Emad Burnat displays the cameras he used to make Oscar-nominated documentary
5 BROKEN CAMERAS (Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi, 2009)
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In February 2005, Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat bought a camera to capture the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel. But he also began filming the dangerous events taking place in and around his home in Bil’in, one of many West Bank villages that were being separated from much of their land by a fence and then a wall, as Israeli settlers moved into newly constructed buildings. Over the course of the next five years, Burnat went through five cameras as he documented the mostly peaceful demonstrations, led by two of his friends, Adeeb Abu-Rahma and Phil, against the Israeli military, with many of the scuffles turning violent on the part of the soldiers. Burnat follows the growth of his children, particularly Gibreel, who gets lessons on how to be careful at the protests from his mother, Burnat’s Brazilian-born wife, Soraya. Much of what he exposes is disturbing, as Israeli soldiers burn down olive trees, lob in tear gas, and shoot an unarmed captive in the leg. However, there is an overriding feeling that Burnat, who teamed up in 2009 to structure the film with Israeli codirector Guy Davidi, has cut out some essential parts, deleting valuable information that might better explain some of what was going on. (More than five hundred hours of footage were edited down to ninety minutes for the final film.) At one point Burnat is arrested for throwing rocks; although he never shows himself taking such action, he also does not claim he was wrongly imprisoned. And another scene in which Soraya begs for him to stop filming because it is hurting the family feels staged. Still, the footage does exemplify the intense battle going on between Palestinians and Israelis over the West Bank settlements, resulting in so much unnecessary violence and destruction. The fight even continues over the film itself, as Palestinians are boycotting it because of the involvement of Israeli financing, while Israelis consider it a pro-Palestinian film and are avoiding it as well. In the end, the Oscar-nominated 5 Broken Cameras is a deeply personal look at one man’s experience of a political crisis that has no resolution in sight.