Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER 147 specialized, as a war correspondent, in the story of the fate of the Jews of Europe. The film, Kline and I agreed, was to show w hat Palestine could io for the survivors. Kline brought to the project his experience as a ■ory-documentary producer, being especially icnovvn for The Forgotten Village, But each of us had worked in the other's field, for he had collaborated on screenvvriting assignments, while I had worked as a documentary film director in OWI. Having agreed upon the theme of the story, there followed a consideration of what had to go into the story. During all my years of contact with Palestine I had collected 'must' scenes for i film about the country. On every one of my "our previous trips I had discovered some view, or some activity, which I felt must eventually go into the film. And I had, in fact, first proposed the idea of a Palestine film to Kline in Spain in 1937; we had never quite let the subject drop. I knew, for instance, that the story must show what life was like in a Palestine farm collective; it must include a horra — the settlers' dance — and it must include an aliyah — the going up to the site of a new colony, which is collectively built in a single day. It must include an illegal landing. It must include the view of the wilderness of Judea and the Dead Sea from Jerusalem-Jericho road. It must include the view of the Emek from the Haifa road. It must, of course, include the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan. It had to contain a sequence thai could be played on the campus of the Hebrew University, with the awesome background of the Dead Sea on one side and the spiritual view of Jerusalem on the opposite side of Mount Scopus. The film-story would have to make an opportunity for a sequence in the old city of Jerusalem; it would have to make use of the complex IradiJ lions and emotions that were attached to the « sights of the Via Dolorosa and of the dark lanes «1 ijand huddled synagogues of the old city; it would have to show the progressive force and spirit of ui the new city, too. And apart from all the physically obligatory scenes, the places that had to be in the picture because of their beauty, or their historic and spiritual connection, there were the mandatory requirements of the life in the country. Something of the cultural life had to be shown, through the city of Tel Aviv — perhaps the theatres or the symphony orchestra. Something of the industrial life of the country had to come into the story, either showing the manufacturing complex in Haifa harbour, or perhaps the diamond industry of Nathanyah, or the potash works of the Dead Sea. And finally, the pioneering aspects of land reclamation had to come into any story of Palestine, and for this, the new drive toward settling the desert of the Negev was the ob\ ions answer. Plainly, there were enough 'must' items for the construction of a full-length documentary film. If we could hope to get them all in, we needed a story of movement— a chase, or a search, i Usually, writers fee! that the inclusion of obligatory scenes hampers them. But sometimes one feels these scenes is a challenge to invention. \nd since in this case most of the requirements had ariginated with myself, there could be no complaint. In the end they were all solved, through the story of a boy's search for his family. The central motif of the story echoed in mj mind from the story of every survivor I had met in the liberated camps and on the roads of Europe, during and immediately after the war. The first and consuming quest of each was for the remnants of his family. Indeed, 1 somewhat caught their obsession, and for many weeks almost dropped my work as a journalist in order to collect lists of survivors, with the names of the kin they hoped to find and spread these lists wherever they might be useful. One story emerged from the rest. It was the story of a little boy in Buchenwald who refused to leave the camp when liberation came because his father had been at the camp with him and his father, w hen taken away on a work-party, had told the child 'don't go away from here — wait here for me until I come back. Otherwise we will never find each other". This became transmuted into the story of a child whose father, when being taken away with the rest of the family on a deportation train, told the child to run and hide in the woods, 'you will find us in Palestine'. The child then arrives in Palestine with a group landed illegally by the Hagana; from the first moment he reveals his obsession that he will find his family in Palestine. As the group is taken, by truck, to a settlement in lower Galilee it becomes possible, by following the truck, to disclose such views as Mount Tabor in the pre-dawn and the Sea of Galilee in dawn. The life of a typical settlement is revealed as the refugees l>egin to adjust themselves to their new home, and as the children try to befriend the bo I (avid. Rut he rebuffs them, and runs awaj in search of his own family. David trades an arm) jack-knife for a ride on an Arab bov's donkey, and through their runaway episode we see more details of the shores of Galilee and the life of the region. The relationship between David and the Arab boy, and between the settlement and the Arab boy's village, serves in a most natural way to illustrate the typical workaday relationships on the ground level, between Arabs and Jews. The runaway episode is halted when the donkey gives birth to a foal; the boys are I back home and David is given the foal. But as it cries for its mother, he carries it back, wading across the Jordan which is between the Jewish settlement and the Arab village. Later, it is decided at a meeting of the settlement that David shall be sent to a children's village, where he will be among other boys like himself, with a chance for special care toward adjustment. This time in the daylight, the truck passes on the Haifa road, through the Emek, past oil refineries; it stops in Haifa, where David learns that a ship of legal immigrants is entering the port; he hopes to find someone from his family on the ship. After his further disappointment in the port, the story progresses to the children's village; on the (Continued on page 14s, THE UNIT WITHI Realist Film Unit has been making documentary and instructional films since 1937. During the last two years a Unit under the Educational Supervision of Dorothy Grayson, B.Sc, has completed ten classroom films. This 'unit within' is now preparing, shooting or completing eight films. REALIST FILM UNIT Member of the Federation of Documentary Film Units 9 GREAT CHAPEL STREET W I Telephone Gerrard 1958