War veteran tackles Israel's 'collective amnesia'

[Scurrilous]

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" Israel's Ari Folman, in Cannes to premiere his fiercely anti-war animation "Waltz With Bashir," says his country is awash with ex-soldiers like himself who have repressed horrific memories of their time in the Israeli army.

"A world expert on post-trauma I interviewed in the film told me that in Israel there are thousands of walking bombs," he told AFP in an interview, saying the country was suffering from a "collective amnesia."

"People, ex-soldiers who can live their lives, nothing happening, everything's cool, but one day they could just burst out and you will never know what will happen," he said.

"Waltz With Bashir," the Cannes film festival's first ever fully-animated documentary, deals with repressed memories, the horrors of war and Israel's dubious role in a notorious 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees in a camp in Beirut.

The highly personal tale recounts Folman's quest to fill the holes in his memory of his stint as a 19-year-old conscript in Israel's army. It ends with him realising he was one of the many Israeli soldiers positioned around the camp but who did nothing to stop the massacre by a Christian militia."

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Israeli animation on Beirut massacre bids for top Cannes prize

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"Repressed memories, the horrors of war and Israel's dubious role in a notorious Beirut refugee camp massacre are the themes of the Cannes film festival's first ever fully-animated documentary.

"Waltz With Bashir," said Screen magazine in one of the first reviews, "could easily turn out to be one of the most powerful statements of this Cannes and will leave its mark forever on the ethics of war films in general."

Ari Folman's anti-war movie, in the running for the Palme d'Or top prize, is premiered here as Israel celebrates its 60th year of existence and its neighbour Lebanon hits yet another political crisis pushing it to the brink of civil war.

Opening with thumping rock music as snarling dogs hurtle through city streets, the highly personal tale recounts the director's quest to fill the holes in his memory of his stint as a 19-year-old conscript in Israel's army.

He was baffled by why he couldn't remember much of his role in Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and the 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israeli-backed Christian milita in the West Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

So Folman, a longtime documentary filmmaker in Israel, tracks down nine people who were either with him at the time or were involved in the events, and then slowly pieces together his own actions.

He then wrote a narrative script and got artists to transform the interviews into animation.

"There was no other way to do it," he told reporters here. "Otherwise it would have been pictures of middle-aged men going on about stories that happened 20 years ago."

The result is a visually and emotionally gripping tale that brings to life harrowing and sometimes surreal memories of death, guilt and regret."

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[stillcool]

1. "what's too painful to remember...

we simply choose to forget". and people think repressed memory isn't real...perhaps they've never had anything to repress...

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2. Animation tipped for Cannes glory

An animated documentary about a massacre in the Middle East is the current frontrunner to win the coveted Palme d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Waltz with Bashir is a daring and provocative attempt by director Ari Folman to bear witness to an atrocity committed during his stint in the Israeli army in 1982.

The invasion of Lebanon, codenamed Operation Peace for Galilee, was an attempt to occupy the country as far as the capital Beirut.

It ended in what many think of as the worst atrocity of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict, when at least 800 Palestinian civilians were massacred at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during Israel's invasion.

They were murdered by Lebanese Christian militiamen allied to Israel while the Israeli forces encircled the camps.

Folman was among them. His film is a personal journey with his own narration accompanied, unusually, by animated images.

The director says he had blanked the massacre from his memory until he started making the film.

BBC - read more

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3. Cannes film festival wraps with French triumph

French director Laurent Cantet's 'The Class' wind festival's Palme d'Or. Israel's 'Waltz With Bashir' goes unrecognized despite rave reviews

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3548046,00.html

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"Israeli director Ari Folman was left disappointed at the Cannes film festival, after his animated documentary Waltz With Bashir failed to win any of the festival's prizes, despite being favored by critics.

The movie was praised for its haunting retelling of a conscript's efforts to dig up buried memories of the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Beirut's refugee camps, but still went unrecognized.

Cannes goers hailed the first French victory at the Cannes film festival in 21 years, after the acclaimed classroom drama "Entre Les Murs" (The Class) won the Palme d'Or for best picture, late Sunday.night.

The Class is a naturalistic portrayal of a tough Parisian high school where a teacher battles to maintain discipline, and touches on hot issues in France such as overcrowded classes and immigrant youth, although the film is not overtly political."