I just posted the audio podcast of this report:
While media coverage of Israel’s evacuation of 9,000 Jewish residents from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005 focused on the political and physical struggle between the government and its citizens, filmmakers Yaron Shane and producer Avi Abelow chose to focus on the human aspect.Here's a bit of background:
The massive police operation which garnered the world's attention and brought emotions to a fevered pitch within the country, played out on very same day as the final game of the annual high-school basketball championship between the 22 Jewish communities in Gaza.
That's the backdrop for Home Game, their recently-released film.
A movingly edited amalgam of hundreds of amateur film clips, recorded by the residents themselves, along with one-on-one interviews with residents Home Game chronicles daily life before and during the evacuation of the 30-year-old farming community of Netzer Hazani, in the southern Gush Katif settlement bloc. Shane and Abelow carefully pieced together the myriad personal and public dramas taking place both within, and beyond the echoing walls of the sports hall into a dramatic whole.
"My ultimate goal is for people to put aside their political orientations, and religious affiliations and whatever baggage they have that stops them from feeling empathy for their fellow Jews who go through tragedies; and in this case, with the movie dealing with the people and the families and the youth of Gush Katif, who went through an unbelievable tragedy,” Abelow told www.ISRAEL21c.com at a screening of the film in Tel Aviv.
