After experiencing the fantastically raw conflicts of Honeyland (2019), one of the film’s cinematographers (Samir Ljuma) took to the stage. Among many great insights he discussed one particular scene where [SPOILER] the protagonist’s mother dies. In the film this moment unfolds with our protagonist, Hatidze, feeding her elderly mother caringly. She then wanders outside to erect a makeshift radio-dish, and play some music for the mother. “Can you hear the music?” she asks, there’s no response, so she wanders back in. Cut to later, Hatidze is mourning next to the bed on which her dead mother is lying. However, as Ljuma discussed, this far, far from the reality of the event. At the mother’s time of death, the film crew were far from the location (already in the process of editing together the film), and only arrived days later. Moreover, the radio sequence had been shot months prior.
Exiting the screening I discussed this with the two friends who had watched it with me. We concluded that this manipulation of the timeline was justified, necessary even. It didn’t change the meaning of the event—the fact was that Hatidze’s mother had passed, without any added meaning—and in fact supported the film in it’s narrativisation of Hatidze’s extremely rural village life, presenting the death to the audience naturally without including the crew/production in the film’s narrative. In the end, what would have changed if they had not manipulated the timeline? Only the film’s form would be slightly different, with perhaps a less shocking effect. So, in many ways, it’s easy to permit such a manipulation of events as it adds to the film’s narrative without proposing (or side-lining) any ideology.
However there was a concern nagging in the back of my head, if they have manipulated the truth here, presenting false information within its apparent documentary truth, where else had they lied for the sake of drama? Was there any ideological information sidelined to bolster the film’s admirable portrayal of Hatidze or to further the villainous, unthoughtful and aggressive traits of the neighbours?
The Long Duration of a Split Second (2018) is almost the perfect counterpoint here. In many ways this is not a film, or art piece. It’s a document whose intention is to be utilised in court as evidence, and was presented as such in the lecture/screening in which I saw it. Opposing Honeyland’s portrait over years, The Long Duration focuses in on one precise moment—the moment where Bedouin Yaqub Musa Abu alQi’an and an Israeli police officer, Erez Levi, were killed during a demolition raid of Umm al-Hiran village. In this film Forensic Architecture (an investigative research agency) piece together all available media information to question whether the state-proposed narrative, that this was a terrorist attack, is true. Such a narrative became dominant through numerous claims in the media, which the police reinforced by sharing a thermal helicopter recording of the event on social media and news platforms. However, by putting this clip in conversation with other existing sound and image footage, from activists, locals and the police alike, Forensic Architecture manage to reveal the falsehood of the claims. Their process was absolutely fascinating.
First scrutinising each piece of available footage for any information. Then placing them together, synchronising them and using each limited source to create a full real-time 3D model of the event. The event itself unfolded with alQi’an leaving his house in a vehicle, the police approaching the vehicle which quickly sped away, crushing Erez Levi (the officer), before it came to a halt. Somewhere in this alQi’an was shot, and he slowly bled to death. Utilising the process of comparing numerous sources unveiled vital information that was obscured when looking at any single source. For example, the audio of gunshots, without a clear source, from an activist’s camera combined with the thermal imaging (without audio) of an officer shooting at the car to deliver the information that the police, in fact, shot before there was any threat to them. Furthermore a later gunshot, again caught just as audio, was thought to be a point-blank shot finishing alQi’an after his car came to a halt. However, the footage taken from an officer’s camera verified this was not the case—while another officer’s camera showed that the sound was a “sponge” bullet being shot at an activist holding a camera. While further investigation found that the vehicle was on a hill (which was obscured by the aerial thermal images), which suggests that it was unlikely alQi’an accelerated towards the officers—thereby not the weaponisation the vehicle, thus, due to lack of intent, not committing an act of terror.
Here, then, it is clear that each individual piece of footage or sound is misleading, either with or without intention, whereby it delivers either unclear or clearly biased information. Sharing such images obviously lead to the prioritisation of a singular narrative. This weaponised use of footage was rife in the footage the police released, containing the aforementioned aerial thermal image and an on-the-ground officers camera, which was heavily cut. Such removal of information is, as we all know, a hugely powerful way to manipulate an audience. If we are shown evidence of an unknown vehicle speeding into a group of officers, and the officers then firing at the car, we believe it a just retaliation—which was miles from the truth of the situation. By this point, in 2019, we are all accustomed with the concepts of fake news and post truth, so I won’t give further examples. But by combining all these partial sources into one whole, and striving for objectivity over a specific politicised narrative, Forensic Architecture reveal the truth of the situation.
Drawing these together, we must ask: where is the line between Honeyland’s seemingly harmless manipulation of truth and the Israeli police force’s rampant misinformation of the event?
On the one hand we have a lie which seemingly damages no-one, and in fact furthers our enjoyment and connection to the film’s narrative. On the other, we have a similar filmic manipulation of a documentary image leading to widespread disinformation flaring up incredible tensions between social groups both directly and indirectly effected by the incident. How far can we push the former before it becomes the latter, and ultimately how can we ever know that limit? How is one able to, on an individual level, determine when the truth they are viewing, the documentary image, is in fact intentional (or unintentional) misinformation? When is the recorder of the image even aware of this divide, when seeing is believing but we only see one angle. We live in an era where the film, in both image an audio, is both a document of evidence and something to be almost wholly distrusted when presented as such. In such a way it’s easy for us to look questioningly at the footage a police force publishes to defend its colonizing policy, but perhaps hard for us to question a seemingly harmless moment in a narrative documentary, as in Honeyland.
So again I ask, as I have no answers, where is this line between the harmless and the harmful manipulation of the image document? When does something that is seemingly ideologically insignificant actually obscure, or present an alternative, truth? The more I mull it over it feels like there is no line, that it is all sordid and sinister in it’s shameless packaging of lies as truth.
~Leo
Honeyland (2019)
3/3/2
8/13
The Long Duration of a Split Second (2018), with commentary from Prof. Eyal Weizman
4/4/2
10/13