How I shot the war—ideology and accountability in personal Israeli war documentaries

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe article deals with personal documentaries made in recent years by a number of Israeli film-makers during their reserve service. The films under discussion were made during the Al-Aqsa intifada, which broke out in late September 2000, and the second Lebanon war (July—August 2006). The wide spreading of digital video cameras enabled film-makers positioned in the West Bank and Lebanon to document what they saw and felt. Hence, a ‘new’ point of view was presented—not the official one (associated with military correspondents and IDF film units), but that of the regular soldier, who is not necessarily committed to the official perspective and discourse. Indeed, one could argue for the viewer's ‘right to know’, which the documentarists' camera guarantees. As documenting soldiers in the occupied territories, as well as Lebanon, they are able to show us what the institutionalized practices usually conceal. This article therefore asks how this public ‘right to know’ coexists with one's own accountability. Is filming the documentarists' way of dealing with themselves being part of the atrocities of an oppressive system? At the centre of the following analysis are Yariv Mozer's My First War (2007), a personal documentary shot during the second Lebanon war; Yaniv Berman's The Alfa Diaries (2007), which documents the director's company on reserve duty in the occupied territories in the years 2002–2006; and Lior Geller's Heavy Twenty (2004), which is mostly shot inside a tank stationed at an outpost overlooking the Palestinian city of Qalqilya, whose commanding officer is the director.