broken cameras, a broken palestine but an unbroken people

 The film has been nominated for the Oscar's. It will, hopefully, again draw the world's attention to a People who still  refuse to be cowed down under the Empire's might. People who have names. People who have the guts and the commitment  to tell  their stories and show us the reality of their brutal Occupation by an expanding Empire.


5 Broken Cameras, one of the best, most involving documentaries of the past couple of years, shot entirely in and around a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank. 

But fairly soon Emad developed a sense of empowerment and a duty to serve his community. His camera became a way of uniting his fellow citizens, publicising their struggle and becoming a witness for posterity when the Israeli authorities sent in troops to deprive them of land to create a defensive barrier of steel and wire that later became a high concrete wall. Inevitably, seeing this barrier going up in Israel we think of the wall surrounding the Warsaw ghetto, the one that appeared overnight in Berlin and the one separating Catholics and Protestants in Belfast. Emad was not, however, politicised in the orthodox way. He didn't become an agent of any political faction and, ironically, he paid for this when some years later he was injured in a driving accident while going about his business. It left him in debt to the Israeli hospital where his life was saved, but he received no compensation from the Palestinian authorities, which disclaimed any responsibility for his activities.

5 Broken Cameras – trailer

Emad made this film over five years, and the title refers to the five cameras that were variously smashed in action during that time. At the beginning of the movie they're proudly displayed as battered souvenirs of the struggle. Over the years they've recorded the history of his embattled village, both its private and public sides. 

He's constantly threatened with physical injury and the destruction of his camera by the arrogant young soldiers, but is always there, arguing for his rights, though there is little he can say when told he lives in "a closed military zone" where he can't even use a camera in his own home. Always hovering around is the little Gibreel, trying to make sense of what he sees. Some of the earliest words he learns are "wall", "war" and "cartridge".

 Broken Cameras is a polemical work and in no sense analytical. It presents with overwhelming power a case of injustice on a massive scale, and gives us a direct experience of what it's like to be on the receiving end of oppression and dispossession, administered by the unyielding, stony-faced representatives of those convinced of their own righteousness. But it isn't vindictive and has a sense of history and destiny. Much may be concealed, but what we are shown and experience is the resilient spirit of one village recorded by a single observer.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/oct/21/5-broken-cameras-review