''Checkpoint'' (original title: ''Machssomim'') is a 2003
documentary film
A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...
by
Israel
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
i filmmaker
Yoav Shamir Yoav Shamir (), is an Israeli documentary filmmaker most noted for the films ''Checkpoint (2003 film), Checkpoint'' and ''Defamation (film), Defamation''.
Personal life
Yoav Shamir was born in Tel Aviv in 1970. A ninth-generation Israeli from Tel ...
, showing the everyday interaction between
Israeli soldiers and
Palestinian
Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine.
*: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...
civilians at several of the region's
Israel Defense Forces checkpoints. The film won five awards at various film festivals, including Best International Documentary at the
Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and Jun ...
, best feature-length documentary at the
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is the world's largest documentary film festival held annually since 1988 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Description
IDFA is an independent, international meeting place for audiences ...
, and the Golden Gate Award for Documentary Feature at the
San Francisco International Film Festival
The San Francisco International Film Festival (abbreviated as SFIFF), organized by SFFILM, is held each spring for two weeks, presenting around 200 films from over 50 countries. The festival highlights current trends in international film and vid ...
. Although the film was generally well received, the depictions of the check points were controversial and provoked strong reactions.
The film was produced with the support of The New Israeli Foundation for Cinema and Television.
Synopsis
''Checkpoint'' is shot in
cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité (, , ) is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about '' Kino-Pravda''. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subje ...
style with no
narration
Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the ...
and very little context. Shamir himself is absent from the film except for one scene in which a
border guard
A border guard of a country is a national security agency that ensures border security. Some of the national border guard agencies also perform coast guard (as in Germany, Italy or Ukraine) and rescue service duties.
Name and uniform
In diff ...
asks him to try to make him "look good," and Shamir asks how he should do that.
The camera films the people trying to
cross
A cross is a religious symbol consisting of two Intersection (set theory), intersecting Line (geometry), lines, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of t ...
at various checkpoints. At some checkpoints, such as the high-tech fortress at the
Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. I ...
crossing, there are hundreds of people crowded and waiting to get through. At other checkpoints, such as South
Jenin
Jenin ( ; , ) is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, and is the capital of the Jenin Governorate. It is a hub for the surrounding towns. Jenin came under Israeli occupied territories, Israeli occupation in 1967, and was put under the administra ...
, there is just a truck blocking the road while people trickle by. Interactions vary, sometimes people show their
identification card
An identity document (abbreviated as ID) is a document proving a person's identity.
If the identity document is a plastic card it is called an ''identity card'' (abbreviated as ''IC'' or ''ID card''). When the identity document incorporates a ...
s without incident, but much of what Shamir has chosen to include are the more confrontational incidents. The film shows a
school bus
A school bus is any type of bus owned, leased, contracted to, or operated by a school or school district. It is regularly used to Student transport, transport students to and from school or school-related activities, but not including a charter ...
full of children pass several times at South Jenin. The bus driver says that every day the bus is emptied and told that it cannot proceed. In another instance, a family is separated at the checkpoint because a border guard does not see the need for the father to accompany his family to the
doctor
Doctor, Doctors, The Doctor or The Doctors may refer to:
Titles and occupations
* Physician, a medical practitioner
* Doctor (title), an academic title for the holder of a doctoral-level degree
** Doctorate
** List of doctoral degrees awarded b ...
because he is not sick. Several similar situations are portrayed in this film. Although sometimes it seems the soldiers are obviously taunting the people they are monitoring, it often seems that they are following
arbitrary
Arbitrariness is the quality of being "determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle". It is also used to refer to a choice made without any specific criterion or restraint.
Arbitrary decisions are not necess ...
orders that are outside their control. A common source of tension between parties at the checkpoints is the language barrier between guards and civilians. The entire film is spoken in patches of
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
,
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
and
English.
Significance
''Checkpoint'' is a part of the independent digital documentary movement in the early 2000s, in part due to the introduction of relatively inexpensive
digital
Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits.
Businesses
*Digital bank, a form of financial institution
*Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company
*Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...
tape-based
video cameras
A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos, as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film. Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of other ...
and the sudden affordability of powerful
desktop
A desktop traditionally refers to:
* The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor)
Desktop may refer to various compu ...
video editing systems. This in-the-trenches filmmaking lent itself to
direct cinema
Direct cinema is a documentary genre that originated between 1958 and 1962—principally in Quebec and the United States—and was developed in France by Jean Rouch. It is a cinematic practice employing lightweight portable filming equipment, han ...
, or cinéma vérité, a definition that spans from
reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring ordinary people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s ...
to the Pennebaker films of the 1960s. This approach is evident in the popular documentaries in the 2000s such as ''
Fahrenheit 9/11
''Fahrenheit 9/11'' is a 2004 American documentary film directed, written by, and starring Michael Moore. The subjects of the film are the presidency of George W. Bush, the Iraq War, and the media's coverage of the war. In the film, Moore state ...
'' and ''
Supersize Me'', which while driven by narrative and personal
point of view
Point of View or Points of View may refer to:
Concept and technique
* Point of view (literature) or narrative mode, the perspective of the narrative voice; the pronoun used in narration
* Point of view (philosophy), an attitude how one sees or ...
, deploy a camera style which draws on the vérité trope of letting reality play out before the camera. Recalled as ''The Year of the Documentary'', these films came out in 2004 during a convergence of new media possibilities and world conflict including
9/11
The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
and the rising tensions in the
Middle East
The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq.
The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...
during the
Second Intifada
The Second Intifada (; ), also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was a major uprising by Palestinians against Israel and its Israeli-occupied territories, occupation from 2000. Starting as a civilian uprising in Jerusalem and October 2000 prot ...
, according to Paul Falzone in his dissertation, ''Documentary of Change.'' “From this conflict emerges a generation of muckraking filmmakers and a new style of documenting filmmaking,” wrote Falzone. Maxine Baker in her book, ''Documenting in the Digital Age'' goes a bit further. She refers to the ''digital revolution'' as no less as explosive as the
Lumiere Brothers’ invention of the
cinematograph
Cinematograph or kinematograph is an early term for several types of motion picture film mechanisms. The name was used for movie cameras as well as film projectors, or for complete systems that also provided means to print films (such as the ...
during the turn of the 19th century. According to Falzone, a specific kind of documentary was forged by filmmakers looking to challenge mainstream media's interpretation of events. She observed that this new batch of films tended to replace the
protagonist
A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a ...
with
antagonist
An antagonist is a character in a story who is presented as the main enemy or rival of the protagonist and is often depicted as a villain.[festival
A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, Melā, mela, or Muslim holidays, eid. A ...](_b ...<br></span></div>. In ''Checkpoint’s'' case, the director Shamir replaced the antagonist with the subject, who in turn served as the antagonist. While the director may have omitted narration or any stated point of view, he adheres to the vérité technique of hammering home a focused point. ''Checkpoint'' follows the looming sense of futility from shutting down access between two groups of people. In an interview with ''Documentary Film Quarterly'' in 2004, Shamir says, “Everybody is like a victim; the soldiers, the Palestinians. I want to show what effects the occupation has on the Palestinians but even more what the effects are on society.”
<h1><br><p> Awards</h1></p>
The film received five <div class=)
awards, including Best Feature Documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam,
Best International Feature Documentary at the 2004
Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and Jun ...
, and the Golden Gate Award for Documentary Feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
References
Bibliography
Zanger, Anat. "Blind Space: Roadblock Movies in the Contemporary Film." '' Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies'' 24.1 (2005): 37–48. American University Library. Web.
External links
*
{{Yoav Shamir
Israeli documentary films
2003 films
Documentary films about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
2000s Hebrew-language films
2003 documentary films
Films directed by Yoav Shamir