Palestine Her Story Documentary

A Documentary Filmmaking Experience Aim and Accomplishment Renov (1993) states that there are four fundamental purposes of a documentary: “1) to record, reveal, or preserve; 2) to persuade or promote; 3) to analyze or interrogate; and 4) to express” (p. 21). In my documentary, Palestine, her story, my aim was to observe—i.e., to record, reveal and preserve—the stories of the Palestinian women who served as the subject of my film. The film is therefore an observational documentary.

Looking back on my original proposal, I can say that I have completed at least a portion of my original project. The focus of my 20-minute film is on the three Palestinian women who live a successful life in London. Each woman is of a different generation and thus each one has a different experience to share, a different story to tell. Yet they also have one thing in common, which is Palestine.

The films focuses on this connection and shows how, while all of the women have been successful and now live in London, their consciousness burns with devotion towards Palestine. In terms of my original proposal End of Diaspora, this 20-minute documentary serves as one section of the larger story that I envisioned. In terms of Renov’s (1993) theory of what a documentary should do, Palestine, her story, achieves the first purpose—but still with the rest of my proposal I envisioned accomplishing the other three purposes as well.

My film opens with Laila al Shawa, an artist born in Gaza-Palestine in 1940. Laila describes her background, her travels, and her profession briefly. She is from the oldest generation of women featured in the documentary. She speaks English well but has a strong accent. The film then introduces the next generation—a woman from Nablus, who is now editor-in-chief of Al Quds Newspaper, Sanaa Al Aloul. Sanaa speaks only Arabic.

Our third character is of the third generation, and her name is Judie Kalla: she is the youngest of the three and is a chef and author of the book (banned in Israel) Palestine on a Plate. Judie speaks with an English accent. She has never visited Palestine, but has a deep, personal love for the place, the people and the culture because of her family ties and the fact that members of her family are still there.

She recreates the image and experience of being in Palestine through her cooking as well as through her writing. At the beginning of the project my aim was to focus on journalists, using different genres of documentary filmmaking to tell their stories. I wanted to focus on individuals who left their homeland to become the successful journalists they are today despite their challenging journey. However, after researching my subject more, I came across the name Laila Shawa—the artist in the current film.

Her story inspired me to shift my focus away from journalists and to broaden it to include the success stories of all sorts of individuals connected to Palestine and to show how each character is united to Palestine in his or her own way. During my meetings with Laila, however, I realised that there is an underrepresentation of women in the Palestinian. I began narrowing my focus to include specifically Palestinian women living and working successfully in London.

I felt that this kind of focus would not only help to humanize the face of Palestine but also make it more immediate for the viewer.

Instead of seeing grainy, muddy images of conflict in Gaza, I could show real women of Palestine living among us, sharing their experiences, feelings, stories, and in doing so could show to the viewer that this issue is not confined to a narrow strip of land in the Middle East where people live in hovels but rather that it is a conflict that touches many lives of many different backgrounds.

For that reason, the documentary focuses on (a) a quirky artist in her 70s, (b) a serious journalist in her 50s, and (c) a cook in her 40s. They are all very different from one another yet all share one thing in common—a love for their homeland.

As my initial aim was to highlight the successes that Palestenians have achieved far away from their home, I have accomplished my task in this sense, and by allowing my interviewees to tell their stories in their own words, I have enabled these Palestinian women to use their voice and draw attention to the Palestinian cause.

Originally, I had in mind making a contemporary, hybrid documentary, with the narrative unfolding through the dual use of an observational style of filmmaking and a performative element to allow for a poetic effect to be produced. I wanted to include concise discussions with my subjects on their views about the occupation and its effects on Palestinians, using both interviews and a studied observation of their present life state.

However, as the focus shifted, I discovered an alternative way to tell this story—and, in fact, a different sort of story to tell overall. I was still able to include interlude sequences of archival material (both from the characters collections of childhood and experiences, and from archives of Palestine and the catastrophe). The nostalgia felt by each character was revealed through these impressionistic sequences as if they reflected the characters’ internal reminiscences. So I was happy to be able to achieve this aim.

Weaknesses, Strengths and Methods Weaknesses Lighting, style and atmosphere are areas where I had hoped for greater consistency. I wanted the interviews to all be shot in the same style of lighting and with a similar kind of atmosphere but failed to achieve this effect because of limited time and restrictions on locations.

I also wanted to obtain better quality archives of Palestine and London during the Nakba, with footage of refugees fleeing the country so that the viewer could understand the history more viscerally, but I only managed to use a small amount of footage for copyright reasons but also because this footage is hard to find. Poor quality of lighting in Layla’s house marred this section, I felt, and again the primary culprit was due to a limited amount of time to set up and spatial restrictions.

I had to do all the set-up alone. Finally, it was very difficult to fit all the material I wanted to fit into 20 minutes. I had to compromise a lot of scenes which made me choose maybe the best lines instead of what matched the story. A lot of interesting tidbits were left on the cutting room floor, so to speak—and I feel that the stories of these three women could really be fleshed out into a feature length film because there is simply so much to tell.

I also wanted to rely on less interview footage and use more footage of their daily personal lives, which this draft lacked and—what I aim to do with the film afterwards is to include more of these “daily life” shots. Strengths The overall narrative is the documentary’s strongest point: it is a good story to tell and the documentary is structured smoothly and evenly so that each of the three characters has equal or ample time to tell their stories.

The film worked without narration, which is what I hoped to achieve, for I envisioned the characters telling their stories in their own words. The use of archival material from Layla’s childhood as well as home cutaways made the visual experience of the film rich and romantic. I wanted the film to be personal and not so political, and I was able to achieve that effect by choosing the right questions and getting to know the subjects.

I built a good relationship with my subjects beforehand and was able to guide the interviews in such a way that the personal stories came naturally to the fore. Judie’s house for lighting and space was perfect and I really felt that this was the best location for interviewing. The environment also reflected the last generation and her character well. All in all I would have loved to have similarly-styled interviews.

Methods I had in mind a series of interviews similar to what one might find on a TV series—very clean vignette and minimal props with smooth tracking shots entering the characters lives followed by cutaways to old archives to reinforce visually the details of the story—something like the documentary series Wild Wild Country on Netflix. I felt that I was able to achieve this goal somewhat satisfactorily.

I achieved at least a kind of balance between the beautiful and the factual, and that’s really what I wanted to accomplish—even if at the end of the day lighting issues frustrated me. At the same time, I think I gave more justice to my characters by putting each one in their own environment depending on what they do. This actually ended up being a strength, the more I reflected on it.

Rather than a uniform interview style saturating the film, each individual essentially brought her own environment to the film. The clutter and grainy yellowish close-up angles of Layla’s scenes reflect her whole life experience and also the fact that she didn’t really want to move anything, saying, “You’re making a film about my personal space and that’s how it really is so keep it as it is”—which was a sentiment I really found beautiful and quite touching.

In my feature-length film, I would like to include more touches like this. With Sanaa Alouls, I used very plain medium shots in her office at the desk with the newspaper and a cup of coffee and the neon light—all of which I felt reflected exactly how she lives. Then I jumped to Judie Kalla’s Chelsea house with her dogs and her food-filled kitchen and colourful lit space: I felt this is who Judie really is.

I was very happy, in the end, to have such diverse spaces to show in one film. Feedback Feedback I received from those who viewed the final project was positive. Everyone felt that the stories told by the three were particularly effective at producing sympathy for the Palestinian plight. I also heard that the style was appropriate and that the editing was even and flowing. I did not receive any negative feedback, which made me realize that the small faults that I noticed were not really noticeable to others.

Influences Reading, Viewing, and Practice Films. By watching a lot of documentaries and also non-documentaries, I obtained insight in regards to my own cinematic tastes and how I wanted my film to be formed. A major cinematic influence was the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country. I really enjoyed the style, narrative and visuals of that series and felt that the cinematography was exactly what I had in mind for my film.

Visually stunning with the natural poetry of environments speaking for themselves and reinforcing the stories of the subjects was precisely what I hoped to achieve and Wild Wild Country really gave me a sense of how it can be accomplished.

The Act of Killing was another one of the biggest influences on me: its use of beautiful shots and the complete honesty of the story-telling, with everything told on camera, challenged me to not be scared of confronting my own characters and getting my interviewees to discuss intimately their stories and experiences so that my viewer could feel immersed in their world.

The Act of Killing also showed how important good cinematography is for a good narrative and that it is acceptable to recreate scenes from history in order to drive home the visceral point. For me, I love the mix of a film having both a documentary feel as well as a dramatic feel. The Act of Killing is also a genre type that is similar to mine: a film that is focused on raising awareness to what may be a forgotten cause to many viewers.

Raising awareness about the plight of Palestinians is obviously my aim for my own film. I also found that The Act of Killing really gave me a sense of how important it is to include archival footage whenever possible. Had I more time and more resources, I would definitely try to include more such footage in my own film. Readings. As for readings, Bernard’s (2010) Documentary Storytelling: Making Stronger and More Dramatic Nonfiction Films was influential.

Bernard (2010) explained the importance of combining exposition with a narrative spine, an arc, plot, character, and drama in order to tell a good story. The fact that this basic approach to storytelling is as old as history itself, with the Western concept of storytelling defined by Aristotle so many years ago shows that this is a working formula. I found this explanation to be very helpful in developing my own ideas of how to tell a story with the information I obtained from my research and my interviews.

Another reading that I found helpful was Creative Documentary by De Jong, Knudsen and Rothwell (2013). What I especially liked about this book was the concept of “learning to move in the world” (p. 6) by using both thinking and feeling to develop a creative documentary (De Jong et al., 2013). This book provided insight into how documentarians of the past have applied themselves in film and how modern Practice Doing my previous documentary A Man called Alex, I learned a lot on the style I wished to achieve.

In that film, I went for the interactive expository style of filmmaking. Through my practice using sound equipment I understood more about the best choices for microphones to use and the importance of audio—which were elements I never paid that much attention to before. So that practice really helped me to prepare for this film, especially when it came to recording my subjects. Editing was another area where practice helped.

This film was a majorly significant jump for me, and I am glad to have learned from my classmates and through my workshops. I now feel confident in creating my own film, in editing scenes together, and in creating a well-balanced final project. Likewise, the weekly exercises with Dr. Piotr Cieplak were extremely helpful. I learned a great deal about lighting through these exercises as well as new ideas about forming a narrative through limited angles/time and objects.

Using the camera as a frame for telling a story was a fascinating idea that was full of possibilities the more I reflected on it. I tried to implement this learning in my film and feel that I was able to tell a lot of simultaneous stories at once just by including certain details of the environment within my shot. Other Films and My Project I find that documentaries by Ken Burns are the right balance of archival footage, narration, interviews, and storytelling.

I wanted to produce a film that did not rely on voice over narration the way the Burns’ documentaries do, but I did want to include aspects of his films’ style, like Prohibition, into my own. For instance, Prohibition uses a lot of archival footage—especially pictures, and blends these with voice over narration. I realized I could combine the story telling as provided by my interviewees with this visual style of placing the voice over narration overtop of the old pictures.

In terms of genre, my film is really a film about raising awareness about a social issue—but it is also meant to be an immersive experience. I did not want to simply tell the facts as though my film were a text book. I wanted the personal experiences of these individuals to speak for themselves. I wanted their surroundings to tell their story as much as their words. I wanted their old pictures and old newsreel footage to help tell the story as well.

One documentary that I feel motivated me to want mine to be experiential was Ron Fricke’s (1992) Baraka. There is no real narrative in this film; instead, the filmmaker edits together hundreds of visually stimulating scenes and creates an abstract tapestry of visceral information that the viewer experiences. The film creates a feeling in the viewer of human society, the human character, our relationship with the world, and so on.

At one point, Fricke shows a monk walking down a busy street: the monk is going very slowly and carefully, walking in a straight line as though he does not see anyone or anything else around him. All his focus and attention is on that one line he is walking. Everyone else on the sidewalk is jostling one another and jockeying for position. The contrast was especially moving for me when I saw this scene.

I wanted to make my documentary with this kind of attention to subtle detail, and in my shots, I feel that the interviewees’ surroundings help to tell their stories, just like the environments depicted by Fricke helped to shape his narrative. Engaging with Truthfulness and Other Documentary Practices My project engages with key questions raised by issues by documentary practice, such as claims to truthfulness and authenticity, representation, authorship, voyeurism, ethics, relationship to the subjects, the use of fictive devices, and the use of digital technology in numerous ways.

First of all, I cut together archival footage to underscore the.