|
|
March 22, 2002
A day full of Promises
Documentary hushes adults, but gets kids talking.
PAT JOHNSON REPORTER
The screening of a film that was billed as a controversial portrayal
of the Palestinian-Israeli situation raised not a hackle among viewers
in a crowded Norman Rothstein Theatre March 21. Promises
is an award-winning documentary that portrays a group of Arab children
from the West Bank and a group of Jewish children from Israel, eventually
introducing some to one another. The film addresses the possibility
that a simple meeting between children may change the future affairs
of nations.
The screening was sponsored by numerous synagogues and community
agencies, including the Israel Action Committee (IAC). However,
before the show, the IAC publicized several concerns it had with
the film in terms of what it perceived as bias against Israel. Nevertheless,
the people in the audience were almost speechless after the screening.
Whatever political messages it might have held - regardless of the
personal points of view of audience members - the film effectively
showed the humanity on both sides of the ongoing crisis. Children
who were filled with nationalistic rage against the "other"
found they had a great deal in common. Pizza, humus, competitive
sports, wrestling and burping were among the similar interests that
crossed cultural barriers.
In the end of the film, though, there was a sense of promise unfulfilled.
The children, due to tangible reasons such as military checkpoints
and intangibles such as social conformity, were unable to maintain
any budding friendship that might have germinated.
The closing scene, in which the camera pans newborns in a maternity
ward, seems to suggest that the potential remains for future generations
to grow up without the seeds of mistrust and violence.
Though the adult audience was nearly silent after the film, an afternoon
screening to students from Jewish day schools provoked far more
vocal reactions. Most of the students in one post-screening discussion
group said their views had been altered by *Promises. Seeing Palestinian
children with whom they could find commonalities seemed to dissipate
some of the images of stone-throwing Palestinian youth or the aftermath
of suicide bombings to which Canadian children are exposed in the
daily news.
"People just look at the extremists and what they do,"
said one student, saying the kids in the film were just ordinary
examples of Jewish and Palestinian youngsters.
When the children were asked how they felt after the film, they
responded that they were sad, angry, disturbed and offended. At
least one student said the film made Israel look bad. Another said
the film made the problem look too simple. If just getting together
and meeting each other solved international disputes, the student
asked, why wouldn't everyone do it?
Another student was angry because of the things Arabs and Jews were
saying about each other in the part of the film before they met.
While the adults in the evening screening seemed unable to overcome
the emotion of the film in order to discuss its various merits,
the children were not so tongue-tied.
One student said North American mediators should be brought in to
decide a final settlement. Another said two states should be created
and, if violence does not cease, the United Nations should intervene.
This caused another student to point out a historical irony.
"The United Nations already did make a decision - in 1948,"
said the student.
The students all seemed well informed about Middle East affairs
and were as frustrated as their older counterparts at the cycle
of terror attacks and retaliation. One student suggested it was
up to the Israelis to go out on a limb in a daring move that might
reduce the series of terror attacks and military retaliation.
"Someone has to be the bigger person here," said the student.
^TOP
|
|
