Licensing
Photo copyright by Miki Kratsman
The Concrete Curtain
Documentary, 76 minutes
Year of production: 2004
Director: Benny Brunner
Produced by: Alexandra Jansse, Benny Brunner
A Xela Films production in association with LASSO Film & TV Production
Versions: English
On Sunday, January 11, 2004, Israel
began drawing a hard line around Jerusalem by walling it off from Abu Dis, an
Arab village joined to the city for generations. Only a 10-15 minute drive from
the city center, towers of concrete slab now divide Abu Dis, keeping part of it
on the Jerusalem side and separating neighbors and relatives who live just
blocks or even a street apart. Among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
affected by it, is also a former Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, who
lives in Abu Dis only a couple of blocks from the ugly concrete slabs of the
wall.
The
film documents the daily routine of two Palestinian middle class families who
live under the shadow of the wall in the greater Jerusalem area; one family on
the Israeli side, the other on the Palestinian side.
Israeli
journalist Gideon Levy, describes the daily scenes along the wall in an article
in Haaretz newspaper: “…thousands of school children waiting every morning,
in all weather, for the IDF or Border Police jeep to arrive and open the gate
for them on their way to school, the farmers cut off from their fields, the
patients kept away from their clinics, the villages locked and bolted and the
sight of a town behind barbed wire... After the settlements, the collective
punishment and the closure policy, the fence is the next penalty to be forced on
the Palestinians.”
For licensing and more information please contact:
Björn Jensen
email: jensen(at)gingerfoot.de
© 2004 by Alexandra Jansse and Benny Brunner
