Five Broken Camera’s was a brilliantly done documentary highlighting one small village in Palestine’s fight to keep their land from the greedy Israelites. The journalist who filmed the documentary is an everyday citizen of this town who goes through 5 video cameras as he captures the life and death of his fellow peace-makers. The Palestinian’s choose to fight the battle for land with peaceful protests and the Israelites choose differently. The film opens one’s eyes to a world of unrest. It is especially striking to follow Emad, the filmmaker’s son Gibreel from his birth to his 5th Birthday. Emad does not shy away from taking his son to see the fighting and protesting, because this is his reality. In fact Emad says a line that has stuck with me since I saw the film, where he says, “The only protection I can give him [my son] is allowing him to see it with his own eyes.” From an American perspective looking in, it seems horrendous to take your son to a place where people are dying and bombs are being unloaded, but this film opened my eyes to an opposite perspective—to see this first hand is survival.
I loved how the film was framed by the broken cameras; I thought that was creative and compelling. I was drawn in and in the true form of a documentary; I left having learned something and having been entertained. I believe this film exemplifies why the film category of documentary exists, to open our eyes to new cultures and ideas.
