NY Times; Cameras Help Teenagers Look Beyond Bitter Conflicts

By JOEL GREENBERG. Looking squarely into the camera, Amer Kamal, a Palestinian teenager from East Jerusalem, delivers a message to his Israeli friend, Yaron Avni, who will soon be drafted into the Israeli Army.

”I hope that you will be a good soldier who helps his society, who helps his people and who works for the peace process,” Mr. Kamal says. ”I don’t want to see you in the West Bank or in Jerusalem or in the Gaza Strip running after Palestinians and killing them. I hope you’re going to stay the Yaron I know, not to change your opinions but go for peace and help us to work for peace.”

The scene is from ”Peace of Mind,” the first documentary film shot jointly by Israeli and Palestinian youths, chronicling a year in their lives after returning home from an Israeli-Arab summer camp in the Maine woods. The camp is run by Seeds of Peace, an organization that brings young Israelis together with Palestinians and other Arab teenagers to build friendships and discuss ways to resolve the conflict between their peoples.

”Peace of Mind,” which will be shown a few times around New York in the coming months, had its Israeli premiere in November after being shown at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October. The producers say that showings are being considered by PBS and the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival this summer. Israel Educational Television and the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation are also planning to show the movie, which the producers hope will become a teaching tool in schools.

The documentary was conceived by Susan Siegel, co-executive director of Global Action Project, an educational group that has produced youth documentaries on social issues in the United States as well as on conflicts in Northern Ireland and the Balkans. She said she wanted the cameras to follow the campers when they left their idyllic surroundings in Maine and returned to the Middle East. ”What happens when they go back home: that’s the real story,” she said.

Producers chose four Israelis and three Palestinians, trained them to use video cameras and to work as a team, then sent them back to document their lives after the 1997 camp session. The film, produced and directed by Mark Landsman, took two years to complete, and the process produced fast friendships and heated debates.

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