SHAZNA NESSA reports on 'Encounter Point,' a moving documentary about Palestinian and Israeli peace activists that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
From Gaza to Tribeca. Some of the real people featured in the documentary "Encounter Point" (left to right) Ali Abu Awwad, Robi Damelin, Sami Al Jundi and Shlomo Zagman (AP Photo/Shazna Nessa)
Ali sits down with a group of fellow Palestinian men to talk about their struggles. They point to their litany of scars and wounds; bullets, missiles and perpetual anger are their reality.
Except for Ali. He is there to talk about peace and reconciliation. He talks about Ghandi's ideas of nonviolent protests. A portly, young man in the group scoffs at this -- he's not going on a hunger strike.
But it is the quest for peace that drives "Encounter Point," a documentary that had its world premier at the Tribeca Film Festival and follows ordinary Palestinians and Israelis who have suffered great loss in the conflict.
How does one cut through the cynicism when talking about peace in the Middle East? Even in the theater, a joke ripples through the room about how it will take something seismic, resembling continental drift, to achieve that goal.
It's hard to believe in peace. Our attention is held with the language of bombs, fighting and political rhetoric -- but peace? Peace is slow and steady. Peace is boring.
Enter Ali, Robi, Shlomo, Sami, Tzvika, George, Rutie and Aziz. They are Palestinians and Israelis, but they are also complicated individuals. Each has lost something precious in the conflict, and each has made it his duty to organize public forums to promote reconciliation. One by one they debunk any notion of heady idealism and define their meaning of peace.
"I don't have to love Israelis to make peace with them," says Ali, director of the Palestinian Community Outreach of the Bereaved Families Forum. He knows the conflict too well -- a settler shot him in the leg, an Israeli soldier killed his brother and he has spent years in Israeli prisons.
Why would he want peace when there's so much to hate? "I'm not asked to forgive the soldier who killed my brother," he says. "I'll never forgive him."
The film was created by Ronit Avni, director of "Just Vision," a nonprofit initiative to widen the influence of Palestinian and Israeli peace builders. Co-director Julia Bacha (who was also co-writer/editor of the excellent "Control Room") says that one of the biggest challenges of making the documentary was overcoming skepticism.
Political figures were consciously left out of the documentary. Much has changed since Just Vision started filming -- Palestinian elections have brought Hamas to power, settlements have been dismantled in Gaza, Arafat is dead and Sharon is in a coma.
Here we see the ordinary people of the region and we also see the ordinary landscapes -- not the perpetual bloodbath that's on the television, but street-food sellers, surfers and fishermen, a man carting boxes of oranges, the beautiful Old City with its labyrinth stairways and ancient stone walls, veiled Palestinian women walking by giant barriers and traffic jams at checkpoints -- loads of them. The images humanize the places we read about every day, locations that sometimes blur in our minds because we've heard them over and over again.
After a Palestinian sniper murdered Robi's son, she became an active member of the Bereaved Families Forum. "There's a sense of trust. It's not hummus and hugs -- it's much deeper than that."
Robi grew up in a segregated South Africa and calls the end of apartheid a "miracle." She thinks that the same kind of miracle can happen in the Middle East. "There is no pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian, there is pro-solution," she says. She contends that success will come with empathy.
"Show your wound" said the German artist Joseph Beuys. The first step toward healing is by showing what hurts. We see many wounds -- the pain of a father whose daughter was killed, a young boy with patches of melted flesh on his leg or a family who had to leave their home.
Their loss is individual, but their grief is collective -- and this, they realize, might be what saves them.
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Shazna Nessa is asap's interactive editor.
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