A moment of truth
Uri Klein
Haaretz, 16 December 2002
Ha'aretz has reported that the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and Bakri are now examining the possibility of filing a petition to the High Court of Justice against the board's decision. This direction should be pursued, and at the same time it is perhaps necessary to take action to do away with the Film Censorship Board, which is a bullying, anachronistic and superfluous institution. Like an old hound that drowses in a corner and from time to time emits a bark to let us know it is still alive, the board is exploiting Bakri's film to remind us that it still exists.
The board should have been done away with a long time ago, but additional strong action is needed. I would expect all the existing film institutions in Israel - all the film schools, all the foundations that operate for the welfare of Israeli cinema and all the organizations of producers, directors, actors and other participants in the local film industry - to protest immediately, to organize demonstrations and to cry out in force. And I would also expect Bakri's colleagues to declare that if he is forbidden to show us his film, then in response they will darken the screens in the movie theaters and the television screens on which their films are shown.
How can Uri and Benny Barabash ("My First Sony"), Nir Bergman ("Broken Wings") or Julie Shlez and Doron Tzabari ("Southwards") sleep at night knowing that their televisions series and films are being shown to audiences while Bakri's film has been banned?
I would expect other artists to join the protest, as well as the audience of consumers of Israeli culture, along with politicians from the left and the right who believe in this country, whose enlightened and free character is important to them.
But in these days of the run-up to elections, when the center has become a vague but promising political safe haven, it is difficult to suppose that this will happen: This demands courage and the taking of a determined stance.
Nevertheless, the banning of Bakri's film is a moment of truth; it is not a marginal event. This is the beginning of something very bad, and perhaps even proof that this evil is already with us.
It is hard to believe that in 2002, it is still necessary to explain why censorship of films is superfluous and why the banning of Bakri's film is an act of bullying stupidity. Such censorship is like saying that the Israeli audience is not sufficiently mature or wise to decide whether or not it wants to watch Bakri's film. This means that the audience that decides to see the film on television or at the cinematheques is not mature enough or wise enough to decide whether "Jenin, Jenin" is a work of artistic and ideological merit.
In fact, the banning achieves an opposite aim: If up until that moment the Israeli public had not heard of Bakri's film, and only a few people had been exposed to two extracts from it that were shown on "Nightly Meeting" on Channel Two last Wednesday, it has now become a cause c?l?bre, an affair that is the subject of broad public debate.
When the film is finally screened, and it is inconceivable that it will not be, many more people will watch it to find out what the members of the Film Censorship Board were so afraid of and what they thought that watching the film would do to us.
In effect, nowadays there is no possibility of entirely withdrawing a film from circulation. If "Jenin, Jenin" is not broadcast on one of the local television channels, as was originally planned (many people, among them the writer of these lines, do not even know how to find them on their satellite or cable remote controls), then it will be broadcast on one of the foreign channels.
Is the Film Censorship Board planning to black out the Arte channel if the film is broadcast there?
I will not argue here with the reasoning of the board, which among other things argued that "this is a falsified representation of the events in the guise of documentary truth that could mislead the public;" that "this is a propaganda film that presents a one-sided view of the position of the side with which the State of Israel is in a state of war and at a time when this war is still going on;" that "this is a film that severely damages the sensitivities of the public that is liable to think mistakenly that Israel Defense Forces soldiers systematically and intentionally commit war crimes."
This catalogue of accusations gives rise to too many aesthetic, ideological, moral and even psychoanalytical issues to discuss here. I shall say only that it is the public's right to decide whether the film indeed does all this.
My opposition to the banning of the film "Jenin, Jenin" has nothing to do with the quality of the film.
On the contrary. My opposition to the banning of the film is fierce even though "Jenin, Jenin" is not a good film; the danger is in the banning, and if what I hope will happen in the wake of this dastardly deed does indeed happen, the film will acquire an aura that will blur this fact and make "Jenin, Jenin" into a more important film from the cinematic perspective than it deserves to be. And this could be no less grave, as respect for the other means relating to his work not in a romantic and sentimental way, which stems from arrogance, but frontally, directly and in an egalitarian way.
The flaws in "Jenin, Jenin" are not the ones noted by the board; they derive from the fact that the film was directed without any guiding thought and is made up of a collection of styles that give it the feel of a very hesitant and raw first cinematic effort, which for lack of a better word, must be called "student-like."
Bakri did not select a style, he did not select a form and above all he did not select a creative and conceptual idea that would determine how he documented what happened in Jenin during what was called Operation Defensive Wall. The film has no structure; it repeats itself and it moves between factual dryness and emotional reportage that makes use of visual cliches. The result is a fuzzy statement, which among other things is what allowed the Film Censorship Board to ban the film so easily.
But all this must not deter us. "Jenin, Jenin" is a local cinematic work and we must demand the right to see it. And if we do not demand this right, we should not be surprised if this house collapses on us and becomes, like the camp in Bakri's film, a heap of ruins.
