DVDs with the Elders: A Palestinian Grandfather
This is a frame from Israeli filmmaker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s 2001 documentary, The Inner Tour. Here is my first visual experience of a Palestinian elder with living memory of his land being seized by Israeli aggression saying, “We stand steadfast, our feet embedded in our land.”
The “Tour” in the title of this film refers to Palestinians, like the old man pictured above, “touring” the land that is defined as a part of Israel. In the case of this elder, he is literally visiting his ancestral land as a tourist. One very interesting scene was when he walked through an Israeli visitor center, clearly designed for under-informed tourists, with all of its museum history totally glossing over and sugarcoating his living memory. The drama of such moments is as poignant as those in other documentaries like Ishi, The Last Yahi.