"The Law In These Parts" Film Screening
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
7:00 pm
Smith Warehouse, Bay 4, Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Room C105
Join the Duke Human Rights Center for a screening of the film "The Law In These Parts," the first film in the 2022-2023 Rights! Camera! Action! Film Series.
Since Israel conquered the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, the military has imposed thousands of orders and laws, established military courts, sentenced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, enabled half a million Israeli "settlers" to move to the Occupied Territories and developed a system of long-term jurisdiction by an occupying army that is unique in the entire world.
The men entrusted with creating this new legal framework were the members of Israel's military legal corps. Responding to a constantly changing reality, these legal professionals have faced (and continue to face) complex judicial and moral dilemmas in order to develop and uphold a system of long-term military “rule by law” of an occupied population, all under the supervision of Israel's Supreme Court, and, according to Israel, in complete accordance with international law.
The Law In These Parts explores this unprecedented and little-known story through testimonies of the military legal professionals who were the architects of the system and helped run it in its formative years. The film attempts to ask some crucial questions that are often skirted or avoided: Can such an occupation be achieved within a legal framework that includes genuine adherence to the principles of rule-of-law? Should it? What are the costs that a society engaged in such a long term exercise must bear? And what are the implications of the very effort to make a documentary film about such a system?
The post-screening panel will feature speaker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz.
Ra'anan Alexandrowicz is a director, screenwriter and editor. He is known for the documentary The Law in These Parts (2011), which received the Grand Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival, a Peabody award, and numerous other prizes. His earlier documentaries, The Inner Tour (2001) and Martin (1999), were shown in the Berlin Film Festival's Forum section and MoMA's New Directors / New Films series. Alexandrowicz's single fiction feature, James' Journey to Jerusalem (2003), premiered in Cannes Directors' Fortnight and at the Toronto International Film Festival and received several international awards. He also directed the 2019 documentary film The Viewing Booth. Alexandrowicz's films have been released theatrically in the United States and Europe, and broadcast by PBS, Arte, the BBC, as well as other television channels. He served several times as an editing adviser for the Sundance Documentary Fund.