When his fourth son, Gibreel, entered the world in 2005, Emad Burnat mirrored doting fathers around the world by obtaining a video camera to record his offspring’s first days and further development. However, as a Palestinian olive farmer born, raised and now rearing his own family in the West Bank village of Bil’in amidst encroaching Israeli settlements, his camerawork also told another tale: the occupation of Palestinian territories by the mobilised Israeli army, and the corresponding fight by desperate, determined locals to retain their land, livelihood and community.
2013 Academy Award-nominated documentary 5 Broken Cameras compiles the footage from Burnat’s autobiographical chronicle, aptly named to commemorate the devices that didn’t survive his five years of shooting. Of course, other casualties fall victim to the conflict as the bombed, smashed and shot cameras continue to roll, with friends killed and imprisoned, peaceful farmers turning militant, protesters injured, and the innocence of hordes of watching children lost.
Burnat and Gibreel are included among those forever altered by the experience, as 5 Broken Cameras painfully but poignantly shows. The former’s instinctive compulsion to capture the repetitive carnage and chaos around him endangers his life and liberty, placing severe stress on his wife, yet still he perseveres. The latter grows from a baby to a boy as filming takes place and war rages in his backyard. Although little more than an infant, his outlook is clearly shaped by the impact of constant combat, with the lasting influence on his personality and politics to be played out in the coming decades.
As intimate as the eyewitness film proves, and as immersive in its eye-opening visuals, too, its intersection with the broader struggle between the Israelis and Palestinians is never lost, nor is the complexity and continuation of that battle. Indeed, 5 Broken Cameras recognises the harsh, harrowing truth of the conflict’s entrenchment in multiple generations of combatants, with its personal portrait offering perhaps the most compelling and challenging illustration of the embedded mindset – and all from the perspective of the other, often-unseen side of the barrier.
That difficult viewpoint is purposefully cultivated by the filmmakers, with Israeli peace activist Guy Davidi joining ad hoc journalist Burnat in assembling the footage into the final product. The moving, motivating result, while potentially controversial – provocative in its eschewing of facts, figures and objectivity in favour of the full first-person experience, and philosophical in its knowing narration – is stunning and shocking.
Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5
5 Broken Cameras (خمس كاميرات محطمة / מצלמות שבורות)
Director: Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
Occupied Palestinian Territory, 2011, 94 min
The Big Picture Film Festival, Sydney
27 February – 05 March
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