From Encounter Point to Budrus: An Interview with filmmaker Ronit Avni

Q. First a hearty congratulations on winning your second audience award at the San Francisco Film Festival for your film Budrus. I know the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a hot one. I’ll circle back to that but could we start of by you sharing a little about growing up and your background?

Budrus

A. Thank you, we are delighted by the award. About myself,  I grew up in Quebec, Canada to a Canadian mother and Israeli father. Primarily immersed in a close-knit Jewish community in which I was taught an Israeli historical narrative.

Q. How did you point of view on the Isareli-Arab conflict change over time?

A. While attending Vassar College in New York State, a friend thought I would be interested in taking a course about the middle-east conflict. I felt I had already been over-exposed to this issue, but opted to give it a try. That in many ways changed my thinking and exposed me to concurrent, complex narratives, and especially to Palestinian perspectives. From there I received a fellowship to intern at Israel’s largest human rights organization, B’Tselem. I also began volunteering for the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, an organization founded to combat torture.

Q. What led you to filmmaking?

A. I come from a family of artists. I studied theater directing and was later drawn to film as it allows you to reach a larger audience. After college I sought to combine documentary film and human rights advocacy. I was hired as a Program Associate at Witness, which is an organization founded by musician Peter Gabriel.  Witness advances human rights advocacy using video.

Q. So now you have the start of both a political awakening and exposure to video. What happened next that led you on your journey to being a filmmaker?

A. In my spare time but during my tenure at Witness, I interviewed 475 Palestinians and Israeli peace builders, human rights advocates and nonviolence leaders. Their issues were invisible to the media and society at large. Many times one initiative or group doesn’t know about the other.  That was the founding idea for Just Vision – to tell the stories of Palestinian and Israeli peace builders and nonviolence leaders who are otherwise invisible to American, Arab, Palestinian and Israeli publics. Early on Joline Makhlouf (Palestinian) and Nahanni Rous (American) joined me, followed by Julia Bacha who had worked on the film Control Point (Brazilian) and Rula Salameh (Palestinian), so we have multiple faiths and points of view represented.

Q. Encounter Point was your first documentary film, which was well received. You won the San Francisco Film Festival Audience award in 2006. Can you talk about the film and its success?

A. The film started the festival circuit at Tribecca, and made its way to Toronto, San Francisco, Dubai, and Montreal. Along the way it was shown in over 200 cities and more than 10 commercial cinemas.

Q. During that process what was the high point for you?

A. Just seeing the audience reaction. That holds true for our second film Budrus.

Q. OK so lets talk about Budrus. The tag line is “It takes a village to unite the most divided people on earth.” What was the genesis of the film?

Julia Bacha (Director) and Ronit Avni (Producer)

A. One of the questions that had come up in the West after we had shown Encounter Point is “where is the Palestinian non-violent movement?.”  The assumption was that if a nonviolent movement arose there would be peace. We knew that the situation was in fact much more complicated, and that historically there were already many examples of Palestinian nonviolence efforts. While researching the subject we found that one of the more inspiring and effective examples came from the village of Budrus.

Q. What makes Budrus so different that Encounter Point?

Encounter Point weaves together multiple narratives, while Budrus tells a single story over a period of time. In Budrus, we show how nonviolence brings different Palestinian factions together including Hamas and Fatah, together with Israelis and women leaders. Budrus is about what people can do to transform their circumstances through nonviolence. It is about action and change.

Q. What are the challenges and joys of documentary filmmaking?

A. There are too many to list. For example in Encounter Point we had to turn 250 hours of footage into a 90 minute film. With Budrus there had been a lot of video footage shot by activists with cameras prior to our arrival, so we had to track down their archival footage and then follow up with interviews to bring the story into the present. In terms of joy, showing Budrus in the village and seeing half of the people show up was very touching.

Q. These subjects could be addressed in feature films, why do you choose documentary?

A. Feature films have a much larger reach, but each genre has its pros and cons. People are cynical about the conflict. They have preconceived notions. If we had made the exact same film as a feature, people wouldn’t have believed it. With documentary, people know the subject is real and it is harder for them not to accept the facts. So each genre brings something to the bigger picture.

Q. Thank you.