Promises

Jon Silpayamanant

September 18, 2008 by Jon Silpayamanant

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Last Night, the wife and I watched 'Promises', a film by Justine Shapiro, B.Z. Goldberg, and Carlos Bolado, is a bbeautiful look at how seven Children in the West Bank view the world and each other.

In some ways their stories were sad, and some of the hatreds the various children hold towards each other's ethnic groups make any hope of peace seem doomed from the start. In other ways, seeing how some of the children do have some hope makes the viewer realize that maybe with some early "interventionist" type of education there might be a way to peace.

I don't really want to give away much, as this is a film that should been heard and seen for itself as it seems that alot of people in the US don't really listen to children. Reading Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer Prize winning feature about Joshua Bell's busking experiment and how Children were consistently the only group that wanted to stop and listen to Bell shows us how that sentiment isn't necessarily shared by children.

Especially compelling, and something that personally resonates with most of my current activities, is Sanabel Al-Fararja's (A Palestinian refugee girl in the Deheishe Refugee Camp) desire to use Palestinian folk dance as a way to educate people about her own culture.

Below is the summary from the film's website.

Program Summary

PROMISES follows the journey of one of the filmmakers, Israeli-American B.Z. Goldberg. B.Z. travels to a Palestinian refugee camp and to an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, and to the more familiar neighborhoods of Jerusalem where he meets seven Palestinian and Israeli children.

Though the children live only 20 minutes apart, they exist in completely separate worlds; the physical, historical and emotional obstacles between them run deep.

PROMISES explores the nature of these boundaries and tells the story of a few children who dared to cross the lines to meet their neighbors. Rather than focusing on political events, the seven children featured in PROMISES offer a refreshing, human and sometimes humorous portrait of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

PROMISES, a film by Justine Shapiro, B.Z. Goldberg and co-director and editor Carlos Bolado, was shot between 1995-2000.

Running time, 106 minutes. Arabic, Hebrew and English dialogue with English subtitles.

Trailer

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Related Links

Promises Website

Promises PBS page

Posted in groups: Movies

Forum: Movies

Tags: 

Film, movies, documentary, english, Israel, Arabic, Palestine, Promises, Justine Shapiro, B.Z. Goldberg, Carlos Bolado, Hebrew, Sanabel Al-Fararja, Palestinian Folk Dance

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