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Tuesday 3rd August 2010 only at 7 pm at the A/V Centre at

Maru a Pula School

“Memory fills the holes with things that never happened”
“Waltz with Bashir” (2008) is being shown Tuesday 3rd of August 2010 only at 7 pm at the A/V Centre at Maru a Pula School by the Gaborone Film Society. It is the first of five fine films from Israel, Palestine, Iran and the USA.
“Waltz with Bashir” is an amazing documentary that takes the form of a realistic animated feature on events in the Middle East around 28-years ago in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon. It was nominated for an Oscar as “Best Foreign-Language Film 2009”. It did win a variety of awards including a Golden Globe.
“Waltz with Bashir” refers to the Christian-Phalangist military leader in Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, who was murdered on the 14th of September 1982—he had just been elected President on the 23rd of August. His posters were up everywhere in Beirut, and at one point the invading Israeli soldiers dance below them. But this movie has a more serious purpose: it is a subtle exploration of the affects of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on soldiers. The director, Ari Forman, an Israeli army veteran, around twenty-years after the war, suddenly became aware that he had no memory of his involvement, what had happened, and what he did as part of the invasion of Lebanon.
“Waltz with Bashir” is thus a quest, to unveil from his mind the buried secrets of his past. Ari’s friend, Boaz, has been having a nightmare, unceasing unremitting, troublesome, disturbing and one that upsets his normal life during the day. His nightmare is shown at the opening of the film. It involves dogs. First one dog. Then two. Then three. The dogs are running. Their numbers grow until there is a pack of 26-dogs. They are racing for a reason and when they reach their destination they are threatening and demanding. He tells a friend, “This dream is coming from somewhere, but where?” Then his friend begins to remember.
Doctors and experts on PTSD now recommend that the individual so burdened must take steps to recovery the suppressed memories. They must identify and seek out what they fear, they must find and expose those memories that are causing their suffering. This is not enough. They must then go to those places and encounter again what happened in the past, and by confronting what they are unconsciously inhibiting, what they have wished never to consider again, to face it and thus eliminate the hold it has over them.
Ari’s friend’s dream stimulates Ari to have a dream from the invasion of Lebanon, one involving water, the Mediterranean Sea, and his and his fellow commandos rising naked out of the liquid soup carrying their weapons, Israeli Uzis, above their head as they walk out on to the beach in front of Beirut’s hotels.
Ari’s journey is a fascinating illustrated oral history, as the process of revealing his past memories that have been buried also allows him to cast off false memories that have taken their place. Was he the best fighter in his commando? What was the “love Boat”? After two years of training why did he deal with uncontrollable fear through uncontrollable silence?  How could he lose all memories of the Lebanon war? Was he part of killing innocent civilians? Whole families? Did he kill 26 dogs? Did he waltz with his gun below Bashir? Was he really there?
Ari is helped in this quest by a variety of people whom he seeks out and interviews, and receives counsel from, beginning with his analyst whom he wakes at 6:30 am. They are all real people—this may look like a cartoon, but instead it is an innovative way of making a film. He finds that he can “remember each leave perfectly”, but not what he was taking leave from or returning to. When he was home, even if for only 24 hours, he can still recall it. But nothing about what he did in Beirut.
Slowly, by following the advice of those he talks to, events, time, places and his actions begin to return to him. Then he recognizes that he was party to two massacres in Palestinian refugee camps on the 16th September 1982, that took place “to avenge Bashir’s death” at Sabra and Shatila. This is labeled the key “disassociative event”. How was this different from the massacres that occurred in Europe before and during World War II that led to the death of six million Jews and over twenty million Slavs? This is brought home to Ari by his parents who survived Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. He is told, “You were part of the massacre—you’d taken on the role of the Nazis”.
“Waltz with Bashir” is 87 minutes long. It is rated 18+. It is in Hebrew, some German, and with English subtitles. The director is Ari Folman who also wrote the script. His voice plus those of Roni Dayag, Ron Ben-Yisahi, Dror Harazi, Yehezkel Lazarov, Ori Sivan and Zahava Solomon make the film. The people interviewed were filmed and then transformed into animated characters by a rotoscopic process. The music is by Max Richter. It is the first animated feature ever made in Israel. This is a film that cannot be pigeon holed. Ty Burr calls it a “truly unprecedented genre: the animated repressed-memory atrocity-mystery documentary”.

From Mmegi ShowBiz Tuesday 3rd August  2010—Backstage at the Cinema by Sasa Majuma