COMMON STATE: POTENTIAL CONVERSATION [1]
Eyal Sivan (Israel 2012, 123 min.)
Whereas the vision or the so-called solution of « two people – two States » in Palestine-Israel is dying a slow death, in the face of apocalyptical visions, an escalation of racism and an ongoing colonization and permanent repression on the part of Israel, Common State, A Potential Conversation, Eyal Sivan's new documentary film, shows a cinematographical encounter between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews.
Twenty interviews were carried out on the theme of the common state with politicians and settlers, legal experts and artists, older and younger people, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, Palestinian Arabs in Israel and in the occupied territories. The interviewees respond to the same questions in their mother tongue in discussion with the director, and the screen is split into two, with an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian in parallel, one listening and one talking and vice versa, thereby enacting a meeting point between two realities that are fragmented and separated from each other in daily life.
Available from:
http://dafilms.com/search/?q=common+state%3A+potential+conversation
Whereas the vision or the so-called solution of « two people – two States » in Palestine-Israel is dying a slow death, in the face of apocalyptical visions, an escalation of racism and an ongoing colonization and permanent repression on the part of Israel, Common State, A Potential Conversation, Eyal Sivan's new documentary film, shows a cinematographical encounter between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews.
Twenty interviews were carried out on the theme of the common state with politicians and settlers, legal experts and artists, older and younger people, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, Palestinian Arabs in Israel and in the occupied territories. The interviewees respond to the same questions in their mother tongue in discussion with the director, and the screen is split into two, with an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian in parallel, one listening and one talking and vice versa, thereby enacting a meeting point between two realities that are fragmented and separated from each other in daily life.
Available from:
http://dafilms.com/search/?q=common+state%3A+potential+conversation
EYAL SIVAN'S Common State: Potential Conversation [1] constitutes a polyvocal and multilayered plea for Israeli-Palestinian co-existence based on dialogue, equality and mutual respect. Such common state or ‘Palsierstaienle’, as the short animated mix-up of letters of the words ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’ at the beginning of the film symbolically suggests, lies beyond the visible in the imaginative off-screen space that viewers/listeners, speakers/interviewees and filmmaker potentially share and co-produce. Formally, such triangulated co-creation of the ‘common’ is made possible by a clever use of the split screen, positioning Sivan’s partners in conversation along a middle line that effects distancing and differentiation as much as it encourages a ‘thickening’ of meaning and thinking across (artificially erected) barriers and borders – metaphorical and real ones.
Sivan’s interview partners – a mobile group of editors, journalists, essayists, politicians, political scientists, psychologists, lawyers and activists, of which some live in Israel-Palestine, others are part of the Palestinian diaspora or free to travel between Israel, Europe and the USA – are also positioned by the filmmaker in such a way as to tackle the complicated (geopolitical, historical, linguistic, psychological) questions regarding bi-nationalism, the concept of homeland, Israel’s legislative power and control over Palestine and its territories, annexation (Green Line, the wall), occupation, the right to return, for self-determination, etc. Their critical, informed and reflective comments, often stressing the impossibility of separation due to a common historical past and the many commonalities between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the present, makes it hard to believe that there is no mutually satisfying solution for the current conflict.
Common State reflects Sivan’s larger interest in creating a common narrative for Israel-Palestine, Palestinians and Israelis. In ‘Common Archive Palestine 1948’, another of his film/research projects, this concern becomes palpably as well. In an audio-visual online archive of the crimes of 1948, testimonies of Jewish executors are cross-referenced with those of Palestinian refugees, allowing both perpetrators and victims to co-write history differently and become involved in a critical discourse on war crimes, social traumas and new possibilities for future co-existence (http://eyalsivan.info; see also Sivan’s co-curated exhibition Towards a Common Archive, with Ilan Pappe and Debby Farber, http://zochrot.org/en/exhibition/towards-common-archive-video-testimonies-zionist-fighters-1948).
Brenda Hollweg
Sivan’s interview partners – a mobile group of editors, journalists, essayists, politicians, political scientists, psychologists, lawyers and activists, of which some live in Israel-Palestine, others are part of the Palestinian diaspora or free to travel between Israel, Europe and the USA – are also positioned by the filmmaker in such a way as to tackle the complicated (geopolitical, historical, linguistic, psychological) questions regarding bi-nationalism, the concept of homeland, Israel’s legislative power and control over Palestine and its territories, annexation (Green Line, the wall), occupation, the right to return, for self-determination, etc. Their critical, informed and reflective comments, often stressing the impossibility of separation due to a common historical past and the many commonalities between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the present, makes it hard to believe that there is no mutually satisfying solution for the current conflict.
Common State reflects Sivan’s larger interest in creating a common narrative for Israel-Palestine, Palestinians and Israelis. In ‘Common Archive Palestine 1948’, another of his film/research projects, this concern becomes palpably as well. In an audio-visual online archive of the crimes of 1948, testimonies of Jewish executors are cross-referenced with those of Palestinian refugees, allowing both perpetrators and victims to co-write history differently and become involved in a critical discourse on war crimes, social traumas and new possibilities for future co-existence (http://eyalsivan.info; see also Sivan’s co-curated exhibition Towards a Common Archive, with Ilan Pappe and Debby Farber, http://zochrot.org/en/exhibition/towards-common-archive-video-testimonies-zionist-fighters-1948).
Brenda Hollweg