Synopsis
A set-up for an experiment in an empty room. Former inmates reconstruct an Israeli secret service interrogation centre. These Palestinian men use role play to come to terms with their memories and the humiliation they have experienced.
2017 ‘اصطياد أشباح’ Directed by Raed Andoni
A set-up for an experiment in an empty room. Former inmates reconstruct an Israeli secret service interrogation centre. These Palestinian men use role play to come to terms with their memories and the humiliation they have experienced.
Istiyad ashbah, Лов на духове, 捉鬼, 噩夜監獄劇場
Part of 30 Countries 2021. Today: Palestine!
A kind of Palestinian counterpart to Waltz With Bashir, except whereas Ari Folman’s film made its points by extreme artifice this does so by removing artifice to a level which is unusual even for a documentary. I’ve seen a lot of drama-docs, but few which pay so much attention to the building of sets.
The location of Raed Andoni’s film occasionally looks like a modern art gallery - and his film occasionally feels like an installation - but it is a recreation of an Israeli prison he was held in when he was 18. This is far from a unique experience; some forty per cent of Palestinian men have been in these jails.…
our people have rocks and dark humor
FREE ALL OUR PRISONERS
BLESS OUR FREEDOM FIGHTERS
LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA
#FreeThemAll
This is a breathtaking film about identity and trauma. With a staggering 25% of Palestinians being interned in Israeli prisons, the impact of a project encouraging community and recovery cannot be understated. Andoni searches for the beauty of his subjects, perhaps stifled by suffering, in this mesmerising film about returning to traumatic memory. Parallels with Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing are reasonable, but Andoni's intimate relation with the film's subject brings added intimacy and affect to this film's themes of community, memory and persecution.
NTIFF 7/40: A film about a current conflict
There's a big controversy in New Zealand right now about THEY ARE US, an Andrew Niccol-penned recreation of the Christchurch massacre of 2019 and the subsequent week. To say locals are not pleased is putting it mildly.
I've had on my mind, in part because of this, what it means for lived trauma to be recreated on film, either as a viewer or as a creator. Some have said the problem with THEY ARE US is that it shouldn't be made, while others seem more focused on the lack of consultation with the victims. But at the end, is it right for anyone who wasn't involved to exploit that trauma for profit?…
5
Blu Ray (Second Run)
I struggled with Ghost Hunting, Raed Andoni's keenly-felt but flawed Berlinale-winning documentary-fiction-animation hybrid. The film aims to explore the physical and emotional effects of interrogation, torture and imprisonment. Andoni hires a group of Palestinian men, the vast majority of whom are former prisoners (including himself), to build a prison set and then act out various scenarios within it, the set and scenarios being an amalgamation of the men's own memories and experiences of their time in captivity. The film observes the men as they go about building the set, interspersed with the scripted vignettes and, occasionally, a brief section of animation (which appears to use some sort of rotoscope technique).
By far the most effective…
A film with an interesting potential but that, in my opinion, fails to deliver any interesting or complex reflexion about the prisonners' psychology.
A Palestinian analogue to The Act of Killing (Josh Oppenheimer even gets a special thanks in the credits). The difference here being a group of hired Palestinian men—nearly all who have experienced jail time, something that close to half of all Palestinians will experience in their lifetime—playing both the Israeli prison staff and the Palestinian prisoners, in a set that is designed like an art installation. We see the men bond through their performance and their work on set, yet re-live some of the trauma of their past experiences; some who have moved on and others who are still clearly troubled. Not quite as focused or affecting as the aforementioned Oppenheimer film but still an interesting artifact.
Featured on Cinema Eclectica
New Second Run joint.
I talk on this podcast about how staggered I am that this was even made. It's a document about dealing with survivors guilt that is also a making of-of itself, psychoanalytic therapy session and the film in question. There's no announcement of intent, Ghost Hunting bounces around at a moments notice. Fourth wall? They didn't even think about building it never mind breaking it. Second Run's newest venture is a staggering documentary for those who want more of the same following the Act of Killing and those who are fascinated with movies (both documentary and real) that peer behind the velvet ropes.
gives a new meaning to trauma bonding
one of the best films i've seen and one that will have you experiencing every emotion. everyone should see this.