Still Life

In her film Still Life Cynthia Madansky asks all the wrong questions, the questions that are usually avoided, or are left without answers.

They are the questions that are never mentioned by any news anchorman, nor by any spokesman for any ministry of information. They are the kind of questions that usually die and are buried along with the nameless victims. Against ‘frames, shots, scenes’ of destruction mostly in Gaza and some in the West Bank, Cynthia forces us to hear and see all the things that we don't want to see or hear.

She turns the rubble into ground zero upon which she starts with the simplest of questions. Questions, so simple that we usually forget about them in thickness of analysis of 'terror and security' that fills the air of our TVs. Just a month ago Israel honored the general who killed 15 family members with a 15-ton bomb that was dropped on a residential building in order to kill one wanted man in Gaza. That particular assassination proved to us how worthless our lives are especially when that particular general has become the chief of staff of the Israeli army. Who is going to remember those 15 people mostly children and women. Maybe some neighbor would read some verses from the Quran while passing their graves on Thursday afternoon. Maybe some photos of the boys and girls will by hung on the wall in the house of some relative, that's all about it. After all, one would say there are too many victims in this world.

And it is for this very reason that the film by Cynthia is powerful because it disengages us from the particularities of the events and she reliefs us from analysis and so she puts us in front of horror as if for the first time, as a fresh experience, regardless of those victimized. In her film we don't see blood, nor do we see women crying, no faces, no names. All what we see is the remains of where they were, houses and buildings stand like headstones for victims who could be anywhere, anytime. Their names, nationalities, personalities do not matter, what matters is the act that finished them of, the violence committed against them.

As a Palestinian writing these words, do I allow myself to think of or to imagine a meta-text for the film because Cynthia is Jewish? Yes I do, and I can't stop myself from seeing Jews there in the rubble, victimized. For me as a Palestinian spectator I can see both, Jews underneath the rubble and above it at the same time. I wonder how conscious of her ’Jewishness’ Cynthia was when she was filming and editing or when she was recording her voice. But does it really matter. If I interview Cynthia now and ask her this question and she says NO, I wasn't at all thinking of myself as Jewish when making this film, it has nothing to do with the way I made the film. But then I can go back to this page and write ‘but it is there in her unconscious’ I am sure about this.

Maybe it is the tone in her voice and the simplicity in which she throws her questions that make me think that Cynthia means a certain kind of audience. An audience who have forgotten these simple facts like reminding a rich man of the times when he was poor. “do you know where you are? do you know what you are looking at? would you like to visit?.... do you think that the wall is beautiful?” There is a certain sarcasm in her tone that develops into sorrow as these questions are repeated over and over again. She doesn’t wait for answers, she doesn’t suggest any answers as if all her questions need no answers. They are for us to take home with us. She does not aim to teach us anything, she just confronts us with the persistence of images and words. She tells no stories but invokes many a story we have stored in our memory. As much as she speaks to our consciousness, the repetition of the images and words delve into our unconscious words linking thus the in-linkable (like Jewish and Palestinian victimhood for example.)

‘Still Life’ is a powerful film and a very difficult one at that. Constructed from simple things in a minimalist style into a very complex film that confronts us with our senses and with all the things we think we know.

— Sobhi al-Zobaidi