With over 3.5 billion cell phone users around the world, thousands of cell phone towers popping up in people’s neighborhoods, children’s schools and neighbor’s rooftops, people are starting to feel the effects. Full Signal talks to scientists, lawmakers, lawyers and everyday people to investigate the truths and myths behind the impact of cellular technology.
Archives
Unsettled
When the Israeli government announces that it will withdraw from the Gaza Strip, it means lifeguards Lior, 21, and Meir, 27, will be forced to leave their home – Gaza’s Palm Beach – forever. They and their surf posse could be characters on MTV’s The Real World, but in the blink of an eye it becomes obvious that the danger is all too real. For Neta, 20, a religious filmmaker, the pullout plan sets off a desperate struggle to convince Israelis and the world that the withdrawal is a crime against God. Soldiers Yuval, 21, and Tamar, 20, must prepare for a mission against other Israelis, putting aside their own emotions to face angry protestors and the prospect of attacks. Ye’ela, 21, joins a cross-country tour in support of the withdrawal, even as she mourns a sister killed by Palestinian terrorists. For young Israelis, the summer of 2005 will change the meaning – and for some the very location – of home.
Life of the Jews of Palestine
Made in 1913, this Russian documentary was assumed lost until 1997, when it was found stored away in France’s National Film Archives. Completely restored, it presents the viewer with a portrait of Jewish life in what was then known as Ottoman Palestine. Originally produced by Odessa’s HaMizrah Society and directed by loyal Zionist Noah Sokolovsky, the documentary journeys from Odessa to Tel Aviv via the Black Sea, and then through Jerusalem and other cities, villages, and rural settlements. The Life of the Jews in Palestine originally premiered in 1913 at the 11th Zionist Congress in Vienna and then went on to be enjoy popularity throughout Europe and Russia; it was screened for more contemporary audiences at the 2000 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
The Illegals
During the British rule of Palestine, Holocaust survivors arrived from Europe by the boatful–only to find themselves refused entry. The “Aliyah Bet” movement was recorded by author and documentarian Meyer Levin, including footage of British soldiers boarding a refugee ship.
The Tree of Life
Wasted
May 2000. Southern Lebanon. For 18 years now, Israel’s most controversial war drags on and on adding fragmented slivers of shattered lives to ashes of smoldering hopes. Up there on the hill overlooking the feathery fairy-tale clouds, a hallucinatory body of boy-soldiers inhabited a world of petrified anguish, coated with layers of innocence. Dispossessed and exiled, they carried out unfathomable orders, fighting invisible yet fatal phantoms; their gazes, clouded with embittered, wizened dread – the chilly stare of the sharpshooter masquerades the bewildered gape of the child who chases his evading innocence. Wasted, they hang between the backdrop of earthly paradise and the engulfing abyss of raging inferno.
STREETS OF JERUSALEM
A revelatory and mature work from Festival veteran Igal Hecht…” (Toronto Jewish Film Festival) Streets of Jerusalem is a new documentary shot over a period of five years, centers around the lives of ten Jerusalem residents. Terror, racism, occupation, economical hardships, political changes and the yearning for peace, are all explored in a no hold’s barred honest manner that has been the trade mark of Chutzpa Productions.
Winding Roads
The film follows a year in the life of Huda Abu Abied, a 19-year-old Bedouin girl from the Negev desert in Israel. As a young independent woman, she refuses to adapt to the patriarchal traditional society back in her village. As a very concerned and politically aware individual, she feels compelled to fight for equal rights for her fellow Bedouins in light of their alienation and bitterness towards the Jewish state.
A Borrowed Village
Kfar Shaul was once the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. In 1948, Jewish Militia forces conquered the village killing over a hundred citizens. The village houses remained intact and the place was turned into a mental health “village”. A BORROWED VILLAGE follows a group of forgotten Palestinian and Israeli mentally ill patients living side by side within the asylum and surrounded by a society that lives in a constant state of “madness.”
