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Angel for a New Place 185

This great question is most often absent in movies about political situations, which are not very good due to their lack of universal signification.
Immersed in the battle, they are primarily one-sided. You have films that
are for the Palestinians, against Israel, against Sharon, and sometimes
finally against the Jews, too: since Israel says that it is the Jewish state,
moving from hostility toward the state of Israel to hostility toward Jews
is an all-too-easy passage. Its the case not only for films about the Palestinian situation but for a great number of activist movies in general: they
are on one side.
Naturally, I know perfectly well that Udi is operating from a real and
radical point of view that is not at all objective or academic. However, the
movies importance is that in its situation it is searching for a way that is
understandable by all the agents of the situation and not merely by one
side. The movie believes in the possibility of finding something in the
situation that is a symbol of peace for everybody. It is not strictly from
the point of view of a militant Palestinian or only from the point of view
of a pacifist Jew. It is something more complexand as such it contains a
proposition for peace that results from a subjective engagement.
The conviction of the movie is that if we consider the situation from
the real point of view of a subjectivity, which is composed of loyalty, faithfulness, and awareness of the other, we can know that the people who
live in Palestine are something like the same as those who live in Israel.
Not the same in the particularity of religion and so onwe know perfectly well that they are different. If we see they are the same we can find
something in the situation that is neither the victory of one side against
the other side nor a sort of discussion or negotiation that would result in
something compromised and not radical.
The movie is concerned neither with victory nor defeatneither with
compromise without end nor continuation of war, but with the construction of a new place. As Palestine is not just a local situation but a symbol
for all humanity, it is the real destiny of the movie to propose something
like a new place to all people on earth. Its my final consideration that
the great stories of states, wars, and religion and the small stories of one
man, one woman, one Palestinian, one Jew, and so on, can have a sort of
common point in the future, which is precisely a new place both spiritual
and concrete.
I insist that this movie is really a very sensible, material movie, concerned about the colors of very sensible things, about the sea, women,
bodies, and the concrete qualities of speech. While it is not abstract,

alon15758_cl.indd 185

7/6/11 8:00 PM

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