The concept of the experimental documentary has been getting some traction in cinema during the last few years, with festivals in particular, nurturing this kind of film quite intensely. In the case of Razan Al Salah’s “A Stone’s Throw” however, this approach is actually a necessity to a point, since the majority of the ‘story’ takes place in Zirku Island, an Emirati offshore oil platform and work camp, where any type of filming and photography is highly controlled by the government and forbidden if not officially approved.
A Stone’s Throw is screening at Doclisboa
The main focus of the story, however, is a Palestinian elder, Amine, who was twice exiled from both land and labor, in a ‘trip” that took him from Haifa to Beirut to Zirku Island. In order to present that latter part, Al Salah has used archival material, zooming in old photographs and also ones taken from satellite, in a rather unique way of giving access to an area that would otherwise be inaccessible. Expectedly, the quality of the images is not great, and the screen frequently fills with grain, in a way, though, that becomes part of the narrative, highlighting the difficulty of the particular project, and perhaps, as a metaphor, the harsh life Amine has lived.
The experimentation, however, does not stop there, since the kind of command lines on the screen, that frequently appear to show various messages, and the passing of the protagonist through imagery, with his slouching walking essentially dictating the pace of the documentary, add even more to this approach.
Furthermore, through his story, Al Salah presents the history of the Palestinians, starting in 1936, when the oil laborers of Haifa blew up a BP pipeline. The British Rule and the events involving Israel later are central here, with the director connecting the story of the land with its history of extraction and colonization, bringing the whole Middle East under his gaze.
While the purpose of the movie is ‘noble’ and the presentation intriguing, the repetitive nature, even if the connection of the various footage is functionable, and the quality of the image do become somewhat tiring after a point, even at 41 minutes.
This however, is the only issue in a documentary that manages to shed light to an area virtually unknown while intriguingly raising the story of its protagonist to a level that encompasses the history of the area and its people.
