Subordinate People in Middle Eastern Documentary Film

SUBORDINATE PEOPLE IN MIDDLE EASTERN ALTERNATIVE DOCUMENTARY FILM

Universiti Sains Malaysia 2009

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SUBORDINATE PEOPLE

IN MIDDLE EASTERN ALTERNATIVE DOCUMENTARY FILM:

EYAD AL DAOUD’S DEIR YASSIN..THE AGONY (1999)

A Thesis

Presented to School of Communication in Universiti Sains Malaysia

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of

Master in Communication (Screen Studies)

March 2009

By

Khaldoun H. Shami

P.KOM0011/07

Supervisor: Dr. Rohani Hashim



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SUBORDINATE PEOPLE

IN MIDDLE EASTERN ALTERNATIVE DOCUMENTARY FILM:

EYAD AL DAOUD’S DEIR YASSIN..THE AGONY (1999)

A Thesis

Presented to School of Communication in Universiti Sains Malaysia

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of

Master in Communication (Screen Studies)

March 2009

By

Khaldoun H. Shami

P.KOM0011/07

Supervisor: Dr. Rohani Hashim



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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my supervisor Dr. Rohani

Hashim for giving and sharing her knowledge with me throughout the time of

completing this research. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to her

without whose advice, guidance and encouragement would not have made this

thesis possible and who made sure I was on track.

Also, I would like to thank other people who had contributed in making this

writing a personal success for me especially my lecturers and staff of School of

Communication in Universiti Sains Malaysia. I am also grateful to my friend Ms. Dima

Shehadeh who has helped me in compiling my writing and doing translation works.

And not forgetting the real friends; Mr. Waseem Ghanem, my fellow course mates

Mr. Indra Alam Firmansyah and Ms. Putri Prejanto for supporting and

encouragement.

Last but not the least; I would like to thank my parents for their love, caring

and upbringing, also to my colleagues for their concern. Not forgetting prisoners of

conscience, and refugees around the globe.

Thank you.

Khaldoun Shami Penang: March 2009.



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ABSTRACT

This thesis attempts to explore the value of the subordinate people in the

documentary film as in Eyad Al Daoud’s Deir Yassin..The Agony (1999), exploring the

reasons why subordinate people are crucial in Middle Eastern documentary films.

And it will discuss if the adoption of subordinate people as a hero in the film provide

more information on the reality of Middle East society and the political events.

In this study the researcher focuses on “ordinary people” who is the

protagonist and the main character of the documentary, through the use of cinema

reality theories, Vertov (Film‐Eye) theory and cinema verite, by analyzing The Agony

and using other independent documentary films as cross references. The researcher

aims to highlight the importance of alternative documentary films in supporting the

reality by portraying subordinate people.

In this study, reader can observe the value of the subordinate people in

films, and their abilities to present the events they witnessed and lived. The

subordinate people as well present the society’s reality and relations and give their

personal perspective and comment on the events. Reader can also observe the

importance of the director’s support to the humanitarian side in documentary films,

and the importance of presenting realistic and true images for humans, societies,

and events, taking into consideration presenting personal details of those people,

and upraising their value, basing on cinema reality elements and techniques.



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CONTENT

Page

Title i

Acknowledgement ii

Abstract iii

Table of Content iv

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION OF THE STUDY

1.1 Introduction 1

1.2 Background 1

1.3 Problem Statement 2

1.4 Objectives of the Study 8

1.5 Research Questions 8

CHAPTER TWO: THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK

2.1 Introduction 9

2.2 Subordinate people 9

2.3 Theoretical Framework 10

2.3.1 Dziga Vertov Theory (Film‐Eye) 11

2.3.2 Cinema Verite 12

2.4 Cinema in Palestine 15

2.5 Deir Yassin..The Agony 18



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2.6 Lost in Costa Rica 19

2.7 Methodology of the research 21

2.7.1 Reasons in selecting Eyad Al Daoud’s The Agony 22

CHAPTER THREE: ANALYSIS OF DEIR YASSIN...THE AGONY (1) SUBORDINATE PEOPLE IN THE FILM

3.1 Introduction 27

3.2 Film summary 28

3.3 The relation between The Agony and the massacre 29

3.4 The subordinate people in The Agony Zainab Mohammed Ismaeel Al haj Attyeh

30

3.5 First scene in The Agony 35

3.6 The last scene 41

3.7 Zainab, a woman and a lonely narrator in The Agony 46

CHAPTER FOUR: ANALYSIS OF DEIR YASSIN...THE AGONY (2) THE REALITY AND THE IDEOLOGY OF THE FILM

4.1 Introduction 51

4.2 The Cinema Reality in The Agony 51

4.2.1 Shots, Montage and Reality 52

4.2.2 Other elements supporting cinema reality in The Agony 58

4.3 Facts and information said by the subordinate people 60

4.3.1 Historical and political information 61

4.3.1.1 Attacking the village 61



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4.3.1.2 Al‐Qastal Battle 63

4.3.1.3 The massacre and its victims 64

4.3.1.4 The significance of the massacre to the Zionists 65

4.3.2 Social relations, Information and image of the families of Deir Yassin

66

4.3.2.1 Documenting village families, their homes, and the way they were attacked and killed

66

4.3.2.2 Zainabs’ family stance 68

4.3.2.3 The strong relation between the woman and her brother in the Palestinian society

69

4.4 The resistance and standing firm ideology 70

4.4.1 The value of the land and strong relation between the Palestinian and his country

70

4.4.2 Glorifying the defense of the land and praising the resistance

71

4.4.3 The connection between the massacre and the peace process 72

4.4.4 Zainabs’ last world

73

4.4.5 The White and the red roses 74

CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

5.1 Introduction 76

5.2 Conclusion 76

5.3 Limitation of Research 80

5.4 Suggestion for Future Research 81



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APPENDIX ONE 83

BIBLIOGRAPHY 86



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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION OF THE STUDY

1.1 Introduction

This chapter overviews and provides a background of the study. It discuses

the related literature reviews on alternative documentary films. It also furnishes the

research objectives, research question, and research problem.

1.2 Background

This study comes within the framework of humanizing documentary films,

and its role in supporting and promoting the truth and the reality of social or political

image, through the "independent" director and production, or what is known as the

“alternative film”.

The documentary film is a personal perspective of the reality and the world

we live in, it’s a vision that takes human side (Abu Ma’alla, 2007). And about the

humanitarian documentary the director Eyad Al Daoud said in interview by the

author:

The documentary film’s value is in its humanitarian side that supports people,

and provide them the chance to tell their experiences filled with joy and

sorrow, success and failure, as well as introducing them to what is going on

around them, develop them and increase their awareness; therefore its

natural for a documentary to become more concerned about humanitarian



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issues. The best documentaries are those which present humans’ problems,

priorities, and fears (Al Daoud, [my translation], 2009).

In this thesis, I have chosen three independent documentaries, the first one is

the main film in this research, which I use for analysing, entitled “Deir Yassin, The

Agony” a Palestinian production. The other two films, which I use as cross reference,

are “Lost in Costa Rica” a Qatari film, and “My country, My country” an American

movie. The main character (the main hero and narrator) in the three films are

“ordinary person”. In The Agony the character lives in the occupied Palestine and

tells his point of view of the political events and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (Deir

Yassin massacre in 1948). While Lost in Costa Rica character lives outside his

homeland (a Palestinian in Diaspora) and narrates his personal social problem. In My

Country,My Country, the main character is an Iraqi man living in Baghdad. This

research studies documentary films that rely on subordinate people as the main

character.

1.3 Problem Statement

Throughout the history of the documentary films in Middle East, these films

have been used by the Middle Eastern regimes as ways to present and promote their

point of view in conflicts, political and ideological cases as well as their social and

cultural sides. These films usually took the form of a historical narrative for events in

the past, especially in wars, and its reasons and consequences, in support of a party

and one‐man system. And ordinary people were absent.



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The lack of needed freedom, and the policies of hiding information which

performed by the Middle Eastern regimes, in addition to the lack of tools used to

show independent films because of the governments control and ownership to

media facilities, all that made of the formal documentary which presents one point

of view, the only available and capable form to get to the viewers.

In a Reportage prepared by Yasmine El Rashidi in “Monocle” a British

magazine, an example of the freedom given to filmmakers in the Middle East. El

Rashidi stated:

The detention of an Al‐Jazeera reporter at Cairo International Airport last

year underscores that Huweida Taha Metwall had been in the city working on

a documentary about torture at an Egypt police station… Her tapes were

confiscated and she was charged with working on a project that might

“damage the reputation of Egyptian authorities” (El Rashidi, 2007).

About the obstacles facing the documentary films in Middle East, the Syrian

cinematic Marwan Akkawi (2007) mentioned:

There are two obstacles that need to be treated seriously; the first is the way

TV channels pay fees to show documentaries… and the second is creating a

free space for selecting and presenting films topics. Documentaries need a

wide range of freedom, but this is not available in some Arabic countries or

excessively restricted.

He added:



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Documentary films are not given as much concern as it deserve, not only in

Arabic countries but in the entire world as well, because of its difficulty to be

presented to public, but TV gave us the alternative solution (Akkawi,[my

translation], 2009).

In the Middle East, a new form of directing and producing Documentaries has

emerged, especially after the first media revolution, which began after the Anglo‐

American war (GWI) against (Iraq) 1991, and the emergence of the independent

satellite channels and in particular Al Jazeera channel 1996, which was followed by

another revolution in 2003 after the American occupational war (GWII) for Iraq. The

media and broadcasting have clearly increased and developed, and the number of

satellite channels has tripled (PBS, 2007).

Due to the development of media, the projects of getting attention to a clear

and independent formulas and tool have improved far from regimes pressure and its

practices and media tools; especially after its utter failure in finding the solutions of

many problems of this region.

Based on the reality, the media and political new landscape, the existence of

alternatives for showing and watching (the independent and private satellite

channels) that forms the major obstacle facing the documentary film‐ private and

independent production companies interested in documentary films came out to

light, and gave the independent directors the opportunity, as well as to the story



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which is close to the real society and its problems, and also provide the opportunity

to the subordinate people’s daily routine, vision, and personal concerns.

Because of the TV stations revolution, the emergence of the private

documentary production phenomenon, and the private cinematic production

companies, the documentary film production had developed. Thereby independent

documentary film makers and directors got a better chance to transfer the image

they perceive with their eyes and their visions. “Hot spot films” company in Dubai

which was established by the journalist Asaad Taha in 1999 is an example of the

independent production and documentary film companies.

When asked about “Hot Spot”, Asaad Taha and the changes happening to the

documentary film production Yasmine El Rashidi (2007) said:

Taha transitioned from reporter to producer began in 1999 when his

frontline career made him aware of the limited documentary output from the

Middle East. For every story that he covered, he saw a dozen that lay untold.

Taha saw that the world, the Arab world at that, was rarely presented as seen

through Arab eyes.

She added:

Al‐Jazeera outsources over 50 percent of its programming. Hot Spot, there

from the beginning, has made some 300 films and 450 hours of TV for the

network and grown its own team to 23 full‐timers and over 30 more

freelancers (El Rashidi, 2007).



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According to Hala Lotfy, documentary films discuss major issues and highlight

many aspects in the Arab society, sincerity and truth. Thus, in this study I try to

examine the importance of subordinate character narration in the documentary film

and its value when the ordinary person becomes the main character in the film and

the narrator of the event (Tuhami, [my translation], 2006).

The importance of these figures comes from being the majority of the

community in the Middle East, as well as being the closest class to reality and the

most affected by the different forms of the political struggle and the social and

economic problems. It also speaks and reflects from a humanitarian and simple

reality, and shows the experiences and the suffering caused by happening events

and the fluctuations. According to Eyad Al Daoud in Al‐Sabeel Newspaper:

I'm looking for the human explosion moment which is capable to feel the

cause and know how to interact with it. We are not looking for a killing strike

through the film, but we are trying mainly to reach humanity in a

humanitarian way by expressing humanitarian issues. As the audience has

the right to freely interact with the film, as a director I have my own way too

to make the film by combining documentary and fiction themes together, to

achieve greater interaction (Al Saiedi, [my translation], 2004).

In most studies and researched films, there is mainly a key figure, in the first

film The Agony from the Palestinian director Eyad Al Daoud, Mrs. Zainab Attiyah

shows as a unique star in all the film duration, sharing the major event of the



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Palestinian conflict with the Zionist of Israel, and that’s through her talk about the

massacre of Deir Yassin perpetrated by Zionist in 1948 against the population of this

village, but she enlightens it as she sees it in reality inside the village itself, speaking

on behave of her family members and neighbors.

Al Daoud revealed in previous interview:

I am a realistic person, although I did not study directing but the experiences

I passed through and living between struggling Palestinian people and

martyrs had affected me and taught me a lot, so it’s not strange ‐in such

circumstances‐ to be working in the field of documentaries that reflect the

reality. Centralizing Palestine in these films becomes my intellectual concern,

as I am capable to understand Palestinian’s problems and talk it out (Al

Saiedi, [my translation], 2004).

Additionally, in the two cross reference films that I will use in this thesis, Lost

in Costa Rica, and My country, My country the key narrator of the event is one

person. In Lost in Costa Rica the main character is Mr. Ehab Acleh, with a several

number of people from problem’s environment and the reality, but he remains the

key figure who tells a particular problem, personally and detailed. And in My

Country, My Country the main character is Dr. Riyad.

The three films belongs to the alternative production (independent), where

the first movie was produced by a Palestinian company known as “Press house” in

1999 in partnership with another company called Vision for production in Amman,



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Jordan. The other movie was produced by Al‐Jazeera satellite channel, through an

executive production done by Hot Spot Films, a private production company in

Dubai, UAE. About the funding of My country, My country PBS revealed that:

Funding for My Country, My Country was provided by ITVS, the Sundance

Institute Documentary Fund, P.O.V. | American Documentary, Inc., the

Wellspring Foundation, the Robert and Joyce Menschel Family Foundation

and the Appleman Foundation (PBS, 2006).

1.4 Objectives of the Study

The objectives of this study are:

1. To study the importance of subordinate people in Middle Eastern alternative

documentary films.

2. To examine the key subject matters portrayed in Middle Eastern alternative

documentary films.

1.5 Research Questions

The research will answer these following questions:

1. Why subordinate people are vital in Middle Eastern documentary films?

2. How subordinate people are elevated by the filmmakers in alternative

documentary films?

3. By adopting subordinate people as a hero in the film will it give more information

on the reality of Middle East society and political events?



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CHAPTER TWO

THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK

2.1 Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview of the literature review

about previous studies related to documentary films. This study will use three

documentary films; Deir Yassin: The Agony (1999) by Eyad Al‐Daoud, Lost in Costa

Rica (2006) directed by Hala Lotfy and My country, My country by Laura Poitras. It

provides the theories that are related to documentary films such as Dziga Vertov

theory and Cinema Verite theory.

2.2 Subordinate people

There are many definitions of subordinates. According to Oxford dictionary,

“subordinate” (to somebody) having less power or authority than somebody else in a

group or an organization, in many societies' women are subordinate to men.

Subordinate (to something) less important than something else. Secondary: all other

issues are subordinate to this one. As noun, it is defined as a person who has a

position with less authority and power than somebody else in an organization. Lower

in rank or position. Less or secondary importance. A person under the authority or

control of another (Oxford Dictionary, 2008).

Cinema has other definition about subordinates, John Leggett defined

subordinate characters may not seem as important as the protagonist, but they're in

the story for a reason. The main character's relationship with a subordinate



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character helps to reveal the protagonist's character and may also help develop the

story's conflict (Leggett, 2003).

Wiki answers determined a subordinate character as any character who is

not one of the main characters. So, for instance, in “Romeo and Juliet” Romeo and

Juliet are the main characters, but there are a lot of subordinate characters who

influence them. The same thing goes in movies or TV shows. (Wiki answers, no year).

Hala Lotfy described subordinate people as:

Subordinate people do not hide its honest expression about itself, its reality

and its problems unlike the complicated characters on social, economical, or

Gnostic levels… This kind of people try to protect its privacy as a form of

power, but the simple characters specially those with humble knowledge

(less than the social and economical complicated characters) thinks that

sharing its problems with others will make them more powerful (Lotfy, 2009).

In this research I inspect the ordinary people in the community when it

becomes a main and star in a documentary film.

2.3 Theoretical Framework

The French called the tourists films they produced in the beginning of the

twentieth century as “documentary films”, the first person to use this term was the

English director John Jeriwson, while showing the film called Mouna directed by

Robert Flaherty, who was recently labelled “the cinematic traveller” because he



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passionately carry his camera to shoot meticulously daily life in remote areas. He

presented a complete study of the life of Eskimos and the South Pole people.

Jeriwson described the documentary film as a creative editing for the realistic event,

and he said that he used to take his material from the real location (Baghdadi, 2009).

The theoretical framework in this project depends on the theories that are

related to documentary films and realism. These theories are as follow:

2.3.1 Dziga Vertov Theory (Film Eye)

Baghdadi stated in an article entitled “Documentary film between the sultan

and the human being”:

Throughout many experiences, different ways and trends of the documentary

film appeared, and the most important was the realistic trend which drives its

material from direct reality of the cities and markets. The romantic trend is

concerned about humans’ life and in living the topic through pictures. The

symphonic trend depends on the sound, light, time, and place and movement

elements, and it deals with documentary as a musical art. In 1922 a new

trend of the documentary cinema came up by the Russian director Deziga

Vertov as a form of a news paper, and this was called the reality cinema, or

the fourth dimension cinema (Baghdadi, [my translation], 2009).

In 1923, Pioneer Soviet Documentary filmmaker Vertov formed a group for

movie making, with his wife Elizaveta Svilova, and his brother Mikhail Kaufman,

which they named “Kino‐Glaze” or "Kinoks”. The Kinoks believed that it was time to



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move away from the Hollywood type of cinematic experience and to go into an age

where truthfulness and realism would prevail.

We declare the old films, the romantic, the theatricalised etc., to be leprous.

Don't come near! Don't look! Mortally dangerous! Contagious! We affirm

the future of cinema art by rejecting its present. The death of

cinematography is necessary so that the art of cinema may live. We call for

the acceleration of its death (Taylor, 1988).

About the visual phenomena, Vertov said:

Our eyes see very little and very badly – so people dreamed up the

microscope to let them see invisible phenomena; they invented the

telescope…now they have perfected the cinecamera to penetrate more

deeply into the visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so

that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the

future, is not forgotten (Invisible cinema, 2008)

Kino‐Glaz theory follows the idea that the camera is an instrument, much like the

human eye, that is best used to explore the actual happenings of real life.While

fiction film was seen to be the “opium of the people” (Vertov, 1984), the need for

un‐played film‐what labelled as “life caught unawares” was to be the foundation of

his film theory.

2.3.2 CINEMA VERITE



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The aesthetic value for the documentary film entertains the viewers’ mind

and sense, and reveals the realistic facts in a logical and persuadable way because it

is a real cinema. The technical revolution that happened in the visualisation world

helped in producing both documentary and story films. Cinematic equipments

became smaller and cheaper than before; the cinematic cameras which coasted

$50,000‐100,000 and weighting over 15 kg, are today a maximum 3 kg and costs

$20,000 or less, which provides the producer a balanced image (Hool, 2008).

On the other hand editing could now be done in small rooms and on PCs

through editing software that provides a wide range of choices and freedom to build

the film structure. But the costly part in film production nowadays is the travel to

shooting locations and accommodation expenses.

New groups of film makers who rejected the Hollywood way and disapproved

the high costs, the imagination, the decoration and the actors issues, was affected by

the real cinema, Vertov theories and his work. They focused on the real events and

on the normal people, and they used the camera as a witness of the reality. The

most remarkable school that was developed by the French directors in the sixties of

the twentieth century was called cinema verite.

When Patricia Aufderh explain Cinema Verite in his book “Documentary Film:

A Very Short Introduction”, he said:

Practices set in motion by legendary of documentary founders were

profoundly shaken up in the 1960s revolution that was variously called



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cinema verite, observational cinema, and direct cinema. This style broke

dramatically with then standard documentary practices of advance planning,

scripting, staging, lighting, re‐enactment, and interviewing. All these

traditional approaches had accommodated the limitations of large, heavy

35mm equipment, and they were appropriate to audience expectations of

the time. Cinema verite (to use a popular umbrella term) employed the far

lighter 16mm technology made more popular and accessible after the

military deployed it during the war. Cinema verite spoke in fresh voice, often

about different subjects. Cinema verite filmmakers took lighter, 16mm

equipment into places that had not been seen before –the interiors of

ordinary people homes, on the dance floor with teenagers, back rooms in

political campaigns, backstage with celebrities, on line with strikers, inside

mental hospital – and filmed what they saw (Aufderheide, 2007).

While PBS website declared Cinema Verite as:

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, directors however, began to break away

from this documentary formula. For the first time, new lightweight camera

and sound equipment made it possible to take cameras anywhere. The lens

could now unobtrusively capture life’s most intimate, awkward or even

mundane moments unfolding in real time. Directors named this new style of

filmmaking “cinema verité”—French for “film truth.” The genre eschewed the

use of devices like interviews, music, narration and sound effects to tell

stories. The footage alone had to speak for itself. Some of the pioneers of the



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verité movement include Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies, High School),

Robert Drew (Primary, The Chair), D.A. Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back, War

Story) and the Maylses Brothers (Salesman, Grey Gardens). These directors

established a standard of truth in filmmaking that has continued to inspire a

new generation of documentarians like Michael Moore, Ken Burns and Errol

Morris (PBS, No year).

Concerning the cinema reality, Robert McConnell (1997) asserted that:

The cinema verite directors used non‐actors, small hand‐ held cameras, and

actual homes and surroundings as their location for a film. One of their

production techniques was to tape record actual conversations, interviews

and statements of opinion make by real people. Then they would find

pictures to illustrate the actual sound recordings. The final production was

put together in the editing room (which is also true of fiction/fantasy films).

Cinema verite was characterized by the use of real people (not actors) in

unrehearsed situations. Cinema verite stands at the other end of the

spectrum from the Hollywood feature film. The typical Hollywood film has a

complete script that has been through several revisions, movie star actors

with million dollar salaries, costly special effects, expensive sets, props and

locations.

This study chooses one documentary film for the purposes of analysis and

research, the Palestinian film of Deir Yassin..The Agony. But before introducing The



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Agony and its director Eyad Al Daoud, a brief discussion on the subject of the cinema

in Palestine is needed.

2.4 Cinema in Palestine

The first cinematic show in the Middle East was in Egypt in 1896, and the first

Egyptian documentary by the director Mohammad al Bayyomi, recorded the opening

of the old Pharaonic king “Tot Ankh Amoun” in 1924, an eight minutes long film

(Baghdadi, 2009).

The Palestinian cinema was established by Ibrahim and Badr Lama in 1928,

leaving their parents and family in Bethlehem to go to Chili carrying their

equipments for filming, and decided to come back to establish a cinema in their

homeland Palestine. But because of the political environment in Palestine they were

force to station in Alexandria, which was a suitable place for cinema production

then, and eventually in 1927 they produced their first film “a kiss in the desert”

(Roqa, 2005).

Palestine witnessed a huge interest in cinema; a number of major cities

enjoyed several cinema theaters, five in Yafa, four in Jerusalem and six in Gaza. The

cinematic press appeared as well, such as the “photographed reality” newspaper

which was issued in Akka in 1937, and “cinema tapes” magazine which was issued in

Jerusalem in both languages English and Arabic in the same year (Roqa, 2005).



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In 1935 the Palestinian director Ibrahim Hassan Sarhan produced a silent

documentary film about the Saudi king Ibn So’od visit to Palestine. In relation to the

beginnings of the Palestinian cinema Wikipedia encyclopedia exposed:

The first Palestinian film to be made is generally believed to be a

documentary on King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia´s visit in 1935 to Palestine,

made by Ibrahim Hassan Sirhan, based inJaffa Sirhan followed the King and

around Palestine, "from Lod to Jaffa and from Jaffa to Tel Aviv. The result was

a silent movie that was presented at the Nabi Rubin festivals. Following this

documentary, Sirhan joined Jamal al‐Asphar to produce a 45‐minute film

called The Realized Dreams, aiming to "promote the orphans´cause". Sirhan

and al‐Asphar also produced a documentary about Ahmad Hilmi Pasha, a

member of the Higher Arab Commission. In 1945 Sirhan established the "Arab

Film Company" production studio together with Ahmad Hilmi al‐Kilani. The

company launched the feature film Holiday Eve, which was followed by

preparations for the next film A Storm at Home. The films themselves were

lost in 1948, when Sirhan had to flee Jaffa after the town was bombarded…

The Naqba of 1948 had a devastating effect on the Palestinian society,

including its nascent film industry. Cinematic endeavours, requiring

infrastructure, professional crews, and finance, nearly ceased for two

decades. Individual Palestinian participated in the film‐production of

neighbouring countries. The first film festival dedicated to Palestinian films

was held in Baghdad in 1973, and Baghdad also hosted the next two

Palestinian film festivals, in 1976 and 1980 (Wikipedia, No year).



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The first film that established the new Palestinian cinema was A rich memory

for Michael Khlefe in 1980, it emphasised the Palestinian existence on his land

(Ibrahim, 2006). The Palestinian film is concerned about documenting the memory

and the rights of Palestinian, it is followed the Palestinians suffering from the Israeli

occupation for more than 60 years, wherever they are, either in their land or away in

a city, in a village, or in a refugee camp.

This gave the new Palestinian cinema a documentation theme, Bashar

Ibrahim confirms this:

The Palestinian cinema production is mostly documentation and recording,

and by days it became an almost complete visualised record for the

Palestinian memory, at least for the recent years of the Palestinian

catastrophe, and of the resistance and revolution experiments. It included

events, stories, and tales, injured and killed people, disasters, break downs,

failures, and wishes for victory. It concerned about forming a new Palestinian

memory, investing the visual and acoustical cinematic abilities, to become a

visual declaration of the existence of the Palestinian identity (Ibrahim, 2006).

2.5 Deir Yassin..The Agony

The Agony is directed and written by Eyad Al Daoud. The story is about the

massacre of Deir Yassin 1948. With a space of time 20 minutes, shooting were



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conducted in the same place of the massacre; the Deir Yassin village. The film was

produced by Press House, Jerusalem 1999. It was viewed on Abu Dhabi TV, Sharjah

TV, Al Manar, Dubai TV, Palestine TV and ANN.

The film shows Palestine terrorized by the Zionist in 1948 before the

declaration of the Israeli State on the land of Palestine, recounted through the tale

of Mrs. Zainab Ismail Attiya in a solitary starring for 20 minutes. The film illustrates

the political incident through the point of view and memory of Mrs. Zainab,

witnessing the events on her, her family, her neighbors and her land.

Eyad Al Daoud, the director of The Agony, is a Palestinian born in Kuwait in

1971. He holds a degree in Management Studies from Jordan 1992, and has been

working in directing and TV production since the beginning of 1995. He has received

many awards such as: Award for best Documentary in the 6th Cairo TV and Radio

Festival in 2000; Silver award in the 7th Cairo TV and Radio Festival in 2001; Viewer

award at the Desert Rain Festival, Italy in 2001; The 1st International TV Production

Festival awards, Tehran in 2002; Distinguished diploma of recognition for the best

director in 2002; Award at the Islamic conference society in 2002 (Al‐Daoud, 2009).

Miguel Liteen a Chilean director acknowledged Eyad Al Daoud in "The Art of

Life “documentary film:

I asked for your movie after the show, and I have watched it twice alone in

hotel, I am now more pleased of the movie when you knew that you are a



Page 29

young man who did not exceed his thirty’s, and within what I saw, I bet you

will have your own theory ( Al Saiedi, [my translation], 2006).

He directed the following documentary films: In the Company of the Gun

2006, The Art of Life 2003, Jenin 2002, The Weddings of Flowers 2001, The Return

2000, Mosques in The Face Of Destruction 1999, Jerusalem, the Promise of the

Heaven 1997, and his films are translated to more than three languages (Al Daoud,

2008).

Therefore, in this study for comparison and supporting purposes, another

independent film from the Middle ? Lost in Costa Rica will be used, it demonstrates a

subordinate people who became a star actor and the main character in the film, and

below is an introduction of the film and the director Hala Lotfy.

2.6 Lost in Costa Rica

Lost in Costa Rica is a documentary film of 47 minutes, it is produced by Al‐

Jazeera channel (Qatar) and Hot Spot films (Dubai) as executive producer in 2006.

The scenario and direction were done by Hala Lotfy, a filmmaker from Egypt. She

was born in 1973, graduated from Faculty of Economies and Political Science in

1995, then studied filmmaking in cinema institute in Cairo and graduated in 1999,

worked as a festival co‐ordinator for Alexandria film festival between 1996 and 2001,

wrote film reviews for Aldostour Weekly newspaper from 1996 to 1997, worked as

an assistant director in 3 long features and directed two documentaries for the

Egyptian TV. She made two short features in 35mm format during her study in



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cinema institute and three documentaries after graduation, all of them were

screened in many film festivals and some received prizes (Lofty, 2009).

Lotfy made seven documentaries for Aljazeera channel. Among the series are

Arabs of Latin America 2006. The shooting took place in Panama, Costa Rica and

Honduras. Hala Lotfy directed the following documentaries films: A Rehearsal 1998,

Four Scenes 1999, Greeting Patern 2000, Images of Water and Earth 2001, Feeling

Cold 2005. And two other fiction films are That Beautiful Voice 1998, and No Waiting

Please 1999 (Lotfy, 2009).

Lost in Costa Rica is a part of “Arabs of Latin America” series, The film tells

about a man who was born in Jerusalem and immigrated to Bolivia in Latin America.

He was registered as a Catholic although he was born to Muslim parents. He lived

confused between the two cultures; the surrounding world that speaks Spanish and

the Arabic culture he has lived and experienced with his family. He remained lost

between the two cultures until he decided to discover the Arab culture, so he began

traveling around the world until he reached Costa Rica, where he lost his Bolivian

documents and lived trying to regain his identity. The starring character of the film

tells his life and his hardships. In explaining the character of Lost of Costa Rica, Hala

Lotfy says, "It's easy for a citizen to live between two rivers citizen, but it is very

difficult for him to live between two cultures.This man is confused between his past

and present like many other immigrants” (Tuhami, 2006).

2.7 Methodology of the research



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The research questions will be answered by addressing two alternative documentary

films, and will look closely on the textual analysis and study the subordinate people

in the films.

In The Agony, dramatic scene played by the main character that serves the

value of the documentary film will be examined, and an analysis on emotions and

human concerns and worries in the spontaneous scenes (joy and sorrow, life and

death or absence) affects the strength of the value of the documentary film and its

beauty will be preformed.

The exploration of text and the narration by the main characters will be

conducted, which provide a picture of the social, personal and family reality of an

event in the political conflicts’ history through Mrs. Zeinabs’ eyes in The Agony film.

The investigation of pictures and the political information about countries and

groups or the people the main character belongs to in “Lost in Costa Rica” film will

be carried out, through telling a personal problem and a reality, as well as

monitoring some values or life sentences and results (either its personal or social or

political) that the character attempts to present.

Several interviews with the directors of the films will be refered; Eyad Al

Daoud, and Hala Lotfy, and additional interviews prepared other researchers. That is

to answer questions pertaining a simple character could depend on the truth, the

reality, and on the raise the working values. How far the director could effects the



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story teller in the text and in acting especially in the docudrama, and how does that

affect the spontaneous and the value of the work and the story presented.

The reason for using the strategy of “content analyzing” is that’s it’s the most

successful method in the humanitarian studies and in the communication and

information sciences, and because it gives a great opportunity to the researcher to

understand the subject of the case being studying.

Qualitative techniques can help the researcher’s depth of understanding of

the issue being studied and at the same time qualitative methods are more flexible

allowing the researcher to pursue a new area of interest. This is based upon the

formation of images which are both complex and holistic which are formed using

words reported from the views of respondents or informants and are carried out in a

natural way (Creswell, 1994).

The films were selected based on their independent production by private

companies, and for using single characters, to tell the story from its own

perspectives.

2.7.1 Reasons in selecting Eyad Al Daoud’s The Agony

Al Daoud, a Palestinian from Ajja village near Jenine city. After the 1967 war

his father took the family to Kuwait, where he was born in 1971. The last visit he

made to Palestine with his family was at the age of 12, he was so attached to his land



Page 33

then, he met many of his village people, and shared them their social occasions and

he moved between other villages as well (Al Daoud, 2009).

Palestine was constantly in Al Daoud mind, the first film that announced the

launching of the cinematic director is about Jerusalem entitled Jerusalem, Sky

Promise in 1997. It was done by a group of talented youth in a private production

house Vision “Tayf for production”.

Al Daoud through an American agency “WTN” went back to the occupied

Palestine after 14 years. He stayed in Jerusalem for a month and moved between the

Palestinian cities, Haifa and Yafa, where he would sit on the beaches of Gaza and

Akka for hours talking to the sea and writing poems. His passion toward Palestine

increased and he was so attached that it became the catalyse of his inspiration (Al

Daoud, 2009).

In Jerusalem, Sky Promise a 60 minutes film, Al Daoud placed the main idea

and started searching and implementing. He supervised the field shooting, and he

sometimes would filmed it by himself. He ran all the stages production, wrote the

script, prepared the scenario, edited some scenes, and directed the film. Even

though it was his first real experiment, it was an incredible success. Jerusalem, Sky

Promise participated in different festivals, and it was screened on 12 Arabic

channels (Abu Dhabi, Al Jazeera, Al Sharjah, Al Manar, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Yemen,

Sudan, Iraq, Iqra’, ANN), the film was even translated to four languages English,

French, Urdu and Turkish.



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Al Daoud had made eight documentary films (writing the script and

directing), all of them were concerning Palestine, and they were closed to the

ordinary Palestinian human, with its spontaneous stories and reality. In the

beginning of Jerusalem, Sky Promise many public and political figures appear; the

Pastor of the Roman Catholic community in Nazareth “Orschmndnt Ameen Shofani”,

the creator of the resistance organization (Hamas) Shekh Ahmad Yassin, and the

president of Muslims scientists commission Dr. Yousif Qardawi. As well as the child

Nisreen who talks about her love toward Jerusalem and the experience of praying

there, and the martyr Ayman Al Shami’s mother who speaks about the value of

Jerusalem and her pride for having a son who was killed in Al Aqsa Masjid yards.

This film is related to an ordinary person, he is Al Hajj Musa Al Khalis (110

years old), who speaks in one of the scenes (Sharqawi, 2004). Al Hajj Al Khalis was

one of the resistance men with Izz edden Al Qassam who fought the British

occupation in 1936, while the Akka prisons cuffs are still on his hands. Three of his

sons are detained in the Israeli prisons. The camera documented his grief and his

believe that he will not leave Jerusalem, because it is a precious and honorable land

(Jerusalem, sky promise, 1997).

In another film by Al Daoud The Art of Life, 52 minutes, produced by Golden

vision‐ Beirut 2003, about the martyrdom trends in Palestine, the director

experienced a different and sensitive situation while making this documentary. He

uses the humanitarian analysis of stories for men and women who blow themselves



Page 35

because they believe in their case. And he answers the martyrdom questions in the

discussion with several families about the martyrs’ lives, their words, their nature,

their distinctiveness in the community, and their academic and work superiority,

which Al Daoud stressed to show in his film.

Al Daoud encountered Al Ma’swabi parents and sister who revealed his work,

morals, orphans custody, and his high professionalism in drawing and in Arabic

handwriting. Then met with Hisham Al Najjar’s mother who told the camera about

her son assisting her in house work and in preparing food to the time of his arrest

and how much he likes to help his friends in the prison. He also came across a

mother of the architectural martyr Hamed Abu Hejleh (Art of life, 2003).

Al Daoud says in a previous interview with Jordanian newspaper “Al Sabeel”

about Art of Life:

The martyrs’ decision of ending his life was in his hands, and it is the least I

can do is to make a film that talks about these people… There is a level of

freedom and willpower I deal through and try to highlight these remarkable

youth… The first I try to listen to is the opinion of the film real characters and

star actors, it was enough for me the martyr’s Al Ma’swabi family ‐one of the

film stars‐ to mention the film humanitarian brave message… Many people

talked about the unprecedented braveness in the film, but I say it is okay. The

journalists and critics in Doha‐ Qatar praised the scenario and the hard work

in the film techniques, which they were surprised at in such a controversial

topic. The technical professionals in Al Arabia channel declared in their



Page 36

negotiation to buy the film that it is one of the best Arabic production that

will be shown on their channel” (Al Saiedi, 2004).

Despite Al Daoud interest in real people, their point of view, reality, talk an

lifestyle in his films, and the presence of the humanitarian side in his work, The

Agony was different and suitable for this study because of its reliance on the

subordinate people in telling the event all through the film, and for Al Dawood

presenting this character (Zainab) as a strong hero in all the scenes that speaks of

the real event, the massacre and from real location, Deir Yassin village.

It also depends only on Zainab’s tale about the massacre she witnessed and

her interview, without voiceover commenting. These things made The Agony a

suitable case for study in searching about the subordinate people in the alternative

documentary film, in addition to its applicable structure to the cinema reality

theories.



Page 37



Page 38

CHAPTER THREE

ANALYSIS OF THE FILM: DEIR YASSIN...THE AGONY

SUBORDINATE PEOPLE IN FILM

3.1 Introduction

This chapter presents the Palestinian film Deir Yassin..The Agony, directed by

Eyad Al Daoud. A short summary about the film and the subordinate people will be

provided, and the exhibition of the first and the last scenes, for its importance in

presenting the directors’ point of view will be offered. The subordinate people in The

Agony film gives a clear picture for what actually conveys. The first scene in the film,

the introduction, shows the main character, the nature of the place that the story

refers to and where the events took place while the camera evolves around it. The

first scene also gives clear signs of the massacre and the victims, the film’s main

issue, presented by the conversations and the expressions of the main character.

During the last scene is where the character leaves the past and history, unfolding

the happenings before 51 years (according to the film production year in 1999) and

sensibly confers about the conflict in Palestine now.

This study will express as well on the main character as a woman, a narrator,

and the sole story teller in the film. Three other documentary films will be utilised as

cross references, they are; Lost in Costa Rica directed by Hala Lotfy, My Country, My

Country by Laura Poitras, and In Spiders’ Web film by Hanna Musleh.



Page 39

3.2 Film summary

This film recounts the story of the most popular massacre in the new

Palestinian history performed by the Jewish Zionist against the unarmed civilians in

Deir Yassin village near Al‐Quds (Jerusalem), right before the announcement of the

establishing of an Israeli state on the Palestinian land in 1948. The awful and terrible

methods of slaughter and abuse were inflicted on the villages, houses and roads,

witnessed by people and pictures, furnished its importance in the history of

mankind.

Eyad Al Daoud, the film’s director described the events of the village in April

9th, 1948 from the point of view of Zainab Ismaeel Attyeh, a Palestinian woman who

lived to tell the massacre. She transfers the image that she saw while walking in the

same place between the victim’s houses and the old roads and sometimes

attempted to illustrate the scene.

The film, which revolves around the agonising experience of Zainab and

family, starts and ends with this woman, and no other character in the film except on

very few occasions. Zainab is the main character and narrator of the massacre,

talking in her Palestinian accent. The second version of the film has English

translation. This film doesn’t have an external voice over comments; the director

uses only one style of presentation, offering an old historical and sad impression.

Now and then, soft music and song are utilised in the end when the movie shows in

colours.



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Al‐Daoud applied an old historical taped scene in addition to the still images

of the massacre, victims, the Zionist members and also the resistance of the villagers

and their struggle to stop the aggression. Maps and arrows are employed to locate

the village and the positions of Jewish settlements and the Zionists attacked

This film is produced in Jerusalem, Palestine by Press House “Bayt al Sahafa”

in 1999. It is almost 20 minutes long, filmed by one camera man “Mo’nis Zahalqa”

who followed Zainab and tapped her story in her Palestinian village that was a

witnessed to one of the horrific massacre in history.

3.3 The relation between The Agony and the massacre

Hundreds of victims, women, children and elders were slaughtered and killed

in Deir Yassin village by Zionists on the 9th of April 1948. A group of Jewish terrorists

known as the Irgun, lead by Manaheem Peagin, who later became the prime Minster

of the Israel (Felesteen Newspaper, 2008), declared that this slaughter was

important and necessary for the establishment of the state, which was announced in

May15th, 1948, almost two months after the massacre (Zaru, 2008).

Deir Yassin is six kilo meters far from the west of Jerusalem in Palestine, had

a population of 610 people in 1945. It is 1.2 hectares, with an agricultural land of

285.7 hectares, was occupied by the Zionist invasion on the same day of the

massacre. The massacre happened on a Friday morning of 9th of April 1948, two



Page 41

Zionist groups, the Argon and the Shtern shocked the village and its population, then

exterminating them without considering elders, children or women (Al Sahli, 2007).

The village was attacked by 3,000 terrorists backed with ironclads.

“Manaheem Pegin” led the Irgun, and “Isaac Shameer” led Shtern, both groups

followed the “Yoshea’ Zetler” in this attack. The Zionist burial leader known as

Nishreen Shefomen, lined up men against walls and shoot them point blank, or

bombarded the houses (Al‐Sahli, 2007).

This wasn’t the only massacre performed by the Zionist against the native

Palestinian population, in preparation to the evacuation of the land of its people, the

Zionists execute many massacres in Palestine such as Tantoura 1948, Qabya 1953,

Kufor Qasim and Khan Yunis 1956, Ibrahimi masjid (Hebron) 1994, Jenin 2002 and

others (Wikipedia, 2009).

3.4 The subordinate people in Deir Yassin.. The Agony

Zainab Mohammed Ismaeel Al haj Attyeh

Zainab, the subordinate people and the only narrator in the film, was born in

1924 in Deir Yassin, enlighten her story when she was 75years old (in 1999 the time

of the film production). She was in her twenties at the time of the massacre. She

wore the same simple winter clothes during the film, which covers all her body

except her face and hands (Look The Agony caver, Appendix one, Fig 1).



Page 42

Zainab did not provide a historical record of what happened before April 9th

1948, she describes what she saw and heard. She sometimes gives her point of view

and comments on the political event while she is walking and moving in the place

that witnessed the massacre. She touches the old stones of the houses walls, and

sometime sets on the high pavement rocks on the road side under trees shadows.

Zainab appeared to be considerably strong and energetic while she is walking in her

village describing what happened to her family, when they were defending

themselves and their land, and how they were killed by the invaders. She informs the

whole story in details with a strong memory. She sometimes interacts with her

memories by crying or talking to the dead like her father and brother or talking to

the land. She talks in wisdom about standing firm against the occupation and facing

death, the assassinations and stealing home lands without fear.

Zainab lost many of her family members including her father, grandfather,

brothers, grandmother and her step mother. While describing her personal

experience; she combines between the events of what happened then, and her

humanitarian side like describing her family members’ conversation, crying over

them, missing them, and the way they were killed by the cold blooded Zionist.

In interview I did with the director Eyad Al Daoud (2009) he described that:

Zainab was forced to leave her village in her twenties and was married with

two children, most of her family houses still exist until today unlike the rest of

the village houses and landmarks. She has a strong memory and a young

spirit with elders’ wisdom, she’s emotional, honest, brave, and wise, and her



Page 43

story tells the martyrdom of 30 people of her family including her husband,

father, brothers and sons.

The subordinate people presents many facts about the attack, its time and

the people’s defence against the Zionist invaders, she also provide information

about the Palestinian resistance and its leaders like (Abdel Qader Al Husaini) who

fought the occupation in Jerusalem and set (Al Qastal) free before his martyrdom.

Zainab gives in details information about families who lived at that time in

the village, their relations with each others, and their stance of the massacre and

during the attack. She points out the weapons their father and brother used to fight

the invaders and the way they died as martyrdom, like many others in their homes

and in roads. She sometime detailed about her experiences; like how one of the

gangs’ members killed her little brother or how her daughter ran away.

Zainabs picture is almost in the centre of the films poster and cover, as a sign

for the importance of the character and its centralization in the film. She points with

her finger to the viewers right side, to the topic she will talk about and comment on

as well as she used to do when talking to the camera. However, if we looked at the

Olson Welles’s film “Citizen Kane” 1941, we notice that the film’s main star actor is

posted in the lower centre of the poster (Check figure 5, Appendix one), and this

indicates to Zainab’s character strength and uniqueness. About the The Citizen Kane

as David Bordwell says (1993):



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The advertising for the film, while not specifying any real‐life

correspondences, does prepare us for a story about a single man, a colosses

seen from different vantage points.

Al Daoud does not use the cameras lower angle in Zainabs scenes in the film,

except for once in the last scene when Zainab was walking quickly on the grass and

the camera is moving backward before her with a lower angle, which shows Zainab

as a great and powerful character. Al Daoud had not use this technique through the

film with the subordinate people, he kept Zainab in the centre of the location or in a

strong and demonstrating angle, when she was points to the events places of the

massacre in her tale.

About the importance of the characters presence in the centre of the frame,

and how this defines the characters’ importance and place, Bordwell (1993) says

about “Citizen Kane”:

Kane offers a good example of how a director chooses between alternatives.

By giving up cutting, Welles cues our attention by using deep space mise‐en‐

scene (figure behaviour, lighting, placement in space) and sound. We can

expressions because the actors play frontally. In addition, the framing

emphasizes certain figures by putting them in the foreground or in dead

center. And of course our attention bounces from one character to another

as they speak lines. Even if Welles avoids the classical Hollywood convention

of cutting in such scenes, he still uses film techniques to prompt us to make

the correct assumption and inference.



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Al Daoud met Zainab by chance in a work trip to Palestine to shoot his film

“Minarets facing destruction, 1999” about the Islamic remains in Palestine, then his

friend “Khaled AlZaghary” the Palestinian photographer told him about her, and he

went there to see her. Al‐Daoud (2009) says:

I asked her one question and she answered fluently and emotionally in a way

that shocked me and made me cry while setting in her house listening to her

experience. At that moment I realized that this is a unique humanitarian

experience that is worth documented, and this lady can alone add a new

document and certain tale for what happened in Deir Yassin, and I don’t need

any other eye witness.

Another film which portrays subordinate people is Lost in Costa Rica which

presents the story of the subordinate person Eihab Acleh opening up about himself

and the hardship he faced in his adopted country in 47 minutes. Eihab was not in

Lutfi’s plan to become a star in one of her movies about Arabs in Latin America, she

met him by chance while she was trying to cross the borders from Panama to Costa

Rica.

Eihab tells his story when he was 39 years old (According to the film’s

production in 2006). He’s an ordinary person (typical), a homeless and drug addict,

surrounded by a lot of problems. In the film he tells a story of an Arabic person in a

foreign country. Despite that this subordinate people is marginal, the director Lotfy

found that Eihab’ story looked typical, and she says:



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Eihabs’ story was typical for our work in the series about Arabs in Latin

American, this series shows successful Arabs, who blended in the new

societies which became their homelands.. The worst tragic loses they faced in

the beginning were religion changing and poverty. Eihab looked more real

and serious than many of these stories (Lotfy, [my translation], 2009].

The real life in the events place between its people was the place where the

American director Laura found the main character for her independent film “My

home land” 2006. She met the subordinate character (Dr. Riyad) in the entrance of

Abu Ghareeb jail in Iraq while she was trying to talk to the prisoners there, to

become later the star and main character for her documentary that she directed

about Iraq after the American Occupation (My country, my country, 2006).

3.4 First scene in The Agony

The first scene starts with Zainab Attyeh talking to the camera and she

explain how it is possible to forget what happened in that day in Deir Yassin, and

how she will always remember it until her soul leaves her body. She says: “I still can

vividly see what happened then as I see the camera stands before me now.”

She appears in the camera as she is talking to someone, pointing with her

hands to her eyes. There is a wall behind her, an ancient wall built of large wide

rocks like all the old Palestinian houses.



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Then, the second scene starts with Zainab moving next to this wall, which its

old rocks become clearer to the camera and an introduction of Zainab, her birth date

and the place appears on the screen. The camera moves to another scene; to one of

the villages’ roads, Zainab is walking slowly, while she’s leaning on a wall and looking

around her checking the place (Check fig 3 and fig 4, Appendix one).

After the title of the film appears on the screen, Zainab is shown to the

camera crying and calling her missing beloveds in a tone close to singing; it’s obvious

that she is talking to her father who was killed while defending himself, his family

and his land. Then she appears holding hands with a little girl, who is not facing the

camera.

In comparison Lotfy starts Lost in Costa Rica with a scene of her subordinate

person, Eihab Acleh giving the reason why he is standing in this place while the

camera presents Costa Rica streets and traffic. The last scene shows Eihab gets on

the bus that will take him back to where he came from.

The first scenes’ location is inside a bus, a medium shot for a man with a

moustache sitting on a chair in the back beside a wide window looking out side, and

vacant blue chairs behind him, also moving buses are shown in the same scene.

A voice that speaks Spanish starts to rise up, Eihab talks about where he is

going and where came from saying: “I came to Costa Rica from Panama”, and about



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the reason why he is coming to Costa Rica he says: “I would like to see my child, it’s

been 8 years since I heard of him, and I want to see my friends and my enemies…”

Eihab is wearing a white shirt with dark stripes and a silver chain in his neck,

this scene is followed by another one on the city roads, the buildings, and the new

cars, the camera turns with the bus movement inside the city, then it goes back to

Eihab in it’s first position while he continues telling the story of his life which he lost

a lot of it before finding out that “life worth’s nothing” as he says (Check fig 2,

Appendix one).

The first scene gives a clear picture about the subordinate people, its face

and clothes, but the viewer did not know the name, the background, the origin or

the culture of the character, it only shows that he speaks Spanish fluently, it also

shows the place and its nature, Costa Rica roads and streets crowded with people

and cars, this scene identifies as well the type of this trip in which the simple

character tells the problems he faced in the past, and why he came from Panama.

Lotfy in the first scene of Lost in Costa Rica does not give full answers to the

viewer about the character; Eihab does not have obvious face gestures of an eastern

or Middle Eastern person, he looks more Latin Americans, as well as his strong

Spanish language. There are question marks about this character and its origin, the

first scene attracts the viewer to know the story of this person who sits in a back seat

of a bus.



Page 49

In the other documentary film, My Country, My Country, the first scene starts

in the kitchen of the main characters (Dr. Riyad) house in Baghdad where he tries to

turn on the cooker to prepare a cup of tea, in a house with no electricity. This scene

that shows the main character without introducing him, and presents the place, the

sleeping children and his talk in the phone about the local elections in Iraq, leaves

the viewers interested to know more about the films story and the tale of this Iraqis’

character that owns a family and a house with no electricity and talks about politics.

The way to attract viewers and to give them basic elements in Lauras’ film is the

subordinate people that appear in the intro (Dr. Riyad), the circumstances of an Iraqi

family after the American occupation to Iraq, and the local Iraqi elections.

While in Lost in Costa Rica, Lotfy leaves in the first scene three open

questions to the viewers; who is the person that appears in the intro, what are his

problems and what about his lost son, and why showing this place ‐Costa Rica

streets‐ that become obvious later it is where Eihabs’ story took place.

In the introduction of the The Agony, Al Daoud presents the subordinate

people to the viewers through showing information about it; its name, the date and

the place of birth on black screen, then he points to the major issues of the film; the

place “Deir Yassin” and the horrible massacre after the first scene. The issue of the

film is that the massacre, this important event in the Palestinian history, will be told

and presented from the point of view of the subordinate person, a lady in her

seventies who lived the event, and not through politicians or the news.



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Al Daoud uses many cuts in the film editing to add information on a black

background about the subordinate people “Zainab”, and to point the reality and

truth that’s told by Zainab in her story like when using the phrase “Between agony

and reality it’s an eye blink”. He also uses this method when changing locations with

Zainabs’ movement in the villages’ roads between houses.

Al Daoud uses 14 scenes in the introduction of the film in a minute and 40

seconds (10 seconds for each scene) before Zainab starts her story about the Zionist

attack on the village. The camera is concerned about Zainabs’ natural reactions, as

it’s obvious in its recording to Zainabs’ moves and looks around the place, specially

those scenes where she walks beside the high rocky wall leaning on it, and her eyes

checking the place around, and the scene when she stands in front of her fathers’

house under the sun crying him and calling her brother. This is what Vertovs’ ‐the

Russian director‐ vision and theory goes to in the real cinema, which presents the

reality and the truth as it is and as it happens.

The camera, according to Vertov has no limitations, he believes it to “have

the capability that humans do not, to perceive life and, furthermore, to organise its

chaos into a meaningful whole.” (Fischer, 1977). He writes the following in his own

manifesto on filmmaking in 1922:

We discover the souls of the machine, we are in love with the worker at his

bench, we are in love with the farmer on his tractor, the engineer on his

locomotive. We bring creative joy into every mechanical activity. We make

peace between man and the machine (Armour, no year).



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In the introduction of Man with The Movie Camera (1929), Vertov’s explain

to the viewers:

(An excerpt from the diary of a cameraman). Attention viewers: this film

represents in itself an experiment in the cinematic communication of visible

events. Without the aid of intertitles (a film without intertitles). Without the

aid of scenario (a film without a script). Without the aid of theater (a film

without sets, actors, etc.) (Petric, 1993).

Al‐Daoud remarks about The Agony:

This film is a spontaneous tale coming from the heart about a humanitarian

experience that’s full of emotions and sorrow. Hajjah Zainab Ismaeel Attyeh

went through this experience with her family and her villages in Deir Yassin,

and since then her memory stayed fresh and retain every details, and as we

went into her village together after this long time she started moving alone

from one place to another, standing and setting there, sometimes she talks,

sometimes she sings, and sometimes she cries. When we decided to produce

this film we wanted it to be a historical documentation, with some politics,

and much of humanitarian experiences and tales, and without Al Hajja

Zainab, we couldn’t do that (Al‐Daoud, email message to the author, 2009).

Regarding to the above mentioned issue Sameer Ateyah (2007) explains:

Our witness walks in the villages’ roads, pointing to the right and left, looking

up and down, and acting spontaneously, raising the love towards those who



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left her as a witness on the time that the Zionists is trying to bury it, by

turning the village into clinics and psychological hospital.

Al Daoud in The Agony uses brown and green colours which emphasise the

ancient and historical sense in the scenes, where Zainab or the old houses and roads

can give the audience a feeling that the film is telling something from the past. My

argument is supported by Mohammad Bal Hajj as he remarks:

The colours used by the directors like the sepia (unnatural brown) or black

and white (as one colour) is an artistic need, which is used to give the work a

flavour that matches with its historical nature, and to retrieve the memory in

an attractive way (Mohammad Bal Hajj, [my translation], 2009).

The documentary film From Palestine’s Roots, which was produced by Al

Jazeera documentary channel (Doha) and directed by Mohammad BalHajj, uses this

type of colors; the unnatural brown, in telling a historical side in the life of the

creator of the Palestinian liberation organization “Ahmad Al Shoqairy” (Al Jazeera

documentary channel, 2009).

Al‐Daoud unified the colors used of the real scenes he shot, and the available

old historical scenes about the massacre, which helps in effecting the viewers and

increasing their concentration, and in minimizing the chance of disconnecting the

harmony in the films’ artistic and intellectual value by any differences in the scenes’

nature or color.



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The Agony looks special with its colors and its style in mixing between

Zainabs’ real tale and between the old historical scenes that documents the

massacre and supports Zainabs’ witness. The viewer watches and follows Zainabs

story with eyes and heart (Al Daoud, 2009). Al Daoud didn’t use this one color style

in any of his previous films or the ones he directed after The Agony. The film

depends on the natural lightning in the location, and didn’t use any external lighting

equipments (Al Daoud, 2009), and this supports the reality of the scenes.

3.5 The last scene

Here a presentation of the last scenes in The Agony will be delivered, and I

will go back to analyze other scenes which the subordinate people talk of to

information, political and social relations, in addition to the scenes and scripts that

rises and praises the Palestinian resistance against the occupation in chapter four.

The importance of the closer appears when the colors changes from the unnatural

brown that’s used in all scenes and moving the subordinate character from the past

into the present and showing its point of view and vision in the Palestinian Israeli

conflict as conclusion and a wisdom Al Daoud closes his film with.

In the last scene of the film, and after Zainab reviews the names of those who

were killed from her family and neighbors; men, women, and children by the Zionist

gangs and the Zionist settlers, the director presents facts about the massacre; its

date and time in consequence lines with a background that shows Zainab walking

towards a tree on the road side, a big old wall for some of the Arabic houses of Deir



Page 54

Yassin, side of the road and some trees, then the picture starts transferring from one

color into colors but still stamped with sad and sorrow.

The scene where Zainab sets in trees shadows, resting from an ugly and

painful tale saying her last words to the camera as a comment of what happened.

Zainab sets on the side of the road under a tree, and then the camera transfers from

medium shot to Zainab with green leaves behind her and a red rose on her left.

Zainab starts talking to the camera and pointing to her chest and telling the

wisdom she drew out of this cruel massacre that she was an eyewitness of it and

says: “They killed us and betrayed us… they killed our children and men, and they

took our land… how can we agree on peace with such people?!” she asks in

deprecation.

Then the director takes a shoot of the only far red rose in the middle of the

camera, then he goes back to Zainab who sets between the green leaves and a huge

tree, and continues her talk by giving an example of the Zionists betrayal and

perfidy; “Like who keeps a snake inside his cloths near to his chest”, and the

impossibility of making any deals of peace with them as long as they are killing, and

occupying their land, Zainab says: “they are not trustable”, and she describes them

as Islam’s enemies.

Zainab ends her talk saying: “your grand enemy can never like you, even if

you worship him as your Gods”, she assures the impossibility of the coexistence



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between the victim and the executioner, the one who has the right and the intruder,

which is the conclusion the director wanted to emphasize of Zainab, the old lady

who witnessed the massacres, and through the camera accompanying her.

In an indication to the strong relation between Palestinians and their land,

the subordinate people in The Agony sets on the ground in the last scene near to one

of the old villages’ houses, telling her vision and wisdom of the conflict happening on

the Palestine land, the land and the tree that Zainab talked to and kissed in the

beginning of the film.

Also, in Lost in Costa Rica, the last scene ends in the bus, which is the same

location the film had started with, but before that Eihab is talking about his wish to

build a Masjid in Costa Rica and give it the name of his son whom he couldn’t visit, so

maybe when he grows up he can read his name on the Masjid, perhaps this symbol

might make him look for his family and his origin. The bus scene in Lost in Costa Rica

starts and ends with symbolizes the subordinate people motion, where Eihab keeps

walking in the streets between drugs addicts and homeless people all through the

film. Lotfy says about using the same elements in the first and the last scenes of her

film:

The meaning of the bus scene in the beginning is that Eihab is moving on, he

will be telling his story while he’s walking to prepare the viewers

physiologically on both levels the physical and spiritual to the Journey he will

go through, he gets down from the bus, and blend in the crowded street



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where his story/ journey started, in the last scene we see the end of Eihabs’

journey when he got the new passport (Lotfy, [my translation], 2009].

A similar case is viewed in My Country, My Country, the film ends at the same

place it started with, the subordinate person Dr. Riyad comes back home after the

Election Day ended in Baghdad and sets between his family members who are

speaking to him spontaneously while watching television, then he goes inside when

they inform him, they haven’t prepared supper.

Lotfy says about using the same shot of the intro in the end of the film again:

A good way to show the changes happened to someone is through watching

the same opening scene but in a new context, to help the viewer understand

how the character and his life had change, as laying two different moments

over each other to understand the difference between them (Lotfy, 2009).

The Agony appears in colors in the last three minutes, which tells the results

of the massacre and the total number of dead in Zainab’s family, to emphasize the

importance of martyrdom in the Palestinian society, in an indication to the end of

the historical narration for what happened in Deir Yassin, conclude the results and

the lesson learned, and talk about the reign situation (Al Daoud, 2009).

The last scene of The Agony, summarizes the Palestinian Israeli conflict as

described by Zainab and its land and outfit that matches with the place and looks

originally like a part of it; she walks in it and talks about houses parts, yards, mills,



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stones and trees as she knows it in details, while the camera shoots someone who

looks totally stranger with his face lineaments, black outfit and the western Jewish

hats walking between the old walls. The difference looks obvious here to whom

really this land and village belong with its stones and architecture, and who is the

stranger who came to capture it from far distances. The last scene is full of values

and ideologies about fighting the invaders and not accepting defeat or even set

peace with the unfaithful enemy who killed our beloveds.

The film closes with a short song in Arabic about hopeless women in

Palestine. And again the director reviews different scenes for the massacre location

in Deir Yassin and for Zainab standing next to her villages closed houses, by the

occupation state (Israel) orders, trying to look inside, and to her crying over her lost

beloved ones.

The Agony is based on the true story, a real character, and a real place that is

still standing until today despite of all the blasts and destroy happened to its houses.

The director showed the facts as said by Zainab or through the historical scenes that

gives information about the massacre but in a special vision and style that

emphasizes the value of Zainabs’ tale, and her memories and emotions about the

people and the place.

The style of the film is so close to Vertov’s Man with The Movie Camera is

works that exemplify the extent to which Vertov was willing to put his theories of

Film‐Eye into practice. Vertov films the city waking up, by shooting normal ordinary



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people; some sleeping out side, train workers cleaning the railways, painting it with

oil, and directing carriages, miners rushing to work, an old lady crying at the grave of

one of her beloveds, and a real funeral passing by girls in cigarettes factory, hands on

typing machines, calling central workers.

Vertov presented the reality of the place and human movement in Soviet

Union who lived its five years industrial plan, and he used editing in a well studies

way to present an artistic image of the soviet human harmony with the new lifestyle

(Man with the Movie Camera, 1929).

The Agony revealed in the director interfering in the films editing, beside his

concerns in bringing up the actual reality to present eventually a cinematically

artistic beautiful piece. He also uses the archive and mixes it into the film to highlight

its message and idea, in addition to using still photographs with the actual voice of

the subordinate character in the film (Al Daoud, 2009).

3.6 Zainab, a woman and a lonely narrator in The Agony

The subordinate person in The Agony is the only character and the only star

that speaks about the massacre of Deir Yassin and the political events in 1948. This

film is considered as a form of the one person cinema or “characters portray

cinema”, this form of cinema came out in Palestine in the early 90’s, it gives a wide

space to one character to talk and represent its experience and to tells its point of

view (Ibrahim, 2006).



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The different in what Al Daoud presented in The Agony is the character

nature that did all the talk and filled all the space in the film. It’s used in these kinds

of films that the main character is a significant politician or an important person in

the community. There are some examples of films that presented women as stars,

and main narrators for their personal experiences, like in Hanan Ashrawi’s film “A

woman in a challenging time” directed by Mai Al Masri in 1995 about the academic

and politician Hanan Ashrawi, and in “Fadwa… A Palestinian Poet Story” a film by the

director Leyana Bader 1999 about the poet Fadwa Tokan, and “Laila… The Orange

Tree” a film by the director Rola Mansour 2000 about the fighter Laila Khaled, and

“Homeland for free” a film by the director Mareez Grogour 2001, and “Abu Salma” a

film by Yahya Barakat 1982 (Ibrahim, 2006).

Zainab is an ordinary and normal person in a community, not a politician, an

academic, or a poet, but Al Daoud gave her all the space to talk about her personal

experience of what happened in the past, and her conclusions about what is going

on today and the nature of the conflict in Palestine. She runs the tale and

commenting the moment she reaches her village with the director, and remembers

the place and all the past. (Al Daoud, 2009).

Zainab looked strong from the first scene Al Daoud had chosen to start his

film with Zainab talking about the impossibility to forget what happened in the

village, then she walks between the houses and the rocks that’s stands there as

witnesses of the history. She’s strong with a confident voice pointing to her eyes to

confirm her ability to transfer a huge political event as the massacre of Deir Yassin.



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Al Daoud presents her talking about where the Zionists entered the village near to

the mills, she is standing in the middle of the screen talking about the resistance of

her village people, before the road that connects the village with the Jewish

surrounding settlers was cut.

Another film which portrays women is “the Spiders web” film that was

produced by Al Haq institution in Ramallah‐Palestine in 2004 and directed by Hanna

Musleh, which came in an international campaign against the collective castigations

performed by the occupying Israel against the Palestinian civilians.

Musleh presents two main stories in his film; the first was about Maysoun

Saleh Hayek from Nablus, whom the Israeli army killed her husband on one of the

barriers while he was trying to transport her to the hospital to give birth to their first

child, she tells what happened with her after the shooting on their car and the

murder of her husband when the soldiers undressed her to make sure she is not

wearing a weapon or a blowing belt, then threw her on the road side naked until she

was transferred to the hospital. The second story is about Um Saa’ds family from the

old city in Al Khaleel (Hebron) who is suffering daily from the Jewish settlers assaults

who are capturing houses attached or above Um Saa’ds Home under the protection

the Israeli army.

In the Spiders Web starts with a scene for a military Israeli barrier, and a

Palestinian lady in her traditional costume and white scarf on her head and

shoulders hold a big black plastic bag, and the Israeli soldier points to her to go back,



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and she has nothing to do but to return with no reactions, then the camera moves to

a group of men waiting, and one of them is shouting at the Israeli soldier in Hebrew

telling him “I do not work for you!”.

In the first scene Maysoun appears fighting her tears to fall and talks about

her helplessness, followed by a scene for Um Saa’d who speaks about her fear and

terror, while the camera moves to the walls and the ceiling of her home while she

continues her short talk before the title of the film appears on the screen.

Both Maysoun and Um Saa’d tells their personal stories with the occupation

in “In the spiders web” film, they perform regular house work; Maysoun tells her

story from the kitchen while she is washing the dishes, or she’s spending time with

her child, as well as Um Saa’d whom the camera shot her in her kitchen or in the

children clinic with her child.

On the other hand Zainab in The Agony walks in a complete freedom,

followed by Al Daouds camera, she sometimes asks the camera to follow her to

show it a place for something happened there, as she did when she talked about the

place Holwa Zeidans daughters hid from the Jewish gangs, and as she suddenly

stopped her tale and went to set on the rocky stairs when she remembered her

brother Mahmoud who was killed defending his village, that’s when she starts

talking to him. That’s how the director let the subordinate people run the event and

the story, and let her shift from one topic to another spontaneously, while the

camera is following her wherever she goes.



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Mysoun and Um Saa’d in The Spiders Web tell their personal experiences

with the occupation that touched certain parts in their lives, meanwhile an external

voice comments on the political situation related to the film, he speaks about the

military barriers, the roads, and the settlement crawling after Oslo agreement. While

Zainab over passes this style completely, the director excluded any external

comments and left Zainab in the villages’ scenes to be the only narrator of the event

she is related to. Her story does not stop at her personal experience she witnessed

or her talk about her family members and what happened in the houses of the

village, but Al Daoud gave her a wide space to comment and speak about the

important battles like Al‐ Qastal, and the role of leading in the resistance then,

without any external interfere from political experts or any commenting on her point

of view.

Although Zainab is a regular person in her society and an old woman, all

these weakness signs gathered in a narrators personality that comments on a

political event in the middle east, but the director presented her as an excellent

qualified narrator, who can tell a side of the history, document it, and draw

conclusions from her strong point of view that’s supported by her experiences and

sacrifices of her family members whom were slaughtered in front of her eyes in the

massacre, in addition to her strong memory and interacting with the place.

Al Daoud seems interested in Zainabs emotional and humanitarian

interaction with the memories of her relatives, he documents these moments,



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words, and songs she says as she was overwhelmed with passion to the past and to

her beloveds. We can notice this is clearly in the scene when she talks to her father

and brother crying, and describing her brother in nice words as “a crown”. Al Daoud

seems very interested in these humanitarian details in the main characters’ life in his

film.



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CHAPTER FOUR

ANALYSIS OF DEIR YASSIN...THE AGONY (2)

THE REALITY AND THE IDEOLOGY OF THE FILM

4.1 Introduction

In this chapter I will describe the elements of the real cinema theory in The

Agony, and provide a representation of the facts and the information mentioned by

the subordinate people and the main narrator.

It will focus at the facts and the images presented in the Agony by the

subordinate people; especially the political circumstances at the time of the

character attended, in addition to the characters social relations which easily can be

observed and understood by the audience. Also this chapter will present scenes and

scripts that’s connected to a specific ideology or strengthening a certain political

vision either of the subordinate character or the director. And also I will use Lost in

Costa Rica by Hala Lotfy, and My country, My country by Laura will be use cross

references.

4.2 The Cinema Reality in The Agony

According to McConnell (1997):

Cinema verite films are usually shot with light, easily portable, inexpensive

equipment, hand‐held cameras, actual locations, real people (not actors) and

a relatively small budget. The films are usually shot without a script and

assembled later in editing (McConnell, 1997).



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Thus there will be a discussion on the relation between The Agony, and

Vertovs’ style and the elements of cinema varite, followed by a presentation the

editing issue and the real shots first, then a discussion about other elements; the

comments, music and lighting in the second point.

4.2.1 Shots, Montage and Reality

Al Daoud presents real images for the place of the massacre. He takes

pictures of the roads, houses, rocks, and stoned arcs in various shots including close

up and long shots. He also adds real historical scenes for the massacre in the editing.

The camera follows the subordinate people to the place where she tells her story of

her family, and how they were slaughtered after the break down of the Zionists, for

example, the scene when she narrates of her youngest brother Musa.

In the famous film Man with The Movie Camera produced in 1928, by the a

prominent in the Russian documentary filmmaker Deziga Vertov, in this 137 minutes

silent film, the director displays the daily routine in Russia after the Bolshevik

revolution. The film tells the story of a photographer who travels around the USSR

from one city to another like Moscow, Kiev and Audessa. It depicts a lot of images of

life signs at dawn when the places starts to awake when people commencing their

daily activities; normal people and carriages in the city, workers, farmers, theater, a

lady in a beauty salon, another waking up, a third one gives birth at the hospital,

different scenes for children playing, trains, new wedded couples, and another

finishing their divorce papers.



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Vertov in Man with the Movie Camera blended reality with beauty, and he

seemed concerned in editing as well. Vertov who became one of the pioneers in the

reality cinema because of his theory that considers the camera as a humans’ eye that

witnesses the reality and the truth, believes that dramatic cinema which is

represented in the Hollywood production is like opium that sedates people.

Vertrov theory inspired new film makers who are interested in

documentaries from all around the world, and became an essential way for the

international cinema like the French reality cinema, the Brazilian “Novo cinema”, and

the Danish “Dogma 95”. Those are the contumacious groups against the Hollywood

monopolization, that broke all the know rules in the traditional cinema, either by

skipping the beautiful decoration, the lighting, and other thing, or through

depending on the extreme reality and the location script improvising (Hani, 2004).

McConnell (1997) provided a statement about the reality cinema and his

views being on the other side of Hollywood:

The key difference between the Hollywood‐type fiction/fantasy film and the

cinema verite film is the respective goals of each. While the Hollywood film is usually

aimed at creating a fantasy of some kind which will be sufficiently attractive to the

mass audience that millions of them will come to the movie theater and pay enough

admission charges so the film can make back its multi‐million dollar budget and

make a profit on top of that, the cinema verite film is aimed at showing the

mundane truth of peoples’ everyday lives and the social context in which they live



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their lives. Cinema verite is part of the broader artistic tradition of realism and the

cinematic tradition of documentary film making. These realistic traditions in are

aimed at showing man’s real situation in life rather than at providing him with an

escapist fantasy experience which and audience will enjoy watching and will pay for

by coming out to the movies in very large numbers. Realism and cinema verite try to

show man as he is and the world as it is because the film maker often has a social

conscience and sometimes a political agenda. His purpose is to enlighten his

audience, to show them the truth a he sees it, so they will have the information they

need to live better lives or to, in some cases, to take political action to right the

wrongs the film maker often exposes.

The Reality Cinema is the real peoples’ cinema or “the public cinema”.

According to Amer Omari:

The reality cinema registers the events in reality with the least possible

interference from the director; making the camera rolling as a silent witness,

using the longs shots as basic element to build the films’ structure, without

any manipulating in the images and the shots in editing, and without forcing

people to react their daily life but only filming their natural behaviours

(Omari, 2007).

In The Agony Al Daoud used in the films editing 20 seconds scene maximum,

he added historical scenes for the massacres’ details. The main character tells a lot of

the events while she is standing on her feet pointing to certain places and directions.



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Al Dawood mixed the beauty and the reality as in the Russian documentary school,

and specially Vertov’s School of thoughts. Al Daoud (2009) says:

I worked hard in editing the film to give it a beautiful artistic cinematic sense,

as I used the Archive and filled it with new content of my own filming

pictures, to emphasize my idea and the films message… I support the

cinematic documentary films that present reality and filled with spiritual and

self creativity.

In his film Al Daoud depended on the real place of the event where the

camera followed the character Zainab who he relied on to recount her story and

spontaneous reactions with the place, therefore he stated that:

The film is a spontaneous story that comes from the heart for a humanitarian

experience full of emotions and passion, Al Hajja Zainab went through it with

her family and the rest of Deir Yassin' people, and since then her memory

didn’t forget any detail. As she enters the village after such a long time she

starts talking, and sometimes crying while she walks alone from one place to

another (Al Daoud, 2009).

In Hala Lotfy’s Lost in Costa Rica, the shots seems longer when she tells the

story of the main character Eihab, while he is walking in the streets between addicts

and homeless. Lotfy provided wide space in the film for homeless lives as they are,

and few shots for addicts. She followed Eihab in his visits to the places he used to go

to, and in his tries to see his son in the school or in his mother’s family house, also in

the passports issuing offices trying to get a new one. This film that documents Eihabs



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reality and problems came by chance, without any preparation or prewritten

scenario (Lotfy, 2009).

There were few problems in shooting this film, Eihab for example tried to

visit his son in the school which is also his mothers' house, but was stopped by

police. They arrested and detained him. Although Lotfy repeated the shot of

arresting Eihab in front of his ex‐wife house by using professional actor but she

didn’t use this scene in order not to ruin the reality and spontaneously of the film,

and about the characters reality and the spontaneous scenes Lotfy claimed:

There wasn’t a scenario prepared for the film at the beginning, we were in a

bus trip from Panama where we spent about a month there coming to Costa

Rica to complete shooting films for the series… we stopped at the borders at

night but the employee didn’t let us pass without a bribery as “Kenith” –a

drug addict and a homeless person, who recommended his Arab friend Eihab.

He brought him to us, this was his first time crossing the borders after the

long treatment period in Panama, Eihab looked sneaky and I almost said he is

a liar, but the way he told us his story, I liked it very much, I told the team, we

will shoot Eihab when he’s telling his story for the first time. We can’t risk

losing the spontaneous sense if he said it twice, so we followed Eihab and

didn’t tell him what to do except in the basic things like not looking at the

camera. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of time when the police wanted to arrest

him twice at his sons’ school and in front of his x‐wife’s house. We also

couldn’t risk losing the camera if they took it, but in the last day we repeated

the scene of him going back to the house and getting arrested, but I didn’t



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use this shot in the editing because it wasn’t real. we knew the story lines

then, and knew that the end will be in the ID issuing offices, but we wasn’t

sure if they we will give Eihab a new passport or not. We followed him

anyway, and he sure that he will get it because we are with him, and he did

(Lotfy, 2009).

Although there are mot much editing interruptions in Lost in Costa Rica, it’s

used when Lotfy cuts Eihab walk in the street more than once, but that’s important

to emphasize the films case and its anxious nature of the troubles that surrounds

Eihab, the main character, in relation of this Lotfy said:

Usually I don’t like fast editing, or having too many cuts in the film, I like the

natural story flowing in documentaries with the minimum range of

interruptions, but in this film particularly it was necessary to reflect the stress

in the main characters live, and the conflict inside and around it.. of course if

we were making a film about an old migratory who sets in his office, then

goes back to his grandchildren to tell them how he came back, we would

depended more on the camera movement than cutting, but in Eihabs’ case

there is so much confusion inside and around him, stress was necessary, and

therefore we cut the same shot more than once as you notice. That suited

the story telling. Each story has a different way to present (Lotfy, 2009)

In Laura Poitras’ My Country, My Country long shots are used, where the

camera follows the event and the subordinate character Dr. Riyad without any cuts

in the editing, and that’s obvious in Dr. Riyad scene near to Abu Ghreebs jail talking



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to prisoners and writings down their cases and problems, the moving from one place

to another with his friends or with the American soldiers and one talking to Iraqis

prisoners behind the fence or discussing with one of the American soldiers the

reason to arrest children under 18 and the scene still going.

As well as in the clinic where he works, with his patients and their families in

one long shot, also a long shots in his house between his family members having a

natural conversation.

Long shots style and avoiding continuous cuts in editing the film without an

accepted excuse –as in Poitras’ My Country, My Country gives a clearer image on the

reality and details, and supports the ongoing reality. The long scenes are one of the

main characteristics of the real cinema which raises the value of the subordinate

people when it is the main character, as in The Agony and Lost in Costa Rica,

whereas it provides wide space for humanitarian feelings, and supports the ordinary

human spontaneity in the place and supports the films case as well.

4.2.2 Other elements supporting cinema reality in The Agony

The commentary and the music used:

The subordinate person in The Agony speaks all through the film. Zainab tells

history and the political event, and the experiences of her family and the village

without any interruption from anyone. The director uses a song that describes the

Palestinian woman reality and suffering, performed by “Ayman Ramadan” and



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“Abdel Fattah O’wenat”, who praises and defends the homeland in this particular

Palestinian traditional song.

However, In Lost in Costa Rica, there isn’t any external commentary, the only

narrator is the main character Eihab in addition to some short words given by some

people in Eihab life. In her commitment to stick to reality and truth Lotfy used Rock

music that the subordinate is fiond of, to express the characters mood. It’s a

Moroccan Arabic song with a western feel form an Algerian band MBS. Lotfy

commented:

I always believe it’s important to know the characters’ favorite music as extra

information that helps me to better understand the person, and eventually

film him as close as possible to his reality… What happened is that I asked

Eihab to bring me copies of the music he listens to, to use it in the film, Eihab

told me that he likes rock music the best, and that was obvious from the shirt

he was wearing… He brought us the copies but the format was different, so it

took us long time to convert it before we could listen to it, Eihab had left

then. In the collection, I heard music for the MBS Algerian band, and

immediately I felt the sadness and the anger mixture in the music that

matches Eihabs’ personality mood (Lotfy, 2009).

Additionally in My Country, My Country, Laura used a song and music for the

famous Iraqi musician “Kazim Al Sahir” to express the reality and the truthful of the

normal and subordinate people scenes she shows in her film which speaks about

Iraq under the American occupation. Kazim says in his song lyrics about Iraq, his



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native “Good Morning my country.. When will your wounds recover?” (My Country,

My Country, 2006)

Lighting and camera:

In The Agony, Al Daoud did not utilize artificial lighting, he depends on the

natural lighting in the location (Al Daoud, 2009). This keeps the scenes realistic and

truthful, and did not miss with single spontaneous talk and motion of the

subordinate people in the film. Also Al Daoud uses one camera and one cameraman

“Mo’nes Zahalqa” in The Agony (The Agony, 1999).

According to Johnson‐Cartee (1991):

In the cinema verite style “the camera is looking in on unstaged

conversation” and natural lighting frequently is used…Cinema verite ads use

ordinary people and give a greater scene of realism.

4.3 Facts and information said by the subordinate people

This film presents different information either by the subordinate people and

main character Zainab, or through the camera lens which follows Zainab and shows

the village features, or through the old historical scenes of the battle, victims and

gangs’ members in still images.

But the film essentially presents two categories of documented information;

the first is the general political event in Palestine, which was then under the British

mandate then, suffering from the ethnic cleansing process of its native citizens and



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awfully sending them away, that is accompanied with presenting historical

information about Palestine’s war before establishing of Israel.

The second category, which sounds more important, is the social

documentation of Deir Yassin village and the deep relationship between its families.

It shows the villages’ population nature in the time of the crime which Zainab

describes spontaneously as shown in the film.

I will highlight in two points some documented information Zainab had

presented in the film, and recorded by the camera; the first point is about the

historical and political information in the time of this crime, and the other is about

the social information about families situations and Zainabs’ family destiny.

4.3.1 Historical and political information

This film presents some information pertaining to the general political

situation in the time of the massacre, in addition to the historical information about

its circumstances. I will give an overview of the attack on Deir Yassin and the

weapons used in the battles, Al‐Qastal battle, the massacre, and how the massacre is

imperative to the Zionists:

4.3.1.1 Attacking the village

Zainab talks about the Zionist attack on Deir Yassin on 9 April 1948, she

describes how the civilians destroyed the bridge connecting the the village with the

surrounding Jewish settlements, after three times that the resistance had defeated



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the attack on the village. And she talks about how they entered the village at 3 am

from three different locations and how they took over the wheat mills.

On 9 April 1948, Menachem Begin, the future Prime Minister of Israel, led a

group of Jewish terrorists known as the Irgun, into the rural village of Deir Yassin and

massacred men, women and children. The number was officially recorded as 254

with more recent studies estimating the figures at around 100, but either way, the

terror tactics used were sadistic – bodies were stuffed down wells after the women

were raped and the men mutilated, and mounds of corpses went on public display to

frighten off the Palestinians in other villages. Deir Yassin was not the largest

massacre, but it was deliberately well publicised to serve as a horrific example of

what Palestinians could expect to happen to them. Thirty‐two other massacres were

perpetrated throughout that year and hundreds of villages were forcibly cleared of

their inhabitants helping to systematically cleanse (so described by the Zionists

themselves) Palestine (Pappe, 2006).

Zainab stands between the villages’ houses and walls pointing at certain

objects, while the director uses some maps and moving arrows showing the gangs

surrounding the village and their movements to entered it. Then Zainab appears

again between trees pointing to one of the places that the gangs entered from and

in the same time the director uses old historical pictures for the battle and the

armed gangs.



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Zainab compares as well, while talking, between the weapons used by each

side, she mentioned the guns used by her father and brother against the cannons

that was used by the Zionists. The director supports Zainabs description of pictures

of old military ironclads which was used in the battles, against the Palestinian

warriors who used simple equipments, wearing plain costume, and hiding behind the

barricades they’ve prepared.

The director used what’s available of still photographs and real scenes of the

historical massacre and what happened in the village to back up Zainabs’ story, and

he used editing to add these pictures in a suitable place that accompanies Zainab

story to the camera.

Using old historical scenes from the archive in a reasonable and artistic way

in the films editing, increases the chances to making it more enjoyable and

persuadable, and more successful, and it also doesn’t affect the documentary’s

reality (Al Daoud, 2009).

4.3.1.2 Al‐Qastal Battle

Al‐Qastal is a village near to Al‐Quds (Jerusalem); it was captured by the

Zionist gangs before the battle that was led by the Palestinian leader Abdel‐Qader Al

Husaini, to set it free from occupation.

Al Qastal battle stayed for a whole 4 days from the 4th until the 8th of

April, 1948, and ended when the resistance took the Arabic town back



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but only for few hours before the Zionists attack again and capture the

town after the death of the Arabs leader “Abdel‐Qader” on the morning

of the 8th of April 1948, after (Arab Orient Center for Studies, [my

translation], 2003).

Zainab tells the historical side of Al Qastal battle and how her people

participated in it before their village was attacked. She remembers how Abdel‐

Qader fought the Zionist and set Al Qastal free, and how he became a martyr

after that. She talks about his death but wondering: “Maybe he was betrayed

by Arabs!”

The director uses montage to show a document signed by Abdel‐Qader to the

league of Arab states in Egypt, asking them to be responsible of all the battles and

what will happen in Palestine after leaving its people without help and weapons in

the time they were winning and the Zionist were being defeated. Then the director

shows montages of the leader Abdel‐Qader picture in his military uniform.

In an exclusive interview on Al‐Jazeera channel by the journalist “Sami

Kolaib” with Ghazi, Abdel‐Qader’s son, he points out the last letter to Abdel‐Qader

which is a memo sent to the league of Arab states in April, 6th 1948, he asks the son

about what he has to say about this letter, and he answers: “My father was killed

defending Jerusalem and Muslims but all the Arabs failed to support him” (Al‐

Jazeera, 2006).

4.3.1.3 The massacre and its victims



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The Israeli affairs researcher “Nawaaf Zaru” mentioned that the

representative of the red cross in Jerusalem Jack Rene’ who visited Deir Yassin in

April 11th, three days after the massacre declared that victims count exceeded 350

people (Zaru, 2008).

As pointed out in history and according to researchers, many of the victims

were either children or women, in addition to the eradication of entire families of

that black day. Zainab tells the audience of what she witnessed during this

eradication, like what happened in house of Mustafa Ali when the Zionist killed 27

people at once, or what happened in Mohammed Zahrans’ house when they aborted

two pregnant women, they both were called (Zainab) by stamping them in their

tummies then killing them. She also tells how (Helwa Yosef) found her husband and

son murdered, as well as a four years old girl. Her little brother “Musa”; whom she

tried to pay off his life with the 250 pounds she had in her bucket, but the Zionist

soldier took the money and shot him five times in his forehead.

Entire families were shot against the walls, young girls were raped, a

pregnant woman was slaughtered, and when a small girl tried to take the baby she

also was shot. the Irgun members cut the dead bodies with their knives, women’s

ears and hands were also cut to steal their jewelries, children’s hands and legs where

chopped, the school was destroyed and the teacher was killed.

The Red Cross found 254 dead bodies on April 10th 1948, more than the half

of the victims were women and children; 25 women was pregnant, and 52 children



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under the age of 10. The colonel “maa’er Baa’eel” who was one of the Igruns,

described in an interview in “Edio’ot Ihrenout” the Zionist newspaper in April 4th,

1972, what he saw “In the afternoon, after execution stopped, the invaders started

evacuating the houses, and cough up 25 men (Al Sahli, 2007).

4.3.1.4 The significance of the massacre to the Zionists

There is sign in this film to how this massacre was important to the Zionists

and the Jewish living in Palestine; the director shows that by montage when he

reviews the declaration of (Manaheem Peagin) the previous prime minister of Israel ‐

who was one of the Zionist gangs leaders ‐ with a consequence images in the

background lining up beside each other: “This massacre was as important as if

without it we couldn’t declare the establishment of Israel state”.

This information is proved by the writings and the declarations of the Zionists

leaders, specially “Peagin” who mentioned this massacre proudly in his book “The

contumacy”: this mission had great and unexpected results, the Arabs were shocked,

and started running away in panic, out of 800 thousand Arabs lived on the current

Israeli land (Palestine land in 1948) only 165 thousands were left, and proudly Pegin

believes that this mission served the Zionist party and says: “it caused magnificent

victories on the wars’ field” (Zaru, 2008).

Peagin said at the time: "We created terror among the Arabs and all the

villages around. In one blow, we changed the strategic situation." (AFP, 2007; Pappe,

2006). According to Australian for Palestine organization (2007):



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Israel has employed both brutish and sophisticated tactics to drive

Palestinians out from the cities, towns and villages that have been home to

them and their ancestors for generations.

4.3.2 Social relations, Information and image of the families of Deir Yassin

Zainab, while her spontaneous and mixed talk between political and

historical, about the awful scenes of the massacre and what the Zionist had done,

presents an important side of the social reality in the village and documents the

families, the houses, and their stance from the aggression. Through Zainab and her

reactions toward what happened, we can see deep humanitarian images about the

strength nature of the relation in the Palestinian family, and the depth of

Palestinians’ tragedy because of losing their families and their beloved ones.

Reviewed bellow some of the social information driven from Zainabs’ talk in

the film, documenting families, their stance from aggression, and Zainabs’ relation

with her parents.

4.3.2.1 Documenting village families, their homes, and the way they were attacked

and killed

Zainab mentions many families and names in her village and what happened

to them in the massacre, some of these families documented by this film.

Zedan family:



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Zainab points at Mrs. Holwa Zedan house, and the camera shows the high

house with its side rocky stairs that leads to it. Then Zainab points at the front yard,

the place where the family was slaughtered, and she starts to call their names and

their relation with Holwa; her son, her husband, her brother in law and her

husbands’ wife.

In the scene, the camera goes back to the house where some tall palm tree

by its side stand erected, then Zainab continuous talks about Holwa’s daughters who

ran hiding from the Zionist gangs and asks the unseen person to follow her to show

him where they hid. The camera follows her to a closed door where the girls hid

there for four days between the dung and wastes waiting without drink or food, for

the hen to hatch egg to feed them to the little hungry baby.

Al Shareef family:

Zainab walking between her villages’ houses, talks about another family, its

Abu Husni Al Shareef family, they are originally from Hebron, but they lived in Deir

Yassin and owned a bakery there. Zainab remembers how the Zionist br into the

bakery and put the family’s’ baby in the oven, and when the father tries to save him,

they kill him as well.

The attack started from house to house, while the children were sleeping in

their mothers laps, and as “Manaheem Peagin” says about the massacre: “Defending

their houses, and their children and women with all the strength they had”, Jewish

blasted every house they entered, then they warned to the people if they will not



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ran away, they will be killed! People believed the call and left their houses in panic

crying for help, that’s when the Shtern and Irgun gangs took the chance and killed

every one their guns could reach.The British officer who investigated the massacre

said:

There are many cases where women were raped by the attacking Jewish, and

there are many students who were sexually abused then killed with no

mercy, as well as old ladies… (Zaru, 2008).

4.3.2.2 Zainabs’ family stance

Zainab talks a lot about her family members, once when she talks about their

stance of the aggression, and once again when she remembers them and tries to talk

to them. She starts her story standing in the middle of her village crying over her

family and calling her father. Then she tells what her father “Mohammed Ismael

Attyeh” and her brother “Mahmoud Mohammed Ismael Attyeh” did to defend the

village with their guns, and how they were murdered by cannons shots which caused

her father injuries in his forehead and killed him immediately, and her brother in

head but he wasn’t dead until the invaders entered the village and killed him.

She also mentions how she hid with her daughter and little brother “Mussa”,

and how he was murdered by the cold blooded Zionists. Then she acts the situation,

and shows the camera how her brother sat on the flour and where they pointed the

gun at his forehead. She remembers her grandfather, who stood in the middle of the

front yard and talked to the Zionist telling them that they broke the safety



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agreement they were given, but the Zionist soldier killed him like the rest of her

family.

4.3.2.3 The strong relation between the woman and her brother in Palestinian

society

Zainab transfers some scenes that show the strong relation between her and

her brother who was murdered in the massacre, these scenes reflects the privacy in

the relation between the woman and her brother in the Palestinian society.

Zainab in the beginning of the scene is standing near to her house weeping

painfully and calling her dead brother, and then the camera starts following her so

listen to her witness of the massacre. Zainab in her talk tells the camera what

happened with her little daughter who ran away to hide in her grandmother house

to find her murdered near to the stoned stairs, then she tries to go up to find her

uncle Mahmoud laying near the bed, injured in his head but not dead. The camera is

moving here trying to mimic the kids’ steps in her escapee. Zainab stands near to a

closed room in her house telling what happened, then she turns left toward the

stairs and sets there in sunlight crying with a tissue in her hand. She puts her hands

on her head talking to her dead brother Mahmoud.

The 75 years lady, talks to her brother in the year of the films’ production as

he’s her crown, and how much she respects and loves him, and how she became

weak degraded and lonely after his murder. Zainab sets her right wrinkled hand to



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the wall, and the other points to the sun, wishing if that day hadn’t ever come, and if

she hadn’t lost her family and beloved ones.

4.4 The resistance and standing firm ideology

Deir Yassin contains in a number of scenes and sayings, presented by the

main character ‘Zainab’ or by the director, many ideological signs that encourage

Palestinians adherence their home, and to resist the occupation and stand firm

against any aggression. I will present here some of these scenes and saying that arise

the value of the land, and praise the Palestinian resistance against the occupation

and the Zionist in 1948.

4.4.1 The value of the land and strong relation between the Palestinian and his

country

The place in The Agony is the master piece between the scenes, and if there

are other stars in this film beside Zainab they will be the old stones. These scenes of

the walls, the stairs, and the houses with its long windows and its balconies tell the

history of this village and document its Arabic existence through the Arabic and

Palestinian architectural art.

Zainabs stops talking and starts crying, remembering the past and her

brother Mahmoud and asks God to bring her back to her home land and her village.

Where here the Daouds’ camera shows high stoned architectural arcs scene in Deir



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Yassin and presents a moving picture for the old houses of the village emphasizing its

Arabic Palestinian origin.

Zainab describes in her Palestinian accent her country and the beauty of her

land in many locations, she calls it: “my kind homeland”. She touches the branches

of a tree while she’s moving down on the stairs toward the field beside the houses,

then she appears holding some soil in her hand, kissing it and putting it on her

forehead as a sign of respect and love known in the Palestinian society. She’s talks to

the land: “you fed us from your fruits a lot; we were in a great blessing then”.

4.4.2 Glorifying the defense of the land and praising the resistance

Zainabs words glorify the resistance of the Palestinians and their defense of

their land with all they have and all their strength, she talks about her villages’

people going to Al Qastal when they heard about it being captured by the Zionist, to

join its people in setting it free. This is the call of duty to the land and to the religion

as Zainab says, and Al‐Daoud supports her story with different pictures from battles

were happening in Palestine before the announcement of establishing the Isreali

state. These pictures clarify the huge difference in the military preparing and

vehicles used by the gangs and the simple guns and the rocky walls used by the

Palestinians in their defense.

The Arab Palestinian resistance was beyond the Zionist expectations, which

wanted and insisted to evacuate the village and kill people. The battle went on for

nine hours from 5 am until 2 pm, when the Zionist gangs took over the village, after



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capturing the simple weapons and pullets that helped the village to stand and face

the intruders, unlike what they expected from its people to leave their homes, in the

moment the gangs enter the village. They were shocked by the strong resistance,

and the shooting came from all houses (Zaru, 2008).

Zainab praises and honors the leaders of the Palestinian resistance, she

mentions Abdel Qader AL Hussaini the leader of Al Qastal battle, he is one of the

pioneers in fighting the occupation and fighting the British and the Zionists who

raped the Palestinian land and built the occupation state on it.

She mentions the resistance of her father and brother and their defense of

their village with the primitive guns, she draws attention to the place they were

wounded (in the face and in the forehead) using her hand to show the placed, and

an evidence of standing firm and facing the enemy although of his well equipped

army and not running away from the war.

In her talk of slaughtering the people and the families in front of their

relatives with cold blood, she remembers Holwa Zaidan and how all her family were

killed in front of her eyes in the yard of her house, and how she’s proud of their

martyrdom, she remembers the reaction of Mrs. Holwa Zaidan and how she was

ululating happily. Zainab says: “the first one killed was her son, she ululates then her

husband, she also ululates, so the killed her as well”. In the scene praises the

steadfastness and the joy of martyrdom and welcoming the death for the homeland

proudly.



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4.4.3 The connection between the massacre and the peace process

In different scenes of the village and in the last minutes of the film, the

camera moves from the ground to the sky and stops when Zainab starts to say the

number of whom she lost in this massacre, they are 27 people from her family and

neighbors, she mentions their names one by one.

Al Daoud focuses on the timing of this massacre in the text appears on the

screen that shows that this massacre happened after two weeks of the peace

negotiations which was ask by the leaders of the surrounding Jewish settlements and

was accepted by the people of Deir Yassin, this is a clear sign of the Zionists betrayal

that can’t be denied. There is another sign noticeably significant, Al Daoud wanted to

emphasize to the viewers is that the benefit of these negotiations and peace

agreements that some Palestinian parties went after with Israel. it started with Oslo

agreement in 1993 in Washington signed on behalf of the Palestinian liberation

organization by Yaser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas (Fateh party leaders) and on

behalf of Israel Shimon Beraze and Isaac Rabine, the president and previous prime

ministers of Israel (BBC, 2003).

4.4.4 Zainabs’ last world

“Don’t put a snake in your pocket or close to your chest”

Zainab finishes her speech that kept going for 19 minutes long while she’s

walking between the houses and trees of Deir Yassin heading towards a tall tree, she

sits under it on the road side, talking directly as she delivers the conclusion of what



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happened, she looks so convinced and irrevocable. She is wondering about the

success of the peace arrangements with those assassinators and killers, she says:

“Jewish are not trustable” and then she compares them to snakes and say: “no

rational man puts a snake in his pocket. It will kill him”.

Zainab in her last word that Al Daoud wanted her to finish her witness with,

leads us again toward the resistance, and fighting the aggression, she confirms not

letting go any of the Palestinian rights of going back to their homeland and living in

peace on it. That’s strengthen the Palestinian point of view that asks for resistance

and rejects the non‐violent solutions, this point of view calls for the Palestinians to

hold still all their rights of their land and the right of all the Palestinian refugees to go

back to it.

4.3.5 The White and the red roses

In the end of “The Agony’s” scenario, and before Zainabs says her last words,

she mentions the names of her family who were killed in front of the villages houses

and trees in the massacre, followed by a scene of a white rose falling down to the

ground then the camera directs to the sky and fades in colors as a symbol of all the

victims who dropped dead that day and their highness and dignity, to emphasize the

value of martyrdom in the Palestinian society (Al Daoud, 2009).

In the closing scenes, and while Zainab talks about her conclusion about the

impossibility of the conciliation between the victim, the Palestinian nation and the

murderer who occupied their homeland and betrayed all the vows, a red rose



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appears this time wagging on Zainabs right side, while she consoles her chest with

her hand. Then a close shot is taken to the lone rose alone as a symbol of vigorous

Palestinian and their existence despite of all the slaughter calamities, it’s also a

symbolized the current willingness to present more martyrdoms as long its land

remains occupied and its right stolen.

Al Daouds’ camera supported Zainab talking and followed her while she is

talking spontaneously and fluently about her wound and pain without any previous

guidance or existing script, and about this he says:

Zainab has a strong memory that helps her to talk spontaneously, honestly,

and fluently, and expresses herself alone without and guidance that might

miss up this combination, all we did was calling the wound and woken up

that humanitarian state. My artistic style depends on a absolute persuasion

that we should give people all the freedom to say what they want, and to

express themselves as they wish, and then we can reflect that in

professionalism and with high responsibility.



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CHAPTER FIVE

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

5.1 Introduction

This chapter will present the summary of this study and the conclusions

about subordinate people in the alternative documentary film, and it will answer the

study’s questions mentioned in the first chapter, before moving to the limitations

that faced the researcher and some suggestions of new possible topics and sides for

future researches in the same framework of this study.

5.2 Conclusion

This study analyzed and made comparisons with a group of documentary

films, like The Agony for the director Eyad Al Daoud, in attempt to understand the

importance of the ordinary people in the alternative documentary film in the Middle

East, and how the director presented subordinate people in the film.

It became obvious from the previous chapters that the importance of the

subordinate people relies in representing the reality and speaking spontaneously

and clearly about the community problems, and the different social and political

details, which emphasizes the film makers desire to present the full image of the

Middle Eastern societies as it is. The difficulty was in the lack of freedom levels in the

Middle East, and the governments’ control of television broadcasting. The

appearance of the satellite stations gave the documentary film a chance to be



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presented to the audience and that was followed by the emergence of private

production companies and the independent documentary films.

The alternative film makers considered the ordinary people who speaks

spontaneously about himself as an important witness of the different events, and

the reality of deep problems in an area which is ‐internally and externally‐ full of

political, economical, social and intellectual struggles. Specially that journalists and

film makers in the Middle East always sought to make the event’s image by

themselves and to transfer and comment on the reality “in Arab Eyes” from their

point of view, after the long time it was covered by other foreigner media and film

makers.

Ordinary people are always closer to real life; this is what makes them

important and main elements to enrich the documentary film with real story, real

faces and real places. That supports the reality which is one of the most important

basics in a documentary film. According to the English director Paul Rotha, the

documentary depends on the idea instead of the story plot, and on a realistic events

and characters instead of imagined ones, as it focuses on the world around us

(Baghdadi, 2009).

In a private interview with the director Eyad Al Daoud, he says about ordinary people

in the documentary film:

The most important value in a documentary film is the humanitarian side that

support people, and give them the chance to tell their experiences which is



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full of joy and sorrow, and success and failure, also to introduce them to

what is going around, and develop their awareness; therefore its natural for a

documentary film to become more concerned about humanitarian issues.

The best documentaries are those which present humans’ problems,

priorities, and fears (Al Daoud, 2009).

And about what the alternative documentary film presented Al Daoud adds:

It presented the real Middle East; the human being, the place, the time frame

and the ancient culture which tried to be wiped out, and the facts tried to be

counterfeited. It presented us as an active people who love life and fight for

our rights and freedom (Al Daoud, 2009).

The filmmakers raised the subordinate people’s value in the alternative

documentary film by making it the main character and the star. They were

concerned about the story and the narration of the event; also they took care of the

feelings, relations and personal details, they gave it time and wide space of artistic

modification in the films context.

The alternative documentary film presents the subordinate people in its real

community and surrounding nature, and respects its witness, vision and point of

view even in the important political and historical deep cases. It presents the

subordinate people as a strong character which have a lot of facts to be presented to

the viewer and it uses cinematic techniques to praise the characters’ value. It



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centralizes the subordinate people in film’s scenes and makes it the dominator in the

frame angles while expressing himself and talking to the camera.

In The Agony the subordinate people remained strong from the beginning of

the film until the last scene, the viewer can find this obvious in the moment he looks

to the film’s poster which has Zainab strong and dominator in the center, looking

strongly to the horizon, pointing with her finger as she is making the event and

reforming it, where the Palestine map appears in the background, as it abbreviate

the long‐lasting Palestinian agony in the subordinate people.

Even in the moment Al Daoud’s camera filmed the subordinate people crying

and complaining her weakness because of loosing her family and village’s people in

the massacre; the director presented her character strong with the sacrifice and the

ability to tell the event in details. Al Daoud supported her story in the editing, by

using the old historical scenes of the massacre, which supported the truth of the

character’s tale in the film, and made her the hero.

In the alternative documentary film – which mainly depends on cinema

reality theories‐ the director presents the subordinate people as a star by showing

his spontaneous and real details in daily life scenes. This is the best way to present

the subordinate people as a hero, and to use his details to make special stories for

documentary films. Overstating in using Hollywood cinema techniques, and

depending on camera angles (low angle for example) and lighting to raise the



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character value and make it as a hero; makes the documentary film loses the value

of showing the real situation, and drives it away from cinema reality style.

Considering to show ordinary people and their stories of the events and

reality in a documentary film, presents a lot of details and facts, and clarifies a lot of

images about the past and today. The details and facts ‐mentioned by the

subordinate people not only in the political and conflicts issues but even more in the

social structure and the problems reality‐ present alive image about the society’s

nature, the family, the neighborhood, and the relation’s development. Subordinate

people in documentary film are not scared to present the information, which

politicians, leaders and specialists can not handle, and would present it briefly

without the humanistic sense and the personal story.

Subordinate people in the alternative documentary film presented an image

of the absent facts in the Middle East, the societies, and the conflicts. He presented

deeply and in a special way the human and his emotions, family, daily life, and how

he sees himself and the surrounding world. He also contributed well in documenting

the memory and the oral history, as in presenting the absent opinion. The

subordinate people supported and raised the documentary film’s value in the Middle

East, as well as the film makers raised the humans’ value and supported the truth

and the reality in presenting the subordinate people as a hero and main character in

the film.

5.3 Limitation of Research



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This study faced some limitations which affected the analysis process; the

reality cinema theories used in the study to analyze the documentary film, are

concerned in methods which supports the reality and the actuality rather than the

Hollywood and drama cinema techniques and its overstating in making stars through

the camera, the lighting, and the decoration.

The alternative documentary film makers do not seem interested that much

in such techniques, their attention was focused on the real story, the real people,

and in filming the reality in a simple and special way. In the interviews made with

directors of Middle Eastern documentary films for this study, they do not seem

interested about the camera techniques or angles in the way they make their films

and the way they present the main character. Their concerns were focused on the

story details, and in the subordinate people motion. However, these films were

made without a prepared scenario or a story board; which means that the taken

shots and scenes were completely spontaneous and matches the main character

performance.

There is no contradiction between the way of making the alternative

documentary film and not concerning the Hollywood cinema techniques (the

position of the character in the frame, and the camera angle), however it is

considered one of the cinema reality characteristics. Some writers think that any

cinema study should use the Hollywood cinema techniques and theories. I should

mention here the wide difference between these two genres, where studying

documentary film with a Hollywood cinema background is not considered rational or



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fair. The differences between Hollywood movie techniques and the way of making

the documentary film, is the difference between fakeness and reality.

5.4 Suggestion for Future Research

The subordinate people in the alternative documentary film could be studied

from a different view, which is the Middle Eastern audience’s assessment for the

documentary film ‐which presents the subordinate people as a hero‐ and the level of

the viewers confidence in the character, and the information and the images

presented by him about the political and historical events, as well as their interest to

watch this type of production.

Other future studies could make comparisons between documentary films

which present ordinary people and other films present social and cultural leaders as

stars, then compare the audience acceptance, interaction, and how they were

affected by the characters and their stories. It is necessary in this kind of studies to

contain the Middle Eastern viewers’ opinion by doing questionnaires and private film

showing, where the researcher could directly contact the films audience.



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APPENDIX ONE

Fig (1): The cover of The Agony (1999). Source: http://www.inminds.co.uk/palestine‐history‐and‐responsibility.html



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Fig (2): An article in ‘La Nación’ newspaper, Costa Rica, on the shooting of a film directed by Hala Lotfy.

Source: http://hotspotfilms.com/ar/press6.html

Fig (3): Deir Yassin village Source: http://ar.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/04/26/704/



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Fig (4): Deir Yassin village Source: http://ar.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/04/26/704/



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Fig (5): poster for Citizen Kane (1941) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Citiza_kane.jpg



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Films: Al Daoud, Eyad. Deir Yasien.. The Agony (1999). Al Daoud, Eyad. Jerusalem, the Promise of the Heaven (1997). Al Daoud, Eyad. The Art of Life (2003). Lotfy, Hala. Lost in Costa Rica (2006). Musleh,Hanna. In the Spiders web (2004). Poitras, Laura. My Country, My Country (2006). Vertov, Dzega. Man with the Movie Camera (1929).