administered by
the unyielding, stony-faced representatives of those convinced of
their own righteousness. But it isn't vindictive and has a sense of
history and destiny. Much may be concealed, but what we are
shown and experience is the resilient spirit of one village recorded
by a single observer.
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