5 Broken Cameras
KHAMAS KAMIRATT MUHATTAMAH
HAMESH MATSLEMOT SHVUROT

With the advent of digital videography, there are now literally thousands of “personal documentaries” made every year, but it is rare that any of these films will ever mean much to a large audience or will achieve any kind of greatness as cinema. 5 Broken Camera is a rare exception. The 90-minute film meticulously edits together half a decade of video recordings taken by a Palestinian farmer named Emad Burnat into a clear, well-structured, and even poetic film that sheds light on one side of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The film, narrated by Burnat, tells how, early on, he became “the guy with a camera” in his village, recording just about everything that happened. Gradually, filming his life and the activities surrounding the illegal expansion of Israeli settlements into his village becomes a full-time job and obsession for him.

The film is a firsthand, inside account of this conflict from the Palestinian perspective—although that film is co-directed and co-edited by an Israeli, Guy Davidi, who teamed up with Burnat in 2009 to help shape his mountain of footage into a film.

5 Broken Cameras covers a five-year period from the time Burnat’s youngest child is born and the Israeli settlers begin their encroachment, and chronicles the fighting of this situation through law-suits, protests and the activism of people from the village. The film is cleverly structured around the fact that Burnat went through five cameras during the five years, each of them being damaged or destroyed by soldiers during the protests he films (sometimes the camera actually saves his life by taking a bullet or other projectile). The fragility of the small DV cameras is mirrored in the fragility of Burnat’s children, who grow up around such hostility and violence and who must lose their innocence far faster than any parent would like.

The film presents something we rarely see in the US – the depiction of non-violent Palestinian protesters. The men and women of this village use tactics of civil disobedience and unarmed resistance to attempt to change their situations. The film only shows one side of the Israeli/Palestinian problem, but removed from the implications of the larger conflict, there really is only one side to this particular story. The people of this village are not trying to destroy Israel or deny its right to exist; they are simply protesting a crime—a crime that even the Israeli courts and government call illegal (though they do nothing about it).

While there is a lot in this movie that is unclear, skimmed over, and lacking context, this is an important film both in terms of providing a living account of what it's like to live under occupation and oppression and also to provide valuable nuance and human detail to the intractable politics of this never-ending conflict. While seeing this film does not change my feelings about which side I'm more sympathetic to in the greater conflict, like this year’s other great documentary covering this issue, The Gatekeepers, it helps expand my perspective and understanding that there are far more than just two sides.