Promised Lands By Susan Sontag

Special Revival Engagement!
"Susan Sontag's third directorial effort and her only documentary, Promised Lands scrutinizes the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and the growing divisions within Jewish thought over the question of Palestinian sovereignty. Shot in Israel during the final days and immediate aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, it is undoubtedly one of Sontag's most incisive examinations of contemporary Jewish consciousness, and she considered it her most personal film.
"Sontag structures the film as an antiphony between two sets of images. The first consists of observational sequences detailing moments from modern Israel: desert landscapes, patrols of roadside soldiers, old men and women at the Wailing Wall, Israeli grocery stores and movie theaters, the Jerusalem War Cemetery, a military psychiatric ward, and a wax museum depicting the official history of the state. Intercut throughout are conversations with two intellectuals: writer Yoram Kaniuk, a supporter of Palestinian rights who sees Israel shifting from its socialist roots to an American-style commercial culture, and physicist Yuval Ne'eman, who argues for the endemic nature of Arab anti-Semitism. Though the film grants no direct access to Arab or Palestinian voices, its clear elaboration of the debate prompted Israeli censors to ban its initial release, claiming it would be 'damaging to the country's morale.' Stateside, Stanley Kauffmann praised the film's Hegelian quality, writing that it presents 'not a struggle between truth and falsehood but between two opposing, partial truths.'" -Ed Halter
"Using the Arab-Israel War as a metaphor for the human condition, Susan Sontag has made a strong, clear, intelligent film. It is unlike any film that I have seen." -Roberto Rossellini
"PROMISED Lands hardly tells all the truths there are about the conflicts in the Middle East, about the October War, about the mood of Israel right now, about war and loss and memory and survival. But what the film does tell is true. It was like that. To tell the truth (even some of it) is already a marvelous privilege, responsibility, gift." -Susan Sontag