The Law in These Parts (film screening) 1/11

CRS FILM+VIDEO SHOW & TELL invites you to join artist Yoshiko Chuma to screen and discuss the award-winning Israeli documentary “THE LAW IN THESE PARTS” on Friday, January 11, 2013 at 7 pm.
The film investigates the legal structure developed by Israel to govern the Palestinian territories seized by Israel during the 1967 Six Days War and subsequently controlled by Israel. 
Following the screening, choreographer Yoshiko Chuma, who has worked repeatedly in the Middle East and recently in the Occupied Territories and on international tour with members of the Palestinian dance company El-Funoun, will lead an informal discussion of the film and describe her own efforts to shed light on the plight of the people of Palestine and to help their voices to be heard. Our intention is to facilitate a thoughtful, respectful, and compassionate conversation about the issues explored in the film.
Tickets are $10 and are available at CRS and online here.

About the Film
“THE LAW IN THESE PARTS” (Israel • 2011) runs 101 minutes and is in Hebrew with English subtitles.
http://www.thelawfilm.com/
What is legal and what is just? The wide gap between the two is explored meticulously by this Israeli investigation (winner of the Best Documentary Award at the Sundance and Jerusalem Film Festivals) of the legal structure created after the 1967 Six Days War, specifically to treat the West Bank and Gaza Strip as occupied territories. Speaking with some of Israel’s most respected lawyers and judges – men who helped to craft and later interpret these laws –  filmmaker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz asks tough, pointed questions and gets even tougher answers. He asks his subjects to consider the consequences of their actions in a highly politicized environment. THE LAW IN THESE PARTS takes the position that unjust laws create unjust realities. Laws that everyone admits are not perfect but are the best that can be done under difficult circumstances may result in tragedy for everyone: both the judges and the judged.
 

About Guest Host Yoshiko Chuma
“When you meet other cultures, you focus on how different you are, but eventually you realize that you are not so different. Creation begins by looking at that gap. And that gap was what made me an artist.” — Yoshiko Chuma, Founder of The School of Hard Knocks
In April, 2011, avant-garde choreographer Yoshiko Chuma completed 6 Seconds in Ramallah in Palestine, a project that involved fifteen artists from Japan and the US, who traveled over several borders to Ramallah, to collaborate with Palestinian Dance Troupe El-Funoun.  After returning home, the collaborators all felt tremendous excitement and thrill, having made something that was more than a preconceived notion of theater or dance work Since then, that project has provided the seeds for Love Story, Palestine, a theater work framed by barbed wire, a mosaic of segments whose contents pertain to pain. 
http://www.yoshikochuma.org
http://www.occupationlayer.blogspot.com/
https://sites.google.com/site/yoshikochumanoorabaker/   in japanese
Reviews of the Film
“Presents a devastating case against the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. An inquiry into justice.”
– Rachel Saltz, The New York Times
“Exacting and heartfelt. Thoughtful, thorough, and powerfully persuasive. A powerful piece of advocacy. There is no shortage of European-funded Israeli documentaries making the festival and art-house rounds and angrily putting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank under the microscope but THE LAW IN THESE PARTS  stands out as a paragon.”
– Jonathan Robbins, Film Comment
“Riveting! There is no mistaking the indignation of the filmmaker’s inquiry into Israeli occupation policy, but it’s tempered at every turn by Alexandrowicz’s wise, repeated acknowledgement that there’s no implicating the policies of these men without implicating himself – that is, without his acknowledging that these laws were written for Israelis.”
– Steve MacFarlane, Slant Magazine
“It is riveting! More than accomplishes its goal of provoking a discussion about imposing laws on people who have no say in making them.”
– Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post
“A really fascinating, meticulous kind of dissection of how the law in the occupied territories came to be.”
– Kenneth Turan, NPR
“A thoughtful investigation into Israel’s justice system. The film includes some amazing testimony from legal officials who remain steadfast in their discriminatory policies where ‘security comes before human rights.’”
– Anthony Kaufman, Indiewire
“The film depicts, graphically and painfully, how it is possible for the highly educated to impose a system of oppression while remaining under the illusion that what they are doing is compatible with the highest legal principles.”
– Nick Fraser, The Observer (London)
“An engrossing new Israeli documentary…The film has generated enormous interest in Israel, screening in more than 100 locations and receiving the prize for best documentary at the 2011 Jerusalem Film Festival. Of course, the warm reception also underscores a paradox: while many Israelis seem open and even sympathetic to critical examinations of the occupation, no political constituency has emerged to challenge the creeping colonization of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.”
– Eyal Press, New York Review of Books Online