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Presented
by The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Audience
Award, Int'l Film Festival, San Francisco, 2001 What is it really like to live in Jerusalem? PROMISES offers touching and fresh insight into the Middle East conflict when filmmakers Justine Shapiro, B.Z. Goldberg and Carlos Bolado travel to this complex and charged city to see what seven children - Palestinian and Israeli - think about war, peace and just growing up. Living within 20 minutes of each other, these children are nevertheless locked in separate worlds. Through candid interviews, the film explores a legacy of distrust and bitterness, but signs of hope emerge when some of the children dare to cross the checkpoints to meet one another. (2001, 108 minutes) Rather than focusing on political events, the seven children featured in PROMISES offer a compelling human portrait of the Israeli & Palestinian conflict. The film draws viewers into the hearts and minds of Jerusalem's children by giving voice to those captured by the region's hatreds as well as those able to transcend them. These seven children are between the ages of 9-13, an age group that rarely has the opportunity to speak for itself. They are less self-conscious and polite than teenagers and adults. They speak directly and without self-censorship and are both true mirrors of their cultures and spokespeople for future generations of Israelis and Palestinians. PROMISES follows the journey of filmmaker B.Z. Goldberg, an American who grew up in Jerusalem and was a journalist during the intifada. Over the course of 4 years, B.Z. and Justine Shapiro, the filmmakers, were welcomed into the daily lives of these seven children and their families. Each child offers a dramatic, emotional and sometimes hilarious insight into what it's like to grow up in the charged and complex city of Jerusalem. Audiences will engage with Palestinian & Israeli kids, coming to know them as multi-dimensional people, not as simple stereotypes perpetuated by the mainstream media. Though they live only 20 minutes apart, the seven children exist in completely separate worlds; the physical, historical and emotional obstacles between them run deep. The ability to have dialogues with anyone, in a way that breaks through prejudices, is surely a prerequisite for peace in the region. And yet hardly anyone has such conversations. The Filmmakers were able to confront and overcome these obstacles, but could these children ever do the same? PROMISES explores the nature of these boundaries and tells the story of a few children who dared to cross the lines to meet their neighbors. The
film is intended for TV broadcast and for organizations involved in
public policy, conflict resolution and the peace process. The film
will also serve as a tool to prepare future generations of Israelis
& Palestinians for the challenges of peacemaking. JUSTINE SHAPIRO (Co-Producer/Co-Director) has been hosting and co-writing the award winning adventure-travel series Lonely Planet since its inception in 1994.The series is broadcast in over 30 countries worldwide with a global audience over 30 million (Travel Channel US; Discovery International, Discovery Europe, IBA Israel, France 3 and Voyage France, etc). Through her work with Lonely Planet, Justine has had the great pleasure of traveling into and off the beaten track of nearly 40 countries all over the globe. Justine was born in South Africa and grew up in Berkeley, California. She studied theater and history at Tufts University. She was an actress for 15 years in theater, film and television. She lived in Paris where she studied for two years with theater master Phillippe Gaulier. In Los Angeles, Justine appeared in plays, films and television movies and taught English to immigrants. It was the life stories of these immigrants and her travels with Lonely Planet that inspired Justine to turn to the documentary form. In 1993 Justine returned to the San Francisco Bay Area-the heart of independent documentary filmmaking. In 1994, during a Lonely Planet shoot in Israel and the West Bank, Justine found herself drawn towards the children's discussions. The strong words and violent emotions that she encountered in her own young Israeli cousins and in the Palestinian children she met, moved her deeply. She and her friend B.Z. discovered they had a common interest in the drama and the power of the Middle East conflict as expressed by children and thus The Promises Film Project was born. PROMISES is Justine's first feature-length film. B.Z. GOLDBERG (Co-Producer/Co-Director) was born in Boston but grew up in Israel just outside of Jerusalem. He is fluent in Hebrew and conversant in Arabic. B.Z. attended New York University Film School where he studied with Brian Winston, media pioneer George Stoney, and Boris Fruman. In 1987 when the Palestinian uprising known as the Intifada broke out B.Z. returned to Jerusalem to produce television news for Reuters TV, the BBC, NBC, CNN and NHK. It was during this time that he began to be moved by the ways in which the Middle East conflict informed and infused the lives of Palestinians and Israeli children. B.Z. started to notice the ways in which Israeli and Palestinian children were not simply victims of the conflict, but had become active protagonists in the making of their countries. During this time B.Z. began to develop the idea of a documentary film that would take international audiences beyond the news headlines, into the hearts and minds of these children. After dodging countless Palestinian rocks, inhaling much too much Israeli tear gas, and producing many hundreds of hours of news that portrayed the endless violence in the region B.Z. decided to change course. He left his TV job and focused on studying alternative approaches to conflict and conflict resolution. Since 1992 B.Z. has worked for a number of U.S. based consulting firms as a specialist in the field of conflict resolution. He has worked with organizations as varied as the Israeli army, the Toyota group (Japan) AT&T, MIT, Columbia University, The Interfaith Committee on the Middle East, Solidarity (Poland), and the ANC (South Africa). B.Z.'s experience has proven to him time and again that what is crucial in solving any conflict is a) creating forums where people can speak directly, openly, and without preconceptions of a particular outcome, and b) cultivating a hunger for awareness and curiosity rather than seeking "objective" justice. PROMISES is B.Z.'s first feature-length film. This event is part of the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It is cosponsored by UCSB Arts & Lectures, Department of Religious Studies, Hillel, and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
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