In 2018, four documentaries about Gaza traveled widely in international film circuits—Gaza, Killing Gaza, Samouni Road, and The Apollo of Gaza. Each was made by non-Palestinian directors and received acclaim from an appreciative audience. Their timely appearance signals a growing interest within American and European cultural sectors in Gaza, as it sinks deeper into levels of “unlivable life.”Footnote 1 Each film challenges, to varying degrees, the story-telling expectations of conventional documentary, which tend to be structured around heroic characters and “neatly linked conflicts and resolutions”, so often chained to the “neoliberal logics of labor, self and capital” (Juhasz and Lebow).Footnote 2 But, of these four films Samouni Road and The Apollo of Gaza stand out for their striking creative interventions in the “storied narratives” of documentary, offering new ways to perceive and feel the situation of Gaza.
Gaza, by Gary Keane and Andrew McConnell, uses slow motion cinematography, haunting music, and an ensemble protagonist to convey the experience of an imprisoned population whose only outlet is a short distance of shoreline. Like other documentaries on the subject, characters converge in a general metaphor, one person's narrated segment leading to the other. They are frequently shown in contemplation of the sea, emphasizing the predicament of being trapped on a tiny piece of land, vulnerable to extreme Israeli military bombardment at any moment, while they aspire for freedom. Despite seeming to capture a vox populi rendered in a state of paralysis, economic impoverishment, and at a moment between the horrific war of 2014 and the March of Return of 2018, the film gestures towards its own limitations, namely its failure to reflect on causality and consequences, wherein some hope may lie. Its greatest strength is in the technical expertise of its portraiture, romanticized through lingering cinematography,
By contrast, Killing Gaza by Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen, is a horror noir with information overload. It examines the aftermath of the 2014 war in Gaza, focusing on people's stories of survival and their recovery efforts, with Blumenthal's narrating voice. Its shows the magnitude of destruction and the extreme conditions in which people are trapped, with borders closed on all sides. The cinematography captures the level of destruction—miles of desolated scorched landscape where once there were buildings and homes, under a beautiful sky, fringed by a captivating Mediterranean coast. Each neighborhood has its unique testimonials—Shuja'ya's most ferocious fighting, Khuza'a's gruesome atrocities, the outskirts of Rafah that were the first to be attacked by Israeli forces. We hear how people survived, who they lost, how they endure. The heaviness of this subject is somewhat alleviated by animated sequences that simplify and make more palatable horrifying scenes of bombings and murder. In scenes shot months later viewers learn that new life cannot endure exposure to the elements; and meet young artists waging cultural resistance in breakdancing, painting, and poetry, while other youth participate in demonstrations predating the March of Return that began in March 2018. Despite its craftsmanship and this effort at creativity, Killing Gaza offers nothing new to the subject, nor the medium.
Samouni Road, however, takes us into uncharted waters by combining scratchboard animation, drone footage, and enhancements of previously recorded video footage with an observational style of shooting, to recount the story of the Samouni family who lost 29 relatives during the 2009 “Operation Cast Lead” bombing in the Zeytoun district of Gaza City. Shot in 2009–10, it loosely follows Amal Samouni, a girl of ten years, who one year after the war can't or won't tell her story when asked, but little bits slip out in the course of filming her. In the beginning she describes the giant Sycamore tree that used to stand in the center of the space where we meet her, now an empty lot. Soon after, she sits at the base of a baby lemon tree in the dirt, smelling its leaves, and tells us, “I was here with my brother Ahmed and my father, may they rest in peace, then the war came.” This cues us to anticipate a story about the war at the very least, but consistent with this cue, we enter into a perspective aligned with the stories of children, who remain the principal focus for much of the film.
The animated sequences are sometimes departures into a visualized child's world-view connected to Amal, who we soon learn has shrapnel in her brain from the bombing. At one point we see a tank-like elephant thunder through the street to uproot the beloved Sycamore, wrenching it from the earth in fury. Later, it reappears after we've seen the bombing of the Samouni home and mosque – in this second instance it is defeated by birds hurling stones, summoning the Quranic verse about Ababil (birds) who threw stones of clay on the elephant-mounted army descending on the kaba. This implies that the oppressor will one day be defeated and the home saved, at least in a child's view, where there may be more room for hope.
The scratchboard process also suggests an analog to what we undergo to understand what happened to this family—a technique that involves scraping with sharp object through a layer of black ink to expose white clay beneath—digging for the truth.Footnote 3 It mirrors the investigative process of a documentary but resists narrative closure. Rather than focusing on people's trauma, which is re-experienced in the process of recounting, the animation offers a creative and critical distance. It unlocks us from the space and time of live action documentation and critically engages us by highlighting the unrepresentability of the nakba as an ongoing trauma, an aporia, or irresolute experienceFootnote 4 that lies beyond documentary's frontier, or the borders of conventional documentary. But this creative articulation springs from factual origins: a closing credit tells us that the animated sequences and CGI renditions of military drone footage are based on testimonies of the Samouni family members, corroborated by those of Red Cross personnel and an internal inquiry of the Israeli army made public in 2010.
The longest animated sequence begins with the attack on the Samouni home on January 4, 2019, which resulted in the death of Amal's father, Talal Samouni, and her brother Ahmed, and extends to simulated drone footage documenting the bombing of a mosque where the family had taken shelter after their home was attacked. Following the animated drawings that narrate the mayhem from a point of view situated within the targeted group, we then have the reconstructed aerial point of view of the killer, who frames his target through cross-hairs, zooming in and out as he decides what to hone in on. The mechanical mediation of this footage is in contrast to the more intimate animation previously seen, and yet both are simulations. The mechanical point of view aims at the roof of the building the family has gathered in and the figures on top. There is a return to the scratchboard technique, which always narrates from the perspective of the family—women preparing bread at one spot while men hold pieces of wood to help the bread cool. We then return to the drone footage and hear the conversation between the IDF soldiers commanding the drone. The surveillance shows a time counter in the upper right corner, giving the date and times of the actual recording during Operation Cast Lead: January 5, 2009. The IDF assume that these men are fighters preparing a rocket launcher and bomb them. We see ghostly forms of humans scurrying inside the building and then there is a second bomb, and a third until the people inside are either injured or dead. Here we have the banal mechanical “observation” of drone footage technology contrasting with the violence it “documents.” This footage reduces everything to a ghostly negative—dehumanizing forms of life (as we see in the flocks of birds) —and when it zooms in on things, losing focus, not precise enough to save them, only precise enough to identify moving targets and ghostly forms. Yet there is a human behind the drone, which becomes apparent when the operator refuses to continue bombing the building after realizing they're shooting at civilians. The humanizing effect, however fleeting, suggests a possibility of morality, redemption, and another grain of hope.
Extracted from this sequence of destruction is Amal's miraculous survival. Initially thought to be dead, she was eventually identified by her brother as alive when the Red Crescent paramedics came to retrieve the injured. This story is recounted from different perspectives, Amal's brother and that of a paramedic, as if to corroborate the personal account. While the rescuing of the injured from this building takes place, we see through the lens of the aerial drone camera that zooms in, zooms out, and scans the area, showing tanks rumbling through the street. We see a donkey-less cart, the vehicle used by the Red Crescent to transport the injured, pulled by people. Paralleling the spatial scanning with zooms and pans, the narration recalls Amal's rescue from another angle and in greater detail. These multiple perspectives, both human and mechanical, arrive at the same conclusion, reinforcing the usefulness of evidentiary testimony in courts of law and in the persuasive objective of documentary film. This extended sequence of simulation, however, raises a question: do we believe the mechanical recording of the event more than the oral testimony?
The rest of the film returns to observational documentary, capturing the painful process of trying to return to normality and recover as much as possible after the devastation of Cast Lead. It captures the shock and suspension among the people, as well as the animals in their environment, all reduced to bare life. People speak as if the camera were not there, walking and sifting through the ruins of what once were standing buildings, suggesting a familiarity with being filmed that underscores the banality of surveillance and its normalization.
The film's conclusion flips to the wedding of cousins Faraj and Shifaa year later, but they're haunted by the reminder of those who are gone. From Amal's refusal, to the digestions of the adults on what all of this means and how they have become collateral in the conflict between Hamas, Fatteh, and Israel, Samouni Road forces us to feel a people who insist on continuing to live in dignity, through rituals of life and loss. Its formal structure allows space not only to contemplate Gaza's suffering but also the power of creativity that helps one endure, empathize, and imagine a better future.
The Apollo of Gaza has a very different subject, for which wars, occupation, and destruction are mere passages in the long march of time. It begins innocuously with a nighttime shot, tilting down from a church tower to a priest, Jean Baptiste Humbert, emerging from the darkness. The camera slowly follows him from a distance as he disappears behind a bush and re-appears behind a slide projector from which he projects an image of the head of the statue of Apollo on the tower. This opening encapsulates the enigma at the heart of the story, which, much like cinema, is ultimately about harnessing people's desire to believe, more than affirming the origins and materiality of the projection. Filmmaker Nicolas Wadimoff sets out to discover what became of a bronze statue of the Greek God Apollo, which was discovered in 2013 by a fisherman in the waters near Deir Al Balah, in the center of Gaza. According to Gazan historian Waleed Al Aqqad, whom we soon meet, the statue dates back to the Hellenistic period, around 332 BC, and weighs around 750 kilograms. Wadimoff meets with several people along the way, each with a different expertise, all of whom directly and indirectly affirm that the Apollo is now in the custody of Hamas, Gaza's governing body. Most of them profess interest in the statue's historical value. Some express differing views about how it appeared in Gaza, whether it lived in the sea for millennia, or spent a short time there as a result of a thwarted clandestine operation to transport it from Egypt through the tunnels and sell it. Wadimoff circles between Jerusalem and Gaza, science and myth, rumor and fact, but the mystery surrounding the statue exposes a deeper struggle and commitment over who controls the narrative.
The film engages not only questions surrounding the origins of the statue, which cannot be verified completely without the archeologists being able to see and restore it, but also concerns itself with the contrasting stories of what happened after it was discovered and how it disappeared. It thus bursts open the concept of story itself, that, similar to Citizen Kane and Rashoman, tells us much more about the storytellers than about any conclusive truth.
Father Humbert, who is also an archeologist at the French Biblical and Archeological School in Jerusalem, has not been able to enter Gaza since 2014, and thus has not been able to see the statue beyond photographs, but he advises Wadimoff to find out how it was discovered, who discovered it, and where it went. The film returns several times to Humbert, the main expert in Jerusalem, and to several people in Gaza: Waleed Al Aqqad, the director of Al-Aqqad Museum; Nafez Abed, identified as “Sculptor Copyist” in Al Shati Camp near Rafah; Jawdat Khoudary, “entrepreneur and collector of archeological relics”; Hayem El-Bitar, archeologist with the Ministry of Antiquities; Jawdat Abu-Ghurab, the fisherman who found the Apollo; Sofiane, his jeweler cousin who kept the statue for “safekeeping” and from whom it was confiscated; Fadel El Otol who works restoring relics at the Gaza branch of the French Biblical and Archeological School; and Archbishop of Saint Porphyrius Church in Gaza, Father Alexios.
We also meet Gil Chaya, a “reformed” Israeli smuggler who is convinced that the statue is a fake, and Tania Cohen-Uzzielli, curator at the Israeli Museum who would love to add the statue to the museum collection so they can have all the Greek gods in their possession. An additional outsider, Swiss archeologist Marc-Andre Haldimann, comes to Gaza to meet with Mohammad Khalla, Deputy Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, to discuss possibilities of restoring the bronze, which he is concerned will deteriorate quickly in the salty sea environment. Minister Khalla agrees that the statue should be restored but does not say when or how Haldimann can do this other than when the time is appropriate.
All these voices have an interest in the statue and describe their encounters with it as if it were a person. This underscores the need to own a piece of history about something other than war and aggression from Israel. In fact, the wars and siege on Gaza do not dominate the story. Here, the sea is not just an expanse of crushed hope, another prisoner to the occupation, but occasionally a giver of gifts. To Jawdat the fisherman and his cousin Sofiane, it's a ticket to a more materially abundant life. To other Palestinians interviewed, it is a critical part of Gaza's cultural heritage. Collector Jawdat Khoudary hopes that one day all of Gaza will be able to look at the statue and reclaim their past, thus imagining their future. Journalists Sami Abu Salem of the Wafaa news agency and Sami Ajrami of La Republicca, explain their prohibition from covering the story because the statue is rumored to be in the hands of the resistance, the military wing of Hamas. Ajrami further explains that to talk about military affairs is off limits, suggesting how even cultural heritage is vulnerable to the concerns of national security.
There is also the imagined voice of Apollo, accompanying shots of his underwater crypt, providing his own commentary on how he came to be there. His voice contrasts with the cheerful pragmatism of father Alexios, who advises Wadimoff to forget about the statue and focus on the reality of Gaza. Wadimoff leaves the last words for Khoudary, who sees in the story of Apollo a sign of what is inevitable and advises him to be patient. It is this patience that the Apollo statue represents, whose story precedes its arrival and remains unresolved. What the film “uncovers” is the refusal of narrative closure, both for the documentary project and for the archive. In respecting this refusal, Wadimoff has taken a position to believe in the future and the people of Gaza. We, as viewers, scholars, and filmmakers, would do well to keep that in our vision as a possibility too, to expand the storytelling modes of documentary, especially when it comes to the situation of an ever-resistant place.
All of these films are important texts to share with both undergraduate and graduate students in a range of disciplines, but Gaza and Killing Gaza should be contextualized by how they reproduce the problematic tendencies of ethnographic documentary. Samouni Road and The Apollo of Gaza, by contrast, teach and remind us of the creative storytelling powers of cinema that, when harnessed, offer new ways of reading documentary and understanding history.
