This past Wednesday night, members of the Duke and Durham community gathered in the university's Griffith Film Theater to watch two short films documenting the lives of everyday people in Iraq and Palestine.
Directed by James Longley, a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, the films were shown as part of the Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Visiting Filmmaker series. Longley will join Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, the series' namesake, for a public conversation about his films and current projects at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 29 at the Nasher Museum of Art.
"The Diamonstein-Spielvogel series focuses on documentary filmmakers with a global perspective," said Kirston Johnson, moving image archivist for Duke's Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. Launched in 2010*, the series aims to engage Duke students and faculty with filmmakers whose work addresses social, political, economic and cultural topics.
In a scene from the 21-minute documentary, "Sari's Mother," a fan spins from the ceiling simulating the military helicopters that break the silence over an Iraqi mother's clay home. She injects medicine into the foot of her son, Sari, who is suffering from HIV/AIDS contracted through a blood transfusion during Saddam Hussein's regime. The mother's hope for better healthcare under U.S. occupation is quickly squashed as she travels from hospital to hospital and then to a government agency, encountering only frustration and red tape.
"There is no difference," says the mother, Faten. "We no longer know who is our enemy and who is our friend."
The film won a Golden Gate Award and was nominated for a 2008 Academy Award.
Also shown Wednesday was Longley's "Gaza Strip," a film that follows what Longley described as the travails of Palestinian youth during the second Palestinian intifada when they encountered Israeli tanks, gunfire and gas canisters. Filmed in verite style without narration and with little explanation, the movie documents events following Ariel Sharon's 2001 victory as Israel's prime minister. Longley had traveled to the Gaza Strip that year with the intention of staying only two weeks.
"He threw away his return ticket and stayed three months, shooting 75 hours of film," said Johnson.
The event was co-sponsored by the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image and the Center for Documentary Studies.
* Correction: The article originally stated that the series began in 2008.