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Checkpoint - Reviews

Video Librarian- March/April 2005

Israeli director Yoav Shamir captures the day-to-day indignities inflicted upon Palestinians in the occupied territories without frills or exaggeration in the extraordinarily simple but powerful (and sometimes grimly humorous) feature-length documentary Checkpoint . Featuring footage shot over a three-year period (from 2001 to 2003) at checkpoints situated throughout the region, the film shows soldiers and border police-some proudly cruel, but most bored and surly-treating men, women and children with almost casual contempt as they attempt to travel from town to town on foot or in vehicles. Shamir's sympathies are hardly difficult to discern: though the Israelis occasionally come across as hapless conscripts (some even plead for the cameraman to depict them in a good light), they more often appear to be needlessly unpleasant, and when one of them-in a rare direct address to the audience-dismisses the Palestinians as animals, the similarity to Nazi propaganda about the Jews is a shock. Add to this the repeated sequences of Palestinians treated in a brutally dismissive fashion-families routinely separated, children sent on their way weeping, young girls harasses-and one can't help but be roused to indignation. Checkpoint contains no narration, or even titles apart from indications of locale, but they're not necessary-the stark matter-of-factness of the film makes it a searing indictment of the occupation and its dehumanizing effect on both sides. Recommended.

Chicago Sun-Times- January 7, 2005

Four Stars. In this must-see, though maddening video, Israeli director Yoav Shamir videotapes Israeli soldiers humiliating Palestinians at checkpoints, rain or shine, day or night, summer or winter, it's the same dispiriting routine endured by commuters, busloads of school kids, truck drivers, college students, and ambulance loaded with patients and a man about to get married.

For two years Shamir documented incidents on roads near Jenin, Nablus , Hebron and Ramallah. “Go home,” orders a heavily armed Israeli guard.”How?” demands the man blocked from going there. Rarely is there closure to these encounters. The focus is interpersonal power rites, not Middle Eastern geopolitics writ large. Shamir's cinema-verite style omits any ideological or historical context outside the range of his lens and microphone.

“Film this,” urges a Palestinian man. “See what they do to us?” At another checkpoint, a soldier brags: “We're humans. They're animals,” and adds, “Let him film, what do I care?” Responding to a soldier concerned about how he will come off, Shamir asks: “How can I make you look good?”

A highlight of the 2003 Chicago International Film Festival, “Checkpoint begins with Israelis sarcastically telling Shamir it's time to “put on a show for the Palestinians,” and toward the end we see a fun snowball fight between Palestinians and Israelis. The director, who counts himself among “the sane minority, the moral left-wing” in Israel , deconstructs all this as “theater of the absurd” with no final curtain in sight.




Chicago Tribune- January 7, 2005

“Checkpoint,” a terrific new Israeli documentary opening for a weeklong run at Facets Cinematheque, takes us to ground zero in one of the world's main trouble spots: the occupied Palestinian territories in Bethlehem , Ramallah and elsewhere. Without any commentary or narration, using only the cold hard gaze of the camera and masterful editing by director Yoav Shamir and his team, this movie tells us more about what's happening there than piles of “learned” commentary and hours of cable news babble ever could.

Shamir shot his film over three years and, thanks to amazing cooperation by both the Israeli soldiers and the Palestinian civilians, her gives us a lucid, candid look at a troubling, painful, sometimes chillingly sunny situation: the seemingly arbitrary treatment of ordinary Palestinians passing in and out of the cities and towns, subject to curfew and refusal by the mostly young Israeli guards. The civilians are testy, the guards phlegmatic sometimes apologetic. The absurdities seem to mount, and the film climaxes with a protest and near uprising, which we know will be futile.

The key element in “Checkpoint” is the humanity it shows on both sides, trapped in a situation that's not of their making and mostly beyond their control. Shamir shows quiet sympathy for everyone here (a few boastful guards excepted) and you won't soon forget the would-be friendly attempts of one Israeli guard to get his photo taken with an angry Palestinian, the plaintive playing of “Amazing Grace” over one checkpoint or dozens of other small, human, telling moments. Of all Israeli films on this subject, this is the most unbiased and honest and also one of the most valuable.

 

 


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