Israel & Jordan

Israel & Jordan
May 9-23, 2009
Filmmaker: Marshall Curry, Street Fight
Expert: Thomas White

Delegate Report

by Thomas White

The American Documentary Showcase delegation to Israel and to Jordan took place May 9-16 and May 16-23, respectively. The delegation was comprised of Thomas White, editor of Documentary magazine / documentary.org, and filmmaker Marshall Curry, whose film Street Fight was screened in both Israel and Jordan. What follows is a report on a most rewarding and fulfilling expedition.

ISRAEL — May 9-16

Tel Aviv

After a grueling 26-hour travel experience, I arrived in Tel Aviv at about 5:30 p.m. Saturday, May 9, and was met by Cultural Attaché Bonnie Guttman from the US Embassy, as well as their driver. Bonnie briefed me on the way from the airport, and we continued our meeting in the hotel (nice digs, by the way--right across from the beach, Mediterranean view). Next day, after a long sleep and a long walk along the beach and some Showcase preparation, I met up with Marshall (who had arrived that afternoon), and Bonnie for late lunch/early dinner; Cultural Specialist Lilly Obadiah joined us.

Sderot

Street Fight Screenings and Discussions

Filmmaker Marshall Curry (left) talking to students at El Manar College in Taibeh, Israel.

From there we drove to Sderot, which, being right next to Gaza, has sustained considerable psychological, emotional and physical damage in the series of missile attacks from Hamas over the past several years. Sderot has a Cinematheque/Film School; Benny Cohen, director of the Cinematheque, was our host. Marshall and I presented both Street Fight and The Betrayal. About 30 students attended both screenings, and they were a good audience and stuck around afterwards for conversations. Street Fight resonated with the audience as a document of politics, political campaigns and sociocultural differences. As we screened the film in subsequent venues throughout the week—Ma’aleh School of TV, Film, and the Arts in Jerusalem; Minshar Visual Arts School in Tel Aviv; El Manar College in Taibeh; and the Israel Filmmakers Documentary Forum in Tel Aviv—we were struck by the diversity of responses and questions from various communities.

Jerusalem

The Ma’aleh School, for example, focuses on Jewish heritage and culture as a foundation for exploring through film the connections between media, social experience and the secular and Jewish cultural and heritage. The students--about 30--were struck by the themes of Black-Jewish relations, as well as intra-Black relations, given the tension among Sephardic, Ashkenazy and Orthodox Jews in Israel. The students were also interested in the American political system. Representatives from the American Center Jerusalem who accompanied us for the screening included Alexander Daniels and Jackie Stein, and we met with Omri Levy, academic advisor, and Neta Ariel, director of the school.

Taibeh

Delegate Specialist Tom White (back row, second from left) and Filmmaker Marshall Curry (back row, yellow shirt), with students from El Manar College in Taibeh, Israel. Also pictured is Dunia Baransky, director of El Manar College (back row, third from left).

The students at El Manar College in Taibeh, a predominately Arab-Israeli community, were somewhat younger than other students we would work with that week, and given that translation was required here, the session was a little more frenetic. But it was energized; we talked about objectivity and the voice of the filmmaker, what happens when a film appears to favor one side over another, what we felt about Obama, how Corey Booker was similar in leadership and charisma. Many of the students recognized the volatility of the campaign in the film in their own local political campaigns in their respective villages, given that a few Arab families control the political machinery in the Arab Triangle, machine politics, as manifest in Sharpe James’ 30-year reign as Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. These students were also interested in the intra-racial tensions, and were struck by Corey Booker’s similarity in demeanor and poise to Barack Obama. For that session at El Manar College, Lily Obadiah; Manal Haddad, Program Assistant; and Zeba Reyazuddin, Assistant Cultural Attaché, accompanied us from the US Embassy. Dunia Baransky, director of El Manar College, and Nir Keinan, head of the documentary track, were our hosts.

The Minshar Visual Arts School students, given that, as the name of the school suggests, their curricula centers around the cinematic, design, photographic and visual arts, were interested in Marshall’s artistic process, being a one-person team for Street Fight versus having artistic collaborators for his next film, Racing Dreams; taking a point of view; being harassed by Sharpe James’ handlers, etc. During the screening, we went out for dinner with David Noy, head of the film department, and a filmmaker himself.

At the Israel Filmmakers Documentary Forum, technical difficulties delayed the screening, and afforded us to have an opportunity to talk about the business of documentary—a topic that dominated the post-screening discussion as well.

Other Screenings

But we didn’t just screen Street Fight. Sderot Cinematheque, which had screenings from the showcase every night, also showed The Betrayal, Made in LA, Frontrunner, Miss Navajo, Beginning Filmmaking and The People’s President. The delegation and Embassy representatives were present for the first three films, but we were at Minshar for the latter three. The Betrayal, which is about a Laotian refugee family’s struggle to assimilate in America, following the Vietnam War, the Communist takeover, and the family’s escape from Laos to Thailand and the US. One audience member recognized betrayal surrounding the 1982 war in Lebanon—particularly the slaughter of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra-Shatila refugee camps. He later came up to me and said, “We Jews have pain in our pocket, but it was important to see the pain and suffering that the Laotians experienced as well.”

The Tel Aviv Cinematheque, headquarters of DocAviv.

The audience for Made in LA and Frontrunners wasn't as big as it was for Street Fight and The Betrayal. I gave a little talk about Made in LA and the filmmakers’ ongoing outreach campaign for the film.

Nazareth

We also screened Beginning Filmmaking at Galilee High School in Nazareth. The 23-minute film was sufficient for high school students: Through the premise of a filmmaker teaching his four-year-old daughter the rudiments of filmmaking, the film conveys something about parent-child and teacher-student relationships, as well as the power and role of the camera, the relationship of the camera to the filmmaker and the relationship of the filmmaker to the subject. This being a high school—and it’s amazing how high school culture is so similar around the world—the students were somewhat rowdy and restless; the teachers had to constantly calm them down; but both students and teachers seemed to like the film anyway. Marshall and I tailored the discussion accordingly, involving the students from the beginning, and encouraging the teachers to weigh in with their observations about teaching. Lily Obadiah, Manal Haddad and Zeba Reyazuddin accompanied us from the US Embassy.

Other Excursions and Meetings

While in our first visit to Jerusalem (Marshall and I took a subsequent trip when we had a morning off), we also went to the Ma’abada Lab, an animation studio that was funded by private investors for the primary purposes of moving Jerusalem forward as a media-making center—a position currently held by Tel Aviv. We also visited the Jerusalem Cinematheque, where we had lunch and toured the facilities, including the theater and the archives.

Traffic getting out of Jerusalem was horrendous, due to the Pope’s visit that same day. We had to cancel a meeting in Tel Aviv with David Fisher, documentary filmmaker and former director of the New Fund for Cinema & Television. (We by-passed returning to Tel Aviv altogether and went straight to Sderot again for screenings of Made in LA and Frontrunners.)

While we were in Israel, DocAviv, the documentary film festival in Tel Aviv, was also going on, and we stopped in to observe a couple of hours of a workshop on Funding, Marketing and Distribution of Independent Films, conducted by Americans Peter Broderick and Sandi DuBowski. Broderick is president of Paradigm Consulting, which specializes in marketing and distribution strategies for independent filmmakers, and DuBowski is a filmmaker and founder of the distribution organization “Films That Change the World.”

The US Embassy had partly sponsored Broderick and DuBowski’s visit. During the section that we observed, they fielded pitches and presentations from the worksop participants, and offered their advice about distribution and marketing through the Internet and various social networking sites, and finding and reaching the core audiences for the specific films.

In addition to screening Street Fight at El Manar College in Taibeh (see above), Marshall and I had the opportunity to critique some of the work of the students—mostly short films and excerpts from feature-length work. All of the films addressed contemporary issues in Israel—maintaining traditions in a contemporary society; the Gaza situation, the wall between Ramallah and Jerusalem—but all told from a personal, grassroots point of view, making the works more poignant than standard political reporting.

Back in Tel Aviv, we met with Dorit Inbar, director of the New Fund for Cinema & Television. This decade has seen a ramped-up activity in cinematic production, thanks largely to this fund, which constitutes $80 million. This fund helps support 16 features per year, ten of which are documentaries. A large part of additional funding for documentaries comes from co-productions with commissioning editors from Australia, Canada and Europe.

Later that evening, we had coffee at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque with Ilana Tsur, director of DocAviv. Although we didn’t get a chance to sample the offerings there, Ilana gave us some good insight into the challenges of running a festival—the cost of programming international films, the difficulties in procuring films from Arab countries, etc.

Following the discussion of Street Fight, local filmmaker Jacky Comforty (who had actually lived several years in the US) accompanied us to the Tel Aviv Harbor for screenings of the winners of the DocAviv Doc Challenge competition—short films of seven minutes or less that focused on some aspect of life in Tel Aviv. The filmmakers had 48 hours to make their films—hence, the Challenge, which is actually modeled after the US-based Doc Challenge, held every year since 2006.

Following our trip to Nazareth, Marshall and I returned to the Embassy in Tel Aviv for an on-camera interview with the Press Department, which has a set up a channel on YouTube. We were also interviewed by an Israeli-American journalist for a local magazine.

Extracurricular Activities

The US Embassy was kind enough to allow us time to experience aspects of Israel outside the context of the American Documentary Showcase. Marshall and I had a morning off, so we went to Jerusalem again to explore the Old City, including the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and other sites. One of the best ways to get a window into the sociopolitical situation of a given country is through cab drivers, and our return cab ride, courtesy of an Arab Israeli, afforded us another perspective on the seemingly intractable and endless situation in the West Bank and Gaza.

Our final evening in Tel Aviv, we had a lovely dinner with Bonnie Guttman (the Cultural Attaché) and her husband, at an Italian restaurant across from Rabin Plaza, where Izthak Rabin was assassinated in 1995. After dinner, we took a driving tour of Jaffa—Tel Aviv is officially called Tel Aviv-Jaffa—which is a striking contrast with Tel Aviv, a more contemporary city, and seemingly the center of international commerce for Israel. Jaffa has preserved its old-world charm and predominantly Arab sensibilities, and history as both a port city and a port-of-call for the Egyptian and Ottoman empires. Tel Aviv celebrates its 100th anniversary this year; Jaffa has been around for 4,000 years.

Next day we departed for Amman—but not before being questioned by Israeli security in the Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. Marshall and I were separated; the security agent asked me about what I had been doing in Israel, where I had been, what my role was, what I did as editor, how to make a documentary film, how to edit a magazine, how Documentary magazine covered Fahrenheit 911. I would say this was an unscheduled and impromptu component of the American Documentary Showcase.

JORDAN — May 16-23

Amman

A view of downtown Amman, from the Royal Film Commission. The columns in the background are the remains of The Citadel—specifically, the Umayyad Palace complex, dating from 720-750 A.D.

We arrived in Amman, Jordan mid-day Saturday, and once we were settled in our hotel, Jennifer Rasamimanana, Cultural Affairs Officer, and Daniel Ernst, Public Diplomacy Officer, briefed us on our upcoming week.

Whereas the Israel chapter of the delegation was very itinerant, with screenings, discussions and meetings in five towns and cities, the Jordan chapter took place entirely in Amman, with the bulk of the activities devoted to workshops led by Marshall and me, along with nightly screenings at the Royal Film Commission.

Screenings

And while we screened Marshall’s Street Fight five times in Israel, we screened it only once in its entirety in Jordan—as the opening night film of a five-night series at the Royal Film Commission’s outdoor amphitheatre, which afforded a spectacular view of the city. The attendees were both local Jordanians and American expatriates, and I led post-screening discussions each night. Other films that were screened included Project Kashmir, FLOW: For Love Of Water, The Hobart Shakespearians and The Betrayal. Some discussions were easier to maintain at a lively level than others. Marshall’s presence at the post-Street Fight helped keep the dialogue going about the American political system, point of view, making one’s first film, and taking on all the filmmaking roles—producing, directing, shooting, editing, writing.

FLOW, which examines the water crisis around the world and how corporations may be part of the problem, while grassroots NGOs are proving part of the solution, was notable for its breadth in presenting case studies from around the world. Also notable about the film was the fact that the Middle East, and particularly Jordan, were not featured in the film, and Jordan is arguably feeling the water crisis most acutely. The discussion turned volatile when representatives of the Jordan Water Commission and of grassroots NGOs offered contrasting takes of what’s being done to address the situation; the NGO representative was decidedly pointed in his barbs directed at the government representatives. Another government representative asked me who funded the film and if it was an American propaganda piece. I deferred the political question to the Embassy representative and referred the funding question to the film’s website.

Screening Marshall Curry’s Street Fight at the Royal Film Commission of Amman Amphitheatre

We also screened The Hobart Shakespearians at the Amman National School, a well-regarded high school whose graduates typically go on to study in Canada, England, and more recently, the United States. Cultural Affairs Specialist Basma Amawi accompanied us from the US Embassy. Here we discussed what made the protagonist, Rafe Esquith, such an inspiring teacher, how he made a difference in the lives of his students. We also talked about Shakespeare, and how it resonated with the Amman students, and we discussed immigration in America and the state of the public school system. Marshall and I also discussed our respective careers, how we came to be doing what we’re doing now, and how what we learned in school still resonates today.

Over the course of the week, the US Embassy representatives in attendance included Jennifer Rasamimanana; Basma Amawi, Cultural Affairs Specialist; Daniel Ernst; Philip Frayne, Public Affairs Counselor; Ruba Matarneh, Cultural Affairs Specialist; Maria Olson, Public Affairs; and Shatha Al-Haj, Public Affairs.

Workshops

Given that we had six workshops on our docket for the week, Marshall and I spent a good deal of time when we arrived in Amman preparing material, working out a comprehensive structure of topics and clips to illustrate our points.

The first workshop was schedule at the SAE Institute, which offers vocational training in digital filmmaking, audio engineering, animation, multimedia and graphic design. Jennifer Rasamimanana, Cultural Affairs Officer, and Basma Amawi, Cultural Affairs Specialist, represented the US Embassy. I introduced the two-hour workshop with a quick précis about documentary and its sub-genres, then about the genesis of a specific documentary production—how it starts with an idea, but, with most vérité documentaries, there will be unexpected turns of events. Marshall proceeded to discuss how, with Street Fight, he had originally wanted to document a mayoral campaign, showing both candidates. When the incumbent mayor, Sharpe James, sent his team to intimidate Marshall, the filmmaker became part opf the story—and its narrator. After showing that particular scene, we screened the first three minutes of The Betrayal, which establish the voice and point of view, taking an episode from American history and personalizing it, making it the filmmaker/narrator’s story.

We also talked about interviewing, then cinematography, utilizing a scene of Project Kashmir, and editing, using the opening of Marshall’s most recent film Racing Dreams. We concluded a brief discussion about the business side of documentary making. This was a lot to cover in just two hours, but the workshop gave us an idea of what worked and what didn’t, and establish a rhythm and flow that would serve us through the rest of the workshops that week.

The major workshop for that week was at the Royal Film Commission, which had selected 12 young filmmakers for a three-day, three-hours-per-day workshop. Shatha Al-Haj, and Ruba Matarneh represented the US Embassy at the workshops. (As an aside, the Commission has been working with the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts in developing a cinematic culture; the Red Sea School of Cinema Arts in Aquba includes a number of USC alumni and teachers on the faculty.) The students were bright and open to learn, but we made it clear that we were here to learn from them as much as they sought to learn from us. We opened the workshop by asking everyone to introduce themselves, talk about their experience in documentary, why they like the form, and what project they’re working on now—and what they wanted to get out of the workshops. This approach gave us an idea of what to emphasize over the next three days.

The students represented a rich range of experiences and interests. Some had come from engineering, some from journalism, some from theater, and the subjects of their docs-in-progress ranged from stand-up comics in Jordan, to one’s relationship with his father, to the war in Gaza to the history of old Amman from the 1940s and ’50s.

With a good idea of how we wanted to structure the workshops—an improvisational structure, if you will--Marshall and I stated out talking about the idea and the story, preparedness and flexibility, bias and objectivity and trust and access. We showed different clips to illustrate and discuss different aspects of filmmaking, and we discussed the films that had been screened at the Commission the nights before.

Throughout the three days, we maintained a good balance of aesthetics, business, and legal and ethical issues. In the concluding hour of the concluding session, some of the students showed us clips from their work for our critique.

In a different workshop, we worked with representatives of NGOs, who had some experience making PSAs and short films. Daniel Ernst represented the US Embassy here. Marshall happened to have made a PSA for a nonprofit organization that had rebuilt a school in Jamaica. He showed the 12-minute film, then showed it again, breaking it down scene by scene, conveying to the workshop participants a sense of how documentary storytelling techniques can apply to a different sort of medium, that has a clear message and a specific purpose: to raise money. I then talked about two films in the Showcase—Made in LA and FLOW—and discussed how, as opposed to Marshall’s PSA, which was commissioned, those films were the brainchild of the respective filmmakers, who then forged partnerships with nonprofits and NGOs in helping to generate both interest and funding for the film. Made in LA, in particular, addresses many issues—immigration, women’s rights, labor—that many nonprofits embrace. The filmmakers have managed to turn an outreach campaign into a revenue producer.

The one workshop that did not succeed as well was with Jordanian TV, the government-sponsored television entity. We had been warned by many people—especially Jordanians--about the deficient quality of Jordanian TV, and given that, I wasn’t sure if a three-hour workshop would be sufficient even as a primer to documentary filmmaking. When we asked the 12 participants to introduce themselves, several said that they didn’t know why they were there. Marshall and I attempted to present our workshop, but we were constantly interrupted by questions about irrelevant or arcane subjects. At one point in the process, the participants argued among themselves in Arabic about the quality of Jordanian TV; Shatha Al-Haj from the US Embassy tried to steer the conversation back to the workshop, but it took 30 minutes to do so. Whereas in other workshops, we would typically screen four or five clips, here we barely got to show one. We never really got into a flow or rhythm and the Jordanian TV representatives just didn’t seem interested in listening to us.

That one aberration aside, the workshops were a most fruitful experience for us; we learned a great deal about cinematic culture in Jordan—where it is right now, and where it wants to be.

Excursions and Final Thoughts

Aquba & Petra

We had a day off on Friday, and I flew down to Aquba, where Rebecca Flores, an American who is teaching at the Red School of Cinematic Arts, picked me up and together we drove to Petra, the spectacular ancient city that has attracted geologists, archaelogists, adventurers and tourists alike for nearly 200 years—although Pertra itself dates back to the Paleolithic Age. Many empires have since staked their claim on Petra, leaving their imprimaturs behind. Jordan itself is an amalgam of cultures and influences—Palestinians, Heshemites, Bedouuis, Iraqi refugees—in the middle one of the richest, oldest, most volatile regions in the world.

A special thanks goes to everyone in the Cultural Affairs divisions at the US Embassies in Israel and Jordan. Their professionalism, courtesy and grace made the delegation all the more enjoyable. The Workshops, screenings, meetings and lunches in both Jordan and Israel were invaluable in teaching us a great deal about issues, history and culture of the region. It is hoped that in the spirit of cultural diplomacy, we will have offered some wisdom, insight and advice as well.

Interview with Marshall Curry and Tom White

The Israeli Embassy presents an exclusive interview with award winning documentarian Marshall Curry and documentary film expert Tom White, in Israel as part of ECA's American Documentary Showcase to highlight American life and values. They visited cinemateques and film schools throughout the country during their week-long visit. This interview is the part of a series of YouTube-only series programming called Out and About (Uploaded: June 2, 2009)

Delegate Report

by Marshall Curry

Israel

Tel Aviv

During the Israel portion of the trip, we were based in Tel Aviv and took numerous trips to towns throughout the region. Some of the highlights are the following:

Sderot

We had a number of screenings at the cinematheque in the town of Sderot, which is just across the border from Gaza. Its location has made it the target of numerous rocket attacks from Gaza in recent years. We had been told in advance that the trauma of those attacks made the citizens less interested in documentaries than in escapist fiction films, and our screenings were unevenly populated. The audience members who did attend the screenings, however, seemed very engaged, and in the Q&A sessions that followed, there were lively discussions about the topic of each film as well as about filmmaking in general.

Jerusalem

In Jerusalem we screened Street Fight at Ma’aleh, a Jewish film school. I had questions about whether that film –– which focuses on extremely local issues (a dirty and racially charged mayoral election in Newark, NJ) would resonate with the students, but they laughed and shook their heads with outrage at all the right spots (the film had been translated into Hebrew). Afterward, two students approached me and said that the tension within the African-American community that is depicted in the film, reminded them of similar tension within the Israeli Jewish community. “I’m Sephardic,” one student said, “And I’m making a film about how, if you try to do well in school or become successful, people accuse you of ‘trying to be Ashkenazi.’ It’s just like in Newark, where if you are black and do well in school, people accuse you of ‘acting white.’” I guess it shows that no matter how small or monolithic a community might seem, people always seem to find a way to cut it in half and pit one side against the other.

In Tel Aviv, we had another screening at Minshar Visual Arts School and an interesting Q&A with the students about the craft and career of filmmaking.

When we first arrived in Israel, I had doubts about whether it was helpful to the goals of the United States to show a film like Street Fight, which shows a not-so-flattering example of American Democracy. I found, however, that people appreciated being presented with an honest portrayal of America –– warts and all –– that did not feel propagandistic. And that film –– as well as the other films that were part of the American Documentary Showcase –– encouraged them to examine their own systems, rather than feel reflexively defensive. After most screenings, in the Jewish and Arab communities, we were told that the campaign reminded viewers of their own local elections. Had the film been about how great American Democracy is, the audience would have probably been focused on debunking that idea. Instead, by airing America’s dirty laundry, it encouraged audiences to look critically at their own situations and discuss ways of improving they system.

I think the film also serves to set realistic expectations about the system that Winston Churchill described as “the worst form of government except for all of the others that have been tried.” During Q&As, I would point out that Democracy is imperfect, and that people are free to pick “bad” candidates. But Democracy also allows people to correct their mistakes when they discover them. I would give an update on the movie and explain that four years after the election in the film, the people of Newark elected Cory Booker in the biggest landslide in the history of the city, and Sharpe James is now in federal prison for corruption.

Jordan

Amman

In Jordan, we had a number of screenings and the discussions were equally engaged. Films that directly touched on local issues received particularly spirited responses. For example, FLOW: For Love of Water, prompted a debate after its screening, because Jordan suffers from a dire water shortage.

In Jordan, Tom and I led a number of workshops as well that focused on the craft of filmmaking. Two of these were particularly effective, I think. One, on making media with a message for NGOs, and another, on documentary filmmaking with students at the Royal Film Commission, focused on the nuts and bolts of finding topics, building stories, and working with interview subjects, etc., and seemed very productive. The workshop with staff from Jordanian Television was less productive, primarily because the people in attendance had not elected to attend, but had been told by their bosses that they had to be present, and so were not very interested in the topic.

Conclusions

Across the board, the staffs at the U.S. Embassies in both countries were extremely supportive and hard working, and did a great job of putting the program together and facilitating the events. Overall, I found the Showcase to be very interesting and worthwhile.