Back in November I described a visit to Rahat, the Bedouin city a few miles north of Be’er Sheva. Later I described an article I read about black Bedouin women in Rahat making films about their difficult situation. Both postings drew comments with many other details and links.
One person who commented was Uri Rosenwaks, the Israeli filmmaker who taught the Rahat women to become filmmakers themselves. His own film, The Film Class, portrays the project’s impact on his students. The film’s distributor has links to reviews and other details.
Uri sent me the DVD, which my wife and I watched two weeks ago. I was hoping my 13-year old daughter would get around to watching it before I commented on it here, but so far she’s been too busy being 13. I’ll suggest it to her again, though, because I know she’ll find it fascinating.
The film itself is short, just under an hour, perhaps designed to fit into a standard television time slot. I would have liked it longer, because there’s so much more to Film Class than just a film class. As some of the reviews explain in more detail, this is really a story of self-discovery by women who finally confront an issue they had avoided their entire lives: how did black people come to be living in the Negev to begin with, and what does that origin have to do with their low status today? With Bedouin at the bottom of the Israeli status ladder and black Bedouin on the very bottom rung, black Bedouin women are as far down as it’s possible to get. They have a disarming sense of humor, though, amidst the heartache.
Once the students begin to explore their origins — complete with a visit to the slave-trade center on Zanzibar — they confront more directly the tensions between Rahat’s blacks and whites — between descendants of African slaves and descendants of whiter Bedouin slaveowners in a society where the good guys and bad guys are all Muslim. When they interview Rahat’s mayor, he insists that under Islam everyone is equal, with no racial distinctions allowed. Then why, he is asked, did one of the students’ cousins who married a white Bedouin woman have to leave Israel because of threats against him? The answer: Tradition — in this case the tradition that parents decide whom a daughter marries. Since this woman’s parents refused, no marriage was possible. Not a race thing at all.
I hope Film Class gets wide distribution, but suspect it will have trouble outside Israel. A friend saw it in Be’er Sheva last month, at a series organized by a Negev co-existence group, but the theme may be too touchy for less-motivated forums. It doesn’t fit into the more common narratives — Israel’s treatment of its own Arab citizens, for example, or its treatment of Palestinians across the Green Line. Of course, the departure from these important politically palatable categories is what makes it so eye-opening.
The story of Rahat’s black women, though not the film, is embedded in the broader issue of how Israel’s national institutions deal with Bedouin more generally. I don’t mean the obvious repressive policies, like destroying homes in unrecognized Bedouin villages to force the residents into larger places like Rahat. I was told over and over again, for example, that there simply is no place in Israel for Bedouin women to go to escape unwanted marriages, polygamous or otherwise. Should the authorities step in to protect those women, or should they let traditional cultures sort things out as the men in charge decide? Should they enforce the law against polygamy by infringing on local tradition? Israel’s response seems to be avoidance.
That’s also an issue within Palestine. The researchers I worked with at Birzeit University in December hope to develop a modern Palestinian legal system, but have not yet sorted out how and when to deal with women’s equality in a mostly-Muslim society. Touchy issue there, too.
Positive note: Uri Rosenwaks writes that the Step Forward Foundation that backed his film has received new funding to buy professional television equipment, which 20 Rahat women are now learning to use. The goal is a Rahat community television station. Now that could be interesting.
[...] Rahat, the Bedouin city a few miles to the north of where I was staying in Beer Sheva. Later, I described a new film by Uri Rosenwaks about the film class he taught to black Bedouin women. A really intriguing film [...]