The Seattle Times
Reviewed by: John Hartl

“Compelling Palestinian Film Benefits From Narrow Focus”

The stares of lost, desperate Palestinian children dominate this surprisingly personal documentary, which was shot two years ago by James Longley, an Oregon filmmaker who once studied cinematography at a Moscow film school.

The images in “Gaza Strip” are often as beautiful as they are disturbing, suggesting a continuous loop of the final freeze-frame image from Francois Truffaut’s 1959 classic, “The 400 Blows,” in which a young boy accuses the audience with his eyes when he realizes he is trapped between adult authorities and the ocean.

Not that the sea can’t also be a refuge here. As Longley’s video camera dwells on a languorous beach scene, one child describes the Mediterranean as “so beautiful that you forget yourself.” Still, the waves are part of a border that makes children and older Palestinians feel trapped, surrounded and ultimately suicidal.

Longley visited the Gaza Strip in January 2001, planning to stay for a couple of weeks while he researched a film on the Palestinian intifada. He remained for three months, focusing on an eloquent 13-year-old newspaper vendor, Mohammed Hejazi, who speaks frankly about the murder of his best friend, his contempt for Ariel Sharon, his mistrust of Yasser Arafat (”Arafat is a spy”), and the difference between this life and nonexistence.

“I think being dead would be easier,” he says. He also worries that he hasn’t been a good Muslim and might not end up in Paradise.

What could have turned into propaganda instead becomes a portrait of one child’s understandably pragmatic reactions to extreme circumstances. When Mohammed’s unemployed father tells him not to get shot in the back and become paralyzed (he’s been throwing rocks at Israeli tanks), he seems less concerned for his son’s safety than he is about whether the boy will be able to continue to provide the main support for his destitute family.

Longley makes no attempt to present the Israeli viewpoint, to show Palestinian destructiveness or to provide much in the way of a historical context. He’s simply concerned with the cumulative impact of living under such conditions. Narrowing its focus so rigorously, “Gaza Strip” presents a most persuasive vision of hell on Earth.