This is my review of this film followed by my interview with Vanessa Rousselot, the director.
While we are bombarded on a daily basis with news and images of casualties, screams and cries of people who lose their loved ones in Gaza strip, and while this age-old conflict between Palestine and Israel seems never ending, we forget the fact that life goes on among those people all the same, that to survive, one needs to smile at life, no matter how unexpectedly harsh the response would be.
Whilst politicians denounce each other's deeds, making journalists produce hundreds of lines in the media, an unorthodox yet natural question intrigues a young French student: What are the Palestinian jokes? Driven to answer this question, Vanessa Rousselot sets off to The West Bank to learn Arabic for a year.
She comes across different reactions, sometimes from reticent people. "Our entire life is a joke", one of them says. Desperate to hear people's jokes, she asks her Arabic teacher for guidance. She tells her to start telling people jokes to gain their confidence and they will open up. She says: "I laugh, so I exist"
Vanessa finds out that Hebronites are butt of dozens of jokes in a similar fashion that French jest about Belgians.
A Hebronite and an Israeli Jew argue about the degree of freedom in their respective countries. The Israeli says: “Right in the center of Tel Aviv, I can shout: Netanyahu, you’re an ass." The Hebronite says in response: "right in the center of Hebroun I can shout: Netanyahu, your're an ass!"
It's quite thought-provoking when we see how people joke about their tragedy. A man in a cafe comes up with another one: “A child from Gaza asks his father, ‘Give me 2 shekels so that I can get to the checkpoint.’ The father says:‘1 shekel should do, since you’ll be coming back by ambulance.’"
Vanessa travels to Ramallah to visit an elderly anthropologist who started collecting jokes during the first Intifada. He said that people make jokes to cope with their situation; the Palestinians joke about things they think they can influence.
While The Palestinian jokes mostly revolve around themselves and their politicians, an Israeli girl working in a shop in Haifa tells Vanessa her version: "A good Arab, is a dead Arab".
While Vanessa passes alongside the Israeli West Bank Barrier fro Jerusalem to Bethlehem, my eyes are in search of the graffiti that Banksy, the English Graffiti artist made on that wall in 2005. I'm also reminded of the musical collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian young musicians which was conducted by Edward Said and Danile Barenboim in 1999.
It's through art that we come to fathom the world around us, since it redirects our awareness to the human aspects of life.
