A View to a Massacre
by Sharad Venkat on August 4, 2008 in Blog, Live from Beirut
A film review I did for the movie Massaker, a documentary about the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps 1982, just after the assassination of then newly elected Lebanese president Bashir Gemayel. It was committed by the Christian Phalangists and supported by the Israeli Army. There is no official count of how many were killed though the number is somewhere in the thousands. I hope to screen this film and another one made by an Israeli director about the same events next year at HKS.
Documentaries will always be subject to controversy, the integrity of the story questioned, the balance of the perspectives weighed. There is a fine line to walk whenever a film documents politically sensitive topics, especially in a place like Lebanon, and particularly when the filmmaker turns the lens toward the Lebanese civil war. Read more
