Emad Burnat, a 39 year-old Palestinian filmmaker, received the $10,000 award for his project “Five Broken Cameras”

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

“If you are wounded you will always remember your wound, even after it’s healed. But what if you are injured again and again… you forget your scars. The camera remembers”.

It’s been five years since my village Bil’in, near Ramallah in the West Bank, began to oppose the wall which Israel built across our land. During this time I have had five different video cameras, and each one, in different ways, gave its life to the struggle. Each camera tells a story.

I chose to tell the story from my own perspective, the perspective of a cameraman who persists in filming despite all the difficulties and threats. This is not just an activist film; the events that I have documented these five years took over my personal life. Just a few days before the beginning of this struggle, my baby boy Jibreel was born. For me, this symbolizes the connection between Bil’in’s struggle and my own life. My family and me, and my two best friends, we are all part of it.

At first, the soldiers arrested my 11 year-old cousin in the middle of the night. My own children, all of us, were scared that the same could happen to us. My wife Suraya worries that my filming puts the family in danger. My brothers who take part in the demonstrations against the wall are arrested and thrown into jail, one after another. My parents try to stop the soldiers, in vain. When my friend Adeeb is arrested, his 14 year-old son tries to stop the soldiers. Later, it’s my turn to be arrested. I’m sentenced to live away from my home for months, as a way to prevent me from continuing to film.

When I started filming, it was a way of reacting to the reality around me, but soon after, it became a way of survival.