Student Verzio
Student Verzio

Compositions of high school students about "Death in Gaza" (J. Miller, 2004, UK, 79' ) screened for students from 'II. Rákóczi Ferenc Gimnázium'
'Student Verzio' at Open Society Archives, 30 November 2005
Teacher: Katalin Gádoros

"I saw a film about the Gaza strip. The cameraman showed very shocking pictures about the people in Gaza. In the first part of the film we saw dead man and the cars blowed up. The journalists asked some people about them dreams and thoughts. They answered different things but there was the same thing about them dreams. They did not want to die, they wanted peace and peaceful life. The children throwed the tanks with stones, because the tanks destroyed them houses. Every day there was a death. Everybody fighted his own form against the war and tanks. The boys played at war. They made hand grenade and they played death and they also learnt how they could help each other. The soldiers helped to the children how could they use the gun, and a lot of children sais "I wanna be a martyr". They hope one day they will free and get a new better life."
(A.B.)

"I liked this film very much, because we could see what is the situation in Gaza. It was very shockind because we saw how people are dying like martyrs. Small children were playing with guns and they played they are the Palestine people and they must kill the Jewish People. The kids were throwing stones at the tanks and the tanks were aiming at the children. They were "playing" like cat and mouse. The tank was chasing the children.
The palestine people are living in scare because every day there come buldozers in the streets and are ruining the houses. We could see Mohammed and Ahmed, who are 12 years old and are making granats and their goal in life is to die like a martyr.
It was a shocking, bloody film but I think it was very good because we could see the real situation in Gaza, the scare of the palestine people and the cruelty of the isralis."
(L.T.)

"That film is real. The film is full of blood. The children, the men and the soldiers are all real. And they could kill other humans. They say the "children of the dogs" came and they must kill them. The film was shocking: a child killed by a tank, a family that lost six family members, two children who wanted to be martyres. James Miller, the director of the film was killed. The The whole territory of the Gaza strip lived in terror. In the school the teacher taught about the big Palestine. The six year old girl in the house spoked about the war, the guns and about clothes. The children played the adults" war. They hided, fired, and threw "home made" granades. And the buldozers came and destroyed the houses. That all is real and the most important is that is all true."
(M.F.)

"I really liked that film, the idea to make a documentary film about this purposless war in Gaza, because it can change people opinion and attitude about the war. It could change because it is so shocking that little children do believe that it is a very brave and great thing to die. And little children"s dream is about killing many jews by committing a suicide with a bomb. And Israel just won"t give up the war until they"ll get the Gaza strip. And the situation is getting getting worse. In this film the seconf most shocking thing was that the director has been murdered while he wanted to go to somewhere and during this he was holding a white flag in his hand and despite all this he was shot dead. This terrible thing has changed two extremist children"s mind. After the death of the director they wanted to be also a director. I guess I"ve not told a new thing, but that is what I think about the film."
(A.D.)

"First I want to say it: I did not see the film because I was ill.
The others said the film was bloody and tragical but I think a good and real documentary film sould be bloody "cause the life is brutal. A good film have to show this. I heard the people who made the film died when they were in a fire fight. Soldiers shot the journalist down but he got a white flag. I don"t think the soldiers made a mistake with it. I can understand them because it could be a trap like the journalist is a suicide bomber. The soldiers sure met with many traps, almost anyone could be a suicide bomber. The people in Israel are strange but they show very good how strong is the humans" adjustability. If a suicide bomber kill himself and other people witth his explose they stop the traffic for a little time, take away the junk and the corpses and the woulded people but after an hour they do work like nothing has happened. There are soldiers on the corners and they shoot everyone who is suspicious without asking. They do this because they don"t want to lose their loved ones. They organize actions to eliminate the leaders of these suicide people to stop this madness. Of course at these actions innocent people dies. They loved ones think the soldiers are evil so they try to strike back. The easiest was is to become a suicide bomber. The leaders of these cults tell those people to kill themself to strike back. They manipulate them to think it"s a good thing. Almost nobody knows why are they doing this but only the the victims suffer from it. I think while the leaders are free they will send more suicide bomber and soldiers will strike back at they own way and this madness will never stop if they are free."
(T.L.)

"I think the is a bit too realistic because it was bloody but in Israel it seems natural. The documentary is about the children in the Gaza strip and it"s shocking that the children are fighting, too and helping in the war. It is shocking that the terrorists are using children in their fights and if someone has been shot everybody thinks that he or she is a martyr and he or she is in heaven. It is the soldiers" fault, toobecause they destroy these peoples" homes because they think there is a smugler tunnel under the house. These people can only throw rocks on the bulldozers and tanks but it won"t work but the soldiers answers with guns even if the rocks can"t hurt the armored vehicles. In the school the teachers are teachuing the children to hate the Israelines. The soldiers have become so paranoied because of the 6 years old suicide bombers and the paramilitaries" attacks that they shoot at anything that moves. In the end of the film that"s why did the soldiers shot at the crew escepialy at night where they can"t decide that it is a suicide bomber or tourist. I think this war will only end if both sides put down their weapons."
(J.K.)

"I think that the film was really sad, but it was also beautiful. It made me think about the terrible situation in the Gaza Strip. The most shocking part of the film was to see little children talking about death like something good, the thought of being martyred made them happy.
I find it very bad that noone (nor the Palestines nor the Israelis) wants to end the war, they want to fight, even if this ruins bunches of families. I hope that things in Gaza will become better.
The only thing which was pacifying to see was that even in such terrible circumstances people can trust and love each other like Ahmed and Mohammed."
(E.T.)

"I liked that documentary film. In the film the people told what they were feeling at the moment. When the bulldozers killed the cameraman, I was shocked. I was desperate when I saw that children were playing their parents" game, the war. I thought that wasn"t their choice. I was sad when I heard the little girl describe the men in the tanks. I hated when the terrorists said: the martyrdom is very good for a little kid. I could not belive in it. In the school the teachers taught the kids about a life what they can never live. The bulldozers ruined the people"s house. The men in the bulldozers did not interest about who lived in that house. I did not like that part of the film. The dead cameraman. James was a martyr. James"s picture was on the walls when the people went to a march against the Israeli soldiers."
(Cs.V.)

"This film was very good, I very enjoyed it, but it was a little bit schocking. It was very bad to see that in Gaza, in every street there is a tank or a bulldozer. In Gaza the people can die in every minute or second. I think that is a very bad feeling. Fortunately in Hungary the situation is different. The Palestinan boys and some adults are very patriotic in their own way, because their were throwing stones or hand made granades, which was made of sugar, metal and some chemical. I think a lot of children think that is a game and they can"t feel what are they doing really. And we could see how the children played soldier. Every person who had a house had to always play attention to the bulldozers, because they cannot know when will the bulldozer damage their house. And the parents also had to pay attention to their sons and daughters. Lot of parents were very sad because they wanted their boy to be a good student or have a good job like their parents when they grow up.
I hope this war will end in one day and the palestin people will be happy again."
(G.M.)

"That film was about Death in Gaza. Firstly I saw the director, who was James Miller, who could not finish his film, this documentary film, because somebody killed him. It was shocking. But it was a very exciting documentary film about a war between Palestines and Israelian men. Not only men shot. The children were fighting, too. It was very unusual. The children made bombs from sugar, iron or metal. It was very interesting and shocking. Before the film I wanted to prepaor myself to it, but it wasn"t a normal film. It was interesting to see that live in the Gaza strip is not easy. The tanks chased the children, but they did not give up. There was a team of paramilitian who spoke about their live. I saw three children who made bombs to protect their own house. It was heroic. That film was very sad because there was a child in it who suicided, And I saw one half pf a person, blood and bbrain."
(T.V.)

"I think the film was very interesting, but very shocking. I"m not interested in the document films, but it wasn"t a usual document film, because it wasn"t boring. But I would like to watch it once again, because it was so shocking to me that I could not pay attentionto a few parts of the film. The children"s situation was terrible. I thought we cannot live under such circumstances. This is very depressing that this is all real in the 21st century. I hope it finishes all over the world and the humans will like each other and the children will not be like the grown up people."
(Zs.H.)

SCREENINGS FOR HIGH SCHOOLS
Verzio organizes morning screenings and follow-up debates for high schools.
By encouraging tolerant intercultural communication, the project works to remove prejudices and the negative effects of extremism, racism, national intolerance and xenophobia. Verzio empowers teachers to help students form independent opinions and enrich individual social, cultural and historic awareness.

Friday, December 2, 2005
OSA Archives, Goldberger Building | Budapest V. Arany János u. 32.

10am and 12am
2 or 3 Things I Know About Him (2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm weiss, Malte Ludin, Germany, 2004, 87 min)
The family of a Nazi war criminal, sixty years after the end of the War. Hanns Elard Ludin found fame as a young officer under the Weimar Republic, after conspiring on Hitler's behalf in the German army. When Hitler came to power Ludin' s career took off; by the time he was twenty-eight, he had an army of no less than 300,000 storm troopers under his command. In 1941 he became Hitler's emissary to the Nazi's vassal state, Slovakia, and looked after the interests of the Third Reich there - including the implementation of the Final Solution. After the war, the Americans handed Ludin over to the Czechoslovakian authorities; he was sentenced to death and hanged. Ludin's youngest son, director Malte Ludin, presents a 'documentary debate' with the three generations of his large family, now scattered all over the world. Although the truth about the father's role in the war has long been on record, his widow, children and children's children argue about their family history, struggling to reconcile private memories with public knowledge.

Friday, December 2, 2005
Örökmozgó Film Theatre | Budapest VII. Erzsébet krt. 39.

10am and 2pm
Memory of the Camps (Sidney Bernstein, UK, 1945, 58 min)
Memory of the Camps was the title allocated by the Imperial War Museum to a documentary on the liberation of the German concentration camps. It was assembled in London during 1945, as a joint Allied project, but never released. After the Americans withdrew from the project, it became the sole responsibility of the Ministry of Information. Alfred Hitchcock had been named director, and a second treatment was provided by Richard Crossman, who had visited Belsen. Five of the film's presumed six reels were transferred from the War Office film vaults to the Museum Film Archive in 1952. The current narration was recorded in 1985. The shocking footage of the film is followed by a line of the commentary which says that the film-makers hope the audience may "absorb what it is hoped will be a dreadful lesson".

12am
Pictures of Germany (Deutschlandbilder, Hartmut Bitomsky, Heiner Mühlenbrock, 1983-84, FRG, 60 min)
An insightful examination of more than thirty so-called "Kulturfilme", Nazi documentary shorts shown in movie theaters before the feature film. Their depiction of a self-confident Germany populated by nature lovers, craftsmen, and people devoted to both progress and tradition is revealed as a perfidious strategy for claiming wide-spread support for the regime. The film is composed of excerpts from more than 30 documentary films that were made and shown in the period between 1933 and 1945 - profoundly hypocritical works whose intention was to conceal the function assigned to them.

Friday, December 2, 2005
Toldi Cinema | Budapest V., Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út 36-38.

10am and 12.30pm
The Goebbels Experiment (Das Goebbels-Experiment, Lutz Hachmeister, Germany, 2004, 107 min)
The name Goebbels stands for unbridled, cynical and - at least partially - successful propaganda. It's a convenient label, regularly used to brand politicians as evil rabble-rousers and polemicists. But Joseph Goebbels' life was more enigmatic and unsettling than his current classification as propaganda genius or 'inveterate liar of the Third Reich' would suggest, and here we see how Goebbels constantly stage-managed his life and reinvented himself, from his beginnings as a 'National Socialist' to his suicide with his wife and children. Unusually, for a documentary, it abstains from the use of commentary - the diary that Goebbels kept from 1924 to 1945 is the only 'voice' in the film. In particular, the film succeeds in conveying the gestures and facial expressions of this manic-depressive man, creating the picture of a modern media manager who devoted his workaholic personality to the whole spectrum of communication - only to fail so completely in political and moral terms.

For further information please contact
Nagy Ilona, program coordinator
(36-1) 327 3250
(36-20) 66 93 248