The Viewing Booth

Description: Ra’anan Alexandrowicz is an anti-occupation activist and filmmaker currently pursuing a graduate degree at Temple University in the US. Tired, in his words, of ‘preaching to the choir’ he wanted to see the impact of activist film on hostile audiences. He set up a viewing booth and invited volunteers to be filmed while watching and commenting on a selection of clips uploaded to YouTube by the Israeli human rights NGO Betzelem and their right wing settler counterparts.

Although he had seven volunteers, Alexandrowicz chose to focus his film on one, Maia Levy, daughter to right wing Israeli emigrants to the US. Although Levy acknowledges seeing some of the Betzelem clips before, it is obvious that she regards them as propaganda. In their first 90 minute session, Levy is mostly defensive of the IDF and settlers and complains about the lack of ‘context’ in the videos. Alexandrowicz invites Levy six months later to return to the viewing booth to be filmed reviewing some of the same clips and the taping of her initial visit.

If anyone expected Levy to be markedly radicalised by what she saw they are going to be disappointed, as is obviously Alexandrowicz.

Merits: The format and the university setting suggest a form of a social science experiment. Alexandrowicz is right to deny this (it would be a very shoddily designed study) and to state that his goal was to simply see whether the kind of work he and other activist filmmakers do has the power to change minds. If taken on its terms, the depressing implications are universal and not just restricted to the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Rating: Graphic violence.

Programming considerations: Consider accompanying with a panel discussion on the difficulty of breaking through ideological bubbles.

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