Tribeca Dispatch. 1.

As the Tribeca Film Festival opens, and the stars pile into town, I'll take a deep breath and look at films that may not make it through the hype. There are plenty of them at the festival.

One is 9 Star Hotel, Ido Haar's documentary from Israel about Palestinian workers, building Modi'in, a new city there on the site of an ancient Jewish town that is said to have been home to the Maccabees. They work illegally, passing from the Occupied Territories into Israel (although everyone, including their bosses, seems to know it) and they live illegally in settlements built from what artists like to call found materials in the hills above their construction site. The title is a joke. Not much else in this film is.

Updated.

The story builds irony upon irony, layering myths on the myth of Sisyphus. Palestinians, displaced and cut off from land which they once owned, have lost the source of their livelihood. Most of those whom we see have no formal education, and some are illiterate, so they work in the traditional masonry trades that Palestinians have practiced for years - although some have second jobs, believe it or not, as security guards. One of them, Ahmed, scrounges through garbage to make an extra five dollars a day. Mohammad, his handsome chain-smoking friend, provides political commentary throughout, talking mostly about working conditions and police. Both end up putting their lives at risk.

The jobs, no surprise, are with the Israelis, who are building everywhere, scarring the Holy Land with new towns, and highways to and from those places, all protected by various levels of Israeli law enforcement.

The workers live in shantytowns, built mostly with cardboard and trash, with no heat or water, not so different from what you can now see in and around every major city in the United States or Europe. This is an immigration story, after all, and almost all immigration is economic.

These "settlements" are illegal, hence another irony, that their illegality is prosecuted, while illegal West Bank settlements at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute are permitted by the government, or ignored as the disputes between Jewish settlers and their government await a "political solution." The laborers' labor is also illegal, yet that seems largely tolerated, because the illegal workers are an integral part of the construction economy, although the men are constantly on the watch for police. After all, the Palestinians are infiltrators.

It's all about land, and about the roles that the strong and the weak have in shaping the landscape. We see the men running across the highways, dodging cars and Israeli cops. We see them at work, pouring concrete and applying plaster to what look like luxury apartments. When the wall now being constructed to separate Jews from Palestinians on the West Bank is finished, they say that sneaking onto building sites could be impossible, so they'll lose the little income that they have.

And these are the men who have jobs. Some talk of being breadwinners for their entire families. "I'd like to join the Palestinian police force," one them says, adding with chagrin, "they only take people who can read and write."

DA Pennebaker likes to say that you can only make documentaries if the people who are the subjects of your film are willing to cooperate, and Ido Haar got remarkable access to the men who camp in the hills and descend to build the homes of Israelis.

The workmen are not terrorists, nor are they saints. When the subject of the Holocaust comes up, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, one of the men observes that six million Jews were killed. "Six million?" another says, imagining that if six million more Jews settled in Palestine and had children, things would be far worse than they are.

Haar's film is shot, by the director, either on the run or at the hilltop encampment where available light means a campfire or a flashlight. It has the look of a video image running to keep up with its subject. Yet there are some cinematic touches. The film opens with shots of the sky and the landscape. We hear sounds that seem like machine-gun fire, which can be routine there. They turn out to be the noises from drills that are preparing the ground for houses. It's reassuring - or is it. There's no gunfire here. Over the course of the documentary, however, we see that construction and occupation are effective instruments of war.

9 Star Hotel isn't making its premiere at Tribeca, having played at Jerusalem, IDFA, Hot Docs and other festivals. Yet it's appropriate that this spare, unsentimental film about real estate and the anonymous workers who create its value is shown at Tribeca, a festival that began as a maneuver to shore up the values of land in lower Manhattan after September 11.

The Israeli dramatic feature My Father, My Lord, by David Volach (in the international competition at Tribeca), is another grim picture of a tiny slice of that country, seen through the family of an orthodox rabbi whose ardent adherence to strict laws of observance end up costing the life of his son on an excursion to the Dead Sea. The film is so well-acted that the dialogue is barely necessary, with the dean of Israeli actors Assi Dayan as the rabbi and father, Sharon Hacohen Bar as his dutiful but tenderly doubting wife, and young Eilan Grif as their curious son.

Boaz Yaacov's cinematography catches every nuance of tension in the family. There's a deliberate contemplative pace to the storytelling here that some will undoubtedly call Bergmanesque. Bresson comparisons will also surely come up. Yet Volach has made his own film, a fatalistic look at the clash of faith and humanity. Think of it the next time someone recommends faith-based initiatives to you.

The Last Jews of Libya by Vivienne Roumani-Denn, a new documentary at the festival, reminds you that the "refugee problem," as it used to be called, isn't only an Arab one. More in a future installment.

-David D'Arcy

"I don't subscribe to the hype, but I do believe in the opportunity: 150-something features; six dozen shorts; a few clever panels; and a press pass to rule them all." ST VanAirdale lays out the many ways the Reeler will be all over Tribeca, including Reeler TV and a reviews blog, the Screening Room.

"Art and politics: two poles rightfully addressed by many of the selections in a film festival located (more and more virtually) near the festering hole that was the World Trade Center." A preview from Howard Feinstein at indieWIRE, where the special Tribeca section is revving up.

"They have to figure out who they are. They've got all the potential in the world, but haven't realized it yet," Sony Picture Classics co-founder and co-president Tom Bernard, who hasn't yet picked up a picture at Tribeca, tells the New York Observer's Sara Vilkomerson.

Updates: "Is Alberto Gonzales stupid?" asks Alex Gibney at the Huffington Post, before answering: "I think that - within limited parameters - he's brilliant. And the proof is a moment from one of his performances in a hearing that I excerpted in my new film, Taxi to the Dark Side, about the Bush Administration's torture policy." Via Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker.

At the Reeler, Steve Erickson surveys the festival's other offerings from the Middle East.

Daniel Kasman on the revival of Gérard Blain's The Pelican.

"[T]he sad truth is that six years into the fest's history, I have yet to see a good movie there," writes Jürgen Fauth. "But we try... Napoleon and Me is intermittently amusing, but the film can't find its tone, theme, or center. With Monica Bellucci as full-bosomed Baronessa."

Posted by dwhudson at April 25, 2007 10:07 AM