Watching Jenin ... Jenin is an uncomfortable experience not just because of the pictures of war and destruction, but also because of the upsetting words of the Palestinian refugees in Jenin city.
No matter whether the Jenin incident is called a massacre, a war crime or just another military attack in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what's for sure in the film is that hatred is spreading and the minds of the Palestinian people are deeply disturbed by terror and oppression.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TIDF
As well as sympathy for the victims, viewers are certain to emerge feeling simply depressed about the whole situation in the Middle East.
The 50-minute video is a documentary about the attack on Jenin and its refugee camp in the West Bank in April, 2002. The result of the military operation was that the city was flattened and scores of residents were killed, though the number of casualties remains unknown.
Filmed in the weeks immediately after the Israeli offensive, the anger of the residents is still fresh and their accounts of the incident are vivid.
The film opens with a deaf Jenin resident pointing out the ruins, bullet holes in the streets and mimicking like a pantomime about how residents were killed by snipers or tanks. Then the camera swings to the rubble and ruin with an old man crying: "Where is God," while desperately searching for his relatives and belongings buried under the broken cement.
In a traditional documentary style, director Mohammed Bakri, an Arab Israeli, interviewed men, children and distressed middle-aged women who speak of their relatives buried alive by bulldozers, children forced to do hard labor for Israeli soldiers before they were shot dead, and the fierce fire of Apache helicopters.
Between the interviews, the director includes shots of alleged execution scenes of civilians, a dozen men lying motionless in a row in front of a giant bulldozer and a group of civilians facing down a tank. The images are vague and fragmented, while it's hard to tell if the men in military uniforms are truly Israeli soldiers.
The most impressive part of the film is the eloquence of the Jenin residents who talk bitterly about their suffering, blaming the US and seeing themselves as deserted by the world.
Their judgment may not be objective, but their long history of oppression is deep-rooted, while their sense of powerlessness has trained the Palestinians in the eloquence of victimhood.
A little girl, who looks about 10, talks about her determination to fight back. The ongoing violence in her daily life only nourishes her feelings of hatred and the urge to take revenge. She shouts that the Palestinians will never give up the struggle, that they will keep on producing children who can continue the fight against injustice.
Because it presents almost exclusively the outcry of Jenin residents without offering accounts from the Israeli side, the film was banned in Israel.
Israel's film ratings board judged the film "one-sided propaganda," saying it "distorted presentation of events in the guise of democratic truth which could mislead the public."
But having a film banned always attracts more attention and Jenin ... Jenin is no exception. The film is currently part of the International Competition section of the on-going Taiwan International Documentary Festival.
葉寧城紀事
穆哈瑪巴克里
巴勒斯坦
2002突尼西亞迦太基影展最佳紀錄片
本片紀錄葉寧城的巴勒斯坦居民,在以色列士兵發動「護城行動」後所作的見證,當時該城和難民營都淪為激烈戰鬥的場地。「護城行動」導致葉寧城被夷為平地,居民死傷無數。巴勒斯坦人與多個人權團體,痛斥以色列在二○○二年四月攻擊難民營的行動中,犯下戰爭罪行。透過本片,觀眾可了解到長期的暴虐與恐怖,對葉寧城居民的心理所產生的影響。
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist