***** NYT August 1, 2002
Hard Life in Gaza, Through 13-Year-Old Eyes
By A. O. SCOTT
Like most news reports and television images coming out of the Middle East these days, "Gaza Strip," an unsparing new documentary by James Longley, offers little reason for optimism. The film, which opens today at the Anthology Film Archives in the East Village, was shot in the winter and spring of 2001, and it provides a grim, upsetting glimpse at the lives of some of the 1.2 million Palestinians who live in the crowded cities and refugee camps of Gaza.
Mr. Longley makes powerful use of the techniques of cinéma vérité. The absence of voice-over narration and talking-head interviews gives his portrait of daily life under duress a riveting immediacy.
Much of "Gaza Strip" follows Mohammed Hejazi, a 13-year-old newspaper vendor. This youth, who left school after the second grade, spends much of his spare time with other boys throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers, even though his best friend was killed by the gunfire that is the inevitable response, and his father, who had spent time in an Israeli prison, once tied his son up to keep him at home.
Mohammed presents a mixture of hardened cynicism and childish innocence that is both heartbreaking and unnerving. He is equally contemptuous of Ariel Sharon, whose election as prime minister takes place early in the film, of Mr. Sharon's predecessor Ehud Barak and of Yasir Arafat, and he fluctuates between weary sorrow and militaristic bravado. ("We want weapons. We don't want food.")
A similar mixture of emotions is expressed by the adults in the film. Sometimes in the same breath, they give voice to longings for peaceful coexistence with Israel, to the wish to be left alone and to the desire to drive the Jews not only out of Gaza but out of the region altogether.
Mr. Longley's camera does not have to look far to find the sources of their rage and despair: Israeli bulldozers demolishing houses and date groves; an absurd traffic jam on the beach after roads have been closed; emergency rooms full of wounded Palestinians, many of them children. It is impossible to see these images and remain unmoved, but the raw intensity of "Gaza Strip" is also a limitation, since it is purchased by the absence of anything (aside from some text at the beginning) that would provide some historical or political context.
Given how polarized discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have become, this means that audiences will watch through their own ideological filters. Some will see the film as evidence of the bottomless cruelty of the Israeli occupation. Others will note the absence not only of any Israeli perspective, but also of any discussion of the deadlier forms of Palestinian resistance or the popularity of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the desperate neighborhoods of Gaza.
Then again, it is not Mr. Longley's intention to analyze the conflict, and in the best vérité tradition, there are moments in "Gaza Strip" that disclose a wrenching human reality deeper and more basic than any politics. At one point Mohammed muses on death and the afterlife. His words cut against much of what we have heard lately about the Muslim view of martyrdom and paradise.
He imagines receiving a stern interrogation from God - "Why did you throw those rocks?" "Why did you steal?" - after which he will be sent to heaven or hell, he doesn't know which. After some thought, he decides that he would be happiest in the solitude of purgatory. Such is the aspiration of a boy in Gaza.
GAZA STRIP
Produced, directed and edited by James Longley; in Arabic, with English subtitles; director of photography, Mr. Longley and Abed Shana; music by Mr. Longley; released by Arab Film Distribution. At the Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue at Second Street, East Village. Running time: 74 minutes. This film is not rated.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/01/movies/01STRI.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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