little town of bethlehem (documentary review)

When I offered to review Little Town of Bethlehem, a documentary by EthnoGraphic Media about the growing nonviolence movement in parts of the Middle East, I was looking forward to broadening my view of what's happening in a part of the world that's almost always in the news but about which I don't feel like I know very much.

The three individuals at the center of the film are (bios copied from promo materials because they were accurate and well-written):

• Sami Awad is a Palestinian Christian whose grandfather was killed in Jerusalem in 1948. Today he is the executive director of Holy Land Trust, a non-profit organization that promotes Palestinian independence through peaceful means. 
• Yonatan Shapira is an Israeli Jew whose grandparents were Zionist settlers that witnessed the birth of the Israeli nation. Today he is an outspoken advocate for the nonviolent peace movement, both in his homeland and abroad. 
• Ahmad Al'Azzeh is a Palestinian Muslim who has lived his entire life in the Azzeh refugee camp in Bethlehem. Today, Ahmad heads the nonviolence program at Holy Land Trust, where he trains others in the methods of peaceful activism.

While it was educational, it had two major flaws and one distracting quirk. First, the narrator and most of the people interviewed were soft-spoken and fairly monotone. Plus the music soundtrack was louder than it should have been, overpowering the words it was meant to accentuate. I had trouble focusing on the information presented because the words weren't easy to hear. Additionally, the artsy editing was more jarring at times than interesting, and at times the way it was edited made it hard to figure out who was talking.

Second, while I know that classic documentaries are meant to inform more than editorialize (although Michael Moore's films changed that, and now most are politicized), this one tried so hard not to pass judgment that parts of it fell flat. The Israeli-Palestine conflict is complex, but there are aspects of it that are clearly noble or ignoble. Talking about peace in a relativistic sort of way rings false.

And, finally, I get that anyone with Western roots hears "nonviolence movement" and thinks about Martin Luther King, Jr. However, the references and video clips of him were excessive. Plus I don't think the parallels - if they exist - between these activists and MLK were clearly communicated, which is why it was more distracting than helpful.

I really wanted to like this. I just couldn't get into it, though.

Thanks to the team at The B&B Media Group, Inc. for providing this for my review. They didn't ask for a positive review, just an honest one.