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Israeli anti-war Oscar bid draws Arabs despite ban
Tue Feb 3, 2009 10:09am EST
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By Joseph Nasr
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - You can't see "Waltz with Bashir" legally in Lebanon but you can buy copies of the Oscar-nominated Israeli anti-war film in Beirut's Hamra district where director Ari Folman saw his life change 26 years ago.
"It's one of the greatest films I've ever seen," said Lokman Slim, an activist with Lebanon's UMAM organization which aims to preserve the country's memories of war by screening movies related to its decades of bloodshed.
"I feel jealous that those we should consider our enemies have the courage to revisit events in which they were involved, while we Lebanese are in an endless silence regarding our history."
"Waltz with Bashir" -- the title conveys Israel's alliance with Lebanon's Christian leader at the time, Bashir Gemayel -- mixes documentary and animation to depict the trauma of an Israeli invasion 26 years ago to expel Palestinian guerrillas.
The film ends with the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians by Israel's Lebanese Christian allies in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps of Beirut.
Against a narrative based on buried recollections of former brothers-in-arms, Folman shows war in the nightmarish colors of a comic book -- until the final moments when it shockingly culminates with actual footage of piles of dead bodies.
Some 600 Palestinian women, children and old people in Sabra and Shatila were slaughtered under the light of flares fired over Beirut by Folman's army unit, ordered to help the Christian Phalangist militia secure the camps.
Folman was a 19-year-old conscript at the time. His movie has won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film of 2008 and was nominated last month for an Oscar for 'best foreign film'
BANNED
In Lebanon, "Waltz" is banned under laws that forbid trade with Israel. But there is huge interest, said Monika Borgmann, who acquired a copy from a German distributor and organized a private screening in Beirut in January.
"I invited 30 people but they brought their friends with them and we ended up being around 90," said Borgmann, who heads UMAM. "When the film finished, people were very, very silent and when they went out, some had tears in their eyes."
Pirated DVD copies now sell for $2 each in Beirut's Hamra district, which features in the film as the site of fierce battles between Folman's army unit and Palestinian guerrillas.
Not everyone is pleased by how Folman tells the story.
"It only presents part of the truth, not the whole truth. It is as if the director is saying, 'We (Israelis) did not commit this crime, the Phalangists did,'" said Ziad Moussa, a retired teacher in the West Bank city of Ramallah where "Waltz with Bashir" was screened at the Franco-German cultural center.
But despite his reservations about Folman's depiction of service in Lebanon as an ordeal that left deep psychological scars, Moussa said the film was a "step in the right direction" to healing the bloody past between Israelis and Palestinians. Continued...
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