The uniqueness of the film, From Ground Zero: Stories from
Gaza (2024), goes well beyond it being a documentary that includes an
animated short made by children and a puppet show. Footage of a Palestinian
being pulled from the rubble twice—one with the head of his dead friend very
close to him and the other with his account that he could see body parts of his
parents near him—is nothing short of chilling. Perhaps less so, yet equally
stunning, are the close-ups of the legs and arms of children on which their
respective parents had written the names so the bodies could be identified after
a bombing. That the kids had dreams in which they erased the black ink from
their skin because they refused to fathom the eventuality of having to be
identified is chilling in a way that goes beyond that which film can show
visually. Moving pictures can indeed go beyond the visual in what film is
capable of representing and communicating to an audience. The same can be said
regarding the potential of film to bring issues not only in ethics, but also in political theory and theology to a
mass audience.
The full essay is at "From Ground Zero."
