For the work of art entitled “From Ground Zero” plenty of praise shall fail to do justice. The Art is actually an anthology by over 22 Palestinian individuals who have been living under the brutal Israeli Occupation in Gaza. It spans a variety of genres such as short films, scripted dramas and hybrid forms that were created in the aftermath of World War 2. The majority of the films are only a few minutes long, which brings global accessibility.
Being directed and produced by Rashid Masharawi, this enthralling creation provides a unique perspective similar to other documentaries depicting Ukraine during the Russian Revolution. It remains focused on portraying the harsh reality that plenty of civilians had to endure during such a violent time in modern history, what it feels like to survive every day where violence felt like the norm and basic items such as food and water were out of reach. The invention of digital technology enabled civilians to create and preserve art during such difficult times, and this really is only one of many perspectives that “From Ground Zero” aims to shift.
The Israel-Palestine War: Caught in the Crossfire – Even though most of the footage is shot on iPhones, some of the professional filmmakers who were in Gaza, who were imprisoned there after October 2023, use high-end cameras and lenses. Some even go so far as to crop their footage to the broad and thin CinemaScope ratio to make a visual statement that, no matter everything they have been through, they are still making cinema, not just YouTube clips.
The conditions are not suitable for the development of in-depth plots as the story is concerned. Several sections depict the gathering of wood from the ruins of homes to make fires needed for cooking, boiling polluted water or simply for warmth during winters. There is an uninterrupted noise of Israeli drones overhead. Everybody has lost a number of family members. It is probably too little during the war to hope to record and edit five minutes of a documentary, starting every day from questions such as, “Was anybody from my family killed during the night?” or “Will there be something to eat today?” The majority of the short items are discrete and indeed more resemble a compilation of songs or a poetry chapbook with contributions from many authors on the same theme – in this instance, life in the ruins.
The physical experience of “Hell’s Heaven” by Karim Satoum can be formulated as a very powerful metaphor. Satoum portrays a unique character of a man who ends up with no memory of being zipped up in a sleeping bag inside of a tent, for which he was not even aware he entered into. He then vertically unzips it, strolls about throughout the day, and then later goes back to it for the night before zipping it back up again. In simpler terms, he does not seem to have been alive. Zaid Mamo’s “Everything is Okay’’ quite captures the narrative as well as Al Jazeera’s interview of an Egyptian crossdresser and comedian. In Gaza street performances, traditional Palestinian dress is accessorized dismissed in a single theatre-tailored dress, and Al Khuli states that Gaza could never turn out to be such a horrible place that would make an artist like him give up his passion entirely. His stage is the street and the relevance of the rubble serves as his backdrop.
When he prepares for the show, he puts on a demonstration of boiling water in a casserole set over a wooden fire, followed by ‘bathing’ in a tent.
A great many movies are about what education and self-development capabilities went missing when the open-air charnel house encompassing Gaza turned up. “The Teacher’ is Tamer Nijim’s attempt at documenting the harsh reality that surrounds a former educator named.. Alaa Najim explores the character’s own memories as he goes about parts of his old Gaza neighborhood while trying to get through his everyday life.
Ahmed Al Danaf’s ‘School Day’ tells the story of a young boy named Yahya who is somehow brave enough to look past the strange dystopia he was left in after the Israeli military killed his teacher. All he had left in this world was a single tent, still, the boy insisted of going to school, building a stronger case around an already grim one.
Meanwhile, Khamis Masharawi’s ‘Soft Skin’ depicts the tale of the children whose parents went missing during turmoil, or have entirely been left orphaned. Together, the children created their own stories and shot them on an iPhone mounted onto flimsy tripods. In order to feature the annihilation of a city block, Masha used cut-out cartoons that were later accompanied by audio clips. The film centers around a girl who, along with her brother, are given permanent markers to have their names drawn onto their arms as a way for their mother to find them in the frantic and chaotic times.
The short story “Flashback” by Islam El Zeriei is a narration that revolves around a girl named Farah Al Zerei, her destroyed house, her lost family, and the trauma that she went through. Islam on his part begins with Farah digging through her “go bag” that she and every other member of the family keeps in case they need to run away from sudden danger. Where Neda’a Abu Hasna’s “Out Of Frame” is centered on a painter who had just a couple of weeks prior the Israeli military bombed her university. She continues working on her graduate project.
In the essay “Sorry, Cinema”, Ahmed Hassouna laments that he is not able to fulfil his ambitions saying, “Sorry cinema, I have to lay the camera aside and join the others.” The final scene of “Sorry, Cinema” is pretty representative of what this collection is all about: it is an impressionistic montage of Hassouna together with the rest of the population of Gaza in one of the streets hustling towards some supplies which have been dropped from above with little parachutes attached. They’re all busy sprinting around. There is one guy who is riding a tiny cart dragged by a donkey. There are also a few service vehicles that pan into the shot but before long dissolve into the background, with many from among the throng gradually pulling back because they are unable to keep up. These include the boxes of foodstuffs, one of which has a block of flour which was smashed when it hit the dirt. But people still attempt to gather the leftovers. “You can see us picking up flour and sand,” says an unknown person. “We pick anything from the ground: we need to get food.”
There is bound to be a pervasive feeling of haste and incompleteness about the work called “From Ground Zero”. There is no maverick here.
When compared to the more overarching spectrum of the project, technical problems or stylistic defects seem rather irrelevant. I suppose a few things could be improved, but critiquing such a masterpiece feels the same as critiquing a letter written on a deathbed and questioning its gun powder level.
With respect to intertwining multiple individual stories, there is always an intuitive understanding that oh yes there are families that parallelly worked together as confirmed by recurring last names. Also, we never learn what happened to the people portrayed in the nonfiction segments or scripted segments. From another standpoint, this sort of thing does not appear to be bewildering, it is intended. Because of the sympathetic apparatus of cinema storytelling, we tend to believe that it is happening to us as well.
Everything has in between the components has in common is making art against all the odds to achieve personal satisfaction. The urge to create persists even in times of huge massacre. For all its horror and sadness, this is one of the most hopeful films I’ve ever seen.
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