I knew immediately from the above user comment (see comment by plypress) that this is probably an interesting film when the fanatics start frothing at the mouth, you know you have to see the film for yourself! Now I've seen it, and I think "Zero Degrees of Separation" is a fascinating glimpse into the bizarre society that is Israel. It's a courageous film that is actually very low-key in its approach. For example, the image of Flanders' wealthy British grandmother on a visit to Israel in 1950 (as a prelude to immigrating), standing in the desert in her leopard-skin coat and movie-star sunglasses, is surreal, in its way. Flanders knows that there is no need for commentary at moments like these. There are plenty of facts and figures in the film to support the filmmaker's contention that the creation of the State of Israel has been massively problematic on many levels, but with her humane and sympathetic eye, she strikes a delicate balance between fairly evoking the Zionists' dream and showing some of the harsh realities of the present in Israel realities which create misery and frustration for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
7 Reviews
Too Biased to be recommended
toothygrin22 June 2005
Warning: Spoilers
When considering this anti-Israeli film, please ask yourself what YOU would do if your borders were permeable to murderous bombers who broadcast they want to bomb as many civilians at a time as possible and who target buses & crowded public areas. Ask yourself how you as a guard would converse with Palestinians coming across the your border station, when you know that several of them plan to blow you up as they go through your crossing. Of course you would be tense and want direct answers supported by valid documentation before you let them in. As efficiently as possibly, you'd want to determine if they were likely to bomb your site so that you could try to neutralize them promptly. As a country, you'd want to peacefully prevent terrorists from coming in e.g. with a wall or other barrier, rather than violently killing them when they do breach the border.
Elle Flanders doesn't think this is reasonable because of the inconvenience and humiliation it imposes on incoming Palestinians.
Zero Degrees of Separation presents interesting-sounding material: interviews with a gay and a lesbian couple each having one mate Israeli and the other Palestinian Arab. The talking-heads documentary is punctuated by scratchy 1940's footage of the cineaste's grandparents' contemporaries including many WW2-displaced persons traveling around the Holy Land. In addition to interview dialogue, the director films Ezra (whose Arab lover Selim is eventually deported to the West Bank) in repeated checkpoint situations. We see him arguing with soldiers, handing them New Years greeting cards, then criticizing them for following their orders to screen travelers for potential bombers.
I am skeptical that Ezra & Selim are really partners. Ezra is much older than Selim and looks like his grandfather. More importantly, we never see them touching each other or even acting warmly or affectionately. I wonder if they are simply roommates with a "marriage of convenience."
The subject of the film is what the director claims are the bully tactics employed by Israel to maintain checkpoints on roads in the West Bank. The rigor of questioning at entry points to Israel is depicted as beyond that which is necessary. However the film never mentions that many suicide bombers have posed as pregnant women, patients in ambulances, etc. The separation fence was erected as a nonviolent barrier to suicide bombers. Here it is shown as nothing but an expensive overreaction that causes Palestinians great inconvenience.
Extremely one-sided opinions are put forth as if they were objective facts. Empathy abounds for the plight of Palestinians, but none for the Israelis who endure unpredictable acts of carnage. The subjects interviewed state that being violent is a logical consequence of growing up with occupation. Further, a lesbian Israeli Rape Crisis Center worker repeatedly asserts that occupation leads men to rape and assault women & that responsibility for all violence toward women in Israel and Palestine is the fault of Israel.
At least the lesbians act like a bona fide couple, kissing and touching each other, referring to their common bed. As I've already said, I am not so sure about the veracity of the male couple.
The stars blame the occupation for domestic violence. Never mentioned is the tradition of Honor Killing that continues in Palestine to this day. It also occurs in Lebanon, Jordan, etc. where the occupation does not exist. Neither do we hear how the penalty for suspected collaboration with Israel is Death.
Other serious omissions are that Israel is the only jurisdiction in the Middle East where Gay pride parades are organized and where there are LGBT community centers. Only in Israel is homosexuality legal and discrimination is illegal. The following may be spoiler: We never learn why Ezra did not join Selim who was deported to the West Bank. I think that a gay Jew living with a Palestinian in Ramallah would be mistreated to say the least.
American Palestinian Gays recently (2006) visited Jerusalem to commune with their Arab brethren, only to be badly beaten in an unprovoked hate crime causing them to quit E. Jerusalem and return to San Francisco. When questioned in San Francisco, the filmmaker openly says that she is biased, and that her film is intended to be so too.
Elle Flanders doesn't think this is reasonable because of the inconvenience and humiliation it imposes on incoming Palestinians.
Zero Degrees of Separation presents interesting-sounding material: interviews with a gay and a lesbian couple each having one mate Israeli and the other Palestinian Arab. The talking-heads documentary is punctuated by scratchy 1940's footage of the cineaste's grandparents' contemporaries including many WW2-displaced persons traveling around the Holy Land. In addition to interview dialogue, the director films Ezra (whose Arab lover Selim is eventually deported to the West Bank) in repeated checkpoint situations. We see him arguing with soldiers, handing them New Years greeting cards, then criticizing them for following their orders to screen travelers for potential bombers.
I am skeptical that Ezra & Selim are really partners. Ezra is much older than Selim and looks like his grandfather. More importantly, we never see them touching each other or even acting warmly or affectionately. I wonder if they are simply roommates with a "marriage of convenience."
The subject of the film is what the director claims are the bully tactics employed by Israel to maintain checkpoints on roads in the West Bank. The rigor of questioning at entry points to Israel is depicted as beyond that which is necessary. However the film never mentions that many suicide bombers have posed as pregnant women, patients in ambulances, etc. The separation fence was erected as a nonviolent barrier to suicide bombers. Here it is shown as nothing but an expensive overreaction that causes Palestinians great inconvenience.
Extremely one-sided opinions are put forth as if they were objective facts. Empathy abounds for the plight of Palestinians, but none for the Israelis who endure unpredictable acts of carnage. The subjects interviewed state that being violent is a logical consequence of growing up with occupation. Further, a lesbian Israeli Rape Crisis Center worker repeatedly asserts that occupation leads men to rape and assault women & that responsibility for all violence toward women in Israel and Palestine is the fault of Israel.
At least the lesbians act like a bona fide couple, kissing and touching each other, referring to their common bed. As I've already said, I am not so sure about the veracity of the male couple.
The stars blame the occupation for domestic violence. Never mentioned is the tradition of Honor Killing that continues in Palestine to this day. It also occurs in Lebanon, Jordan, etc. where the occupation does not exist. Neither do we hear how the penalty for suspected collaboration with Israel is Death.
Other serious omissions are that Israel is the only jurisdiction in the Middle East where Gay pride parades are organized and where there are LGBT community centers. Only in Israel is homosexuality legal and discrimination is illegal. The following may be spoiler: We never learn why Ezra did not join Selim who was deported to the West Bank. I think that a gay Jew living with a Palestinian in Ramallah would be mistreated to say the least.
American Palestinian Gays recently (2006) visited Jerusalem to commune with their Arab brethren, only to be badly beaten in an unprovoked hate crime causing them to quit E. Jerusalem and return to San Francisco. When questioned in San Francisco, the filmmaker openly says that she is biased, and that her film is intended to be so too.
The side of the story the US media doesn't tell
kevangelisti28 July 2006
Warning: Spoilers
This movie needed to be made to tell the other side of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, the side the media doesn't usually tell. I lived in Jordan for a year and traveled to Israel and had my eyes opened to the plight of the Palestinians. Nothing in this film came as a surprise to me and most of the conditions depicted I already knew about.
Sure the film is biased, and doesn't focus on terrorist attacks by Palestinian groups, but we get that in the news all the time. It also doesn't touch on the fact that homosexuality is forbidden in most (all?) Islamic countries. Since the film shows the Palestinian condition on a very personal level, it also leaves out some little tidbits like how Israel recruits Jewish people from other countries to come and populate the settlements that are on Palestinian land as a security tactic.
In this day and age it seems like it is considered anti-semitic to be against the actions of the Israeli government/military, so I am hoping the fact that this film was made by a Jewish person and had Jewish people as the main characters will help allow its message to be heard.
Sure the film is biased, and doesn't focus on terrorist attacks by Palestinian groups, but we get that in the news all the time. It also doesn't touch on the fact that homosexuality is forbidden in most (all?) Islamic countries. Since the film shows the Palestinian condition on a very personal level, it also leaves out some little tidbits like how Israel recruits Jewish people from other countries to come and populate the settlements that are on Palestinian land as a security tactic.
In this day and age it seems like it is considered anti-semitic to be against the actions of the Israeli government/military, so I am hoping the fact that this film was made by a Jewish person and had Jewish people as the main characters will help allow its message to be heard.
Slanted
plypress5 May 2006
This "documentary" was screened at the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival followed by a Q&A with the director/producer. From start to finish, it is a one-sided attack on Israel with accusations of land theft, racial discrimination, misogyny, discrimination against Bedouins, anti-homosexuality. The director intersperses grainy video which she says she inherited from her grandparents with her own footage. There is no documentation to back up the outrageous statements, half-truths and glaring omissions of historical background. The background music is jarring, as if to drive home the severity of her claims.
Ezra, the Israeli half of the gay couple, describes the discrimination he experienced of his Arab background by Ashkenazim (European) Jews. Israel is the world's most ethnically diverse country. Over 1,000,000 Arabs, Christians, Druze, Baha'is, Armenians, Vietnamese, Ghanese and other ethnic groups are among Israel's population, including Jews from Yemen, Ethiopia, India and Burma, many of whom were saved from persecution in Arab countries by airlifts. Instead of showing diversity, the director focused her camera on an obscure cult-like group of Jewish mystics.
We first see the separation wall from the ground up, instead of eye-level, making it appear much taller than it is, accompanied by the bold statement: "The Wall is twice the height of the Berlin Wall." According to Wikipedia, (April 2006), the Separation Barrier is about 95% fence and anti-automobile trench and only 5% wall. The film says nothing about flying bullets entering the kitchens of residents in apartment buildings of Jerusalem's neighborhoods which necessitated building a high wall in the first place. Nothing about the thousands of terrorist attacks thwarted by the barrier. In fact, the only mention of "suicide bombers" is from Samira, the Arab half of the lesbian couple.
If Israel is such a horrible country to live in, why don't Edit and Ezra request political asylum in any one of the 22 Arab countries surrounding Israel?
Ezra, the Israeli half of the gay couple, describes the discrimination he experienced of his Arab background by Ashkenazim (European) Jews. Israel is the world's most ethnically diverse country. Over 1,000,000 Arabs, Christians, Druze, Baha'is, Armenians, Vietnamese, Ghanese and other ethnic groups are among Israel's population, including Jews from Yemen, Ethiopia, India and Burma, many of whom were saved from persecution in Arab countries by airlifts. Instead of showing diversity, the director focused her camera on an obscure cult-like group of Jewish mystics.
We first see the separation wall from the ground up, instead of eye-level, making it appear much taller than it is, accompanied by the bold statement: "The Wall is twice the height of the Berlin Wall." According to Wikipedia, (April 2006), the Separation Barrier is about 95% fence and anti-automobile trench and only 5% wall. The film says nothing about flying bullets entering the kitchens of residents in apartment buildings of Jerusalem's neighborhoods which necessitated building a high wall in the first place. Nothing about the thousands of terrorist attacks thwarted by the barrier. In fact, the only mention of "suicide bombers" is from Samira, the Arab half of the lesbian couple.
If Israel is such a horrible country to live in, why don't Edit and Ezra request political asylum in any one of the 22 Arab countries surrounding Israel?
New Insights
silas109618 December 2006
Zero Degrees of Separation takes viewers into the most unique of circumstances through four individuals, all straddling an impossibly difficult cultural/political setting in which their relationships exist. The toll of occupation becomes vivid for those not familiar with the day to day life in this region. The film uses the relationships as a point of departure for insights into the country.
It has been remarked that the film is biased because it does not focus on bombings or the great ethnic diversity in Israel. Bombings are part of the climate in which the stories of these individuals take place. It is assumed one knows that. There are a multitude of references, direct or indirect to diversity. Ezra, the 50 year old plumber and partner of Selim, is mizarachim (Middle Eastern Jews, in his case originally from Iraq). Edit is originally from Argentina. And on it goes, as anyone who has been to Israel knows, it is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world, a nation of of immigrants.
For me, the film also underscores the nature of activism in such a country. It seems second nature. Governments and leaders are more readily acknowledged as fallible and that action and change lies in the hands of the people.
It has been remarked that the film is biased because it does not focus on bombings or the great ethnic diversity in Israel. Bombings are part of the climate in which the stories of these individuals take place. It is assumed one knows that. There are a multitude of references, direct or indirect to diversity. Ezra, the 50 year old plumber and partner of Selim, is mizarachim (Middle Eastern Jews, in his case originally from Iraq). Edit is originally from Argentina. And on it goes, as anyone who has been to Israel knows, it is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world, a nation of of immigrants.
For me, the film also underscores the nature of activism in such a country. It seems second nature. Governments and leaders are more readily acknowledged as fallible and that action and change lies in the hands of the people.
The other side
tonymann50008 October 2007
I thought the documentary was very well done. It's great that a documentary was done that showed the plight of the Palestinians. I read the review titled, "Too Biased to Recommend". I believe it was the Director's intention to not show or touch on a lot of stuff that we already know about like the honor killings, suicide bombings, etc. We constantly see Israeli side on the news, but never the Palestinian side.
The characters were great. Especially the Ezra and Selim. I believe they don't show much affection because they were brought up in a different environment.
Very well done film.
The characters were great. Especially the Ezra and Selim. I believe they don't show much affection because they were brought up in a different environment.
Very well done film.
A great film!
judealkhalili14 December 2021
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