Israel Apartheid Week runs from March 5-11 and the film, Roadmap To Apartheid, will be screened as part of the tri-continental film festival that will visit South African universities, showcasing the film and other productions.
The two directors, South African-born Ana Nougeira and Israeli-born Eron Davison, dedicated the film to apartheid icon Dennis Brutus, who was instrumental in the sports boycotts.
The New Age caught up with Nougeira in Spain where she shed light on the making of the film and its overall significance to her and Davison.
She said: “The idea to do the film came to us in 2004. The apartheid analogy used to describe the situation in Israel and Palestine was becoming more common yet was often used somewhat rhetorically.
“We wanted to present a thesis on why the apartheid analogy was being used and to convey clearly in what ways Israel violates the UN convention against the crime of apartheid.
“The title Roadmap To Apartheid is a play on words of the roadmap to peace, the term that most popularly symbolises the peace process based on the two-state solution for the conflict.
“The peace process, two decades later, has proved to be a sham and a very complicated, confusing veil to cover what is actually a plan for the bantustanisation (an area reserved for a specific ethnic grouping with little self-governance) process of classifying the occupied territories, rendering any sort of viable state for the Palestinians truly impossible.
“It is comparable to what South Africans called ‘grand apartheid’, so we felt the movie is a better description of what is happening in Israel and Palestine under the so-called roadmap to peace.”
The movie is narrated by acclaimed author Alice Walker, who wrote the book The Colour Purple, which was turned into a Hollywood blockbuster.
It also features never-seen-before interviews with people such as Brutus and the former SA Council of Churches general secretary, Eddie Makue.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has been fortunate enough to watch the movie, said: “Roadmap To Apartheid is very powerful and compelling; the visuals of house demolitions are appalling.
“Religion is repeatedly misused by politicians and one of the lessons of history is that God is always on the side of the oppressed; another is that those who dehumanise others in the process dehumanise themselves.”
Nougeira said the goal of the movie is to show the average person how similar so many of the laws, practices, context and goals in Israel and Palestine are equal to that of apartheid South Africa, and to hopefully get people engaged in this human rights struggle.
Davison added: “As an Israeli Jew who believes in equal rights for all people, the conflict in Israel and Palestine hits close to home for me.
“Reframing the conflict from ‘two warring nations’ to a civil and human rights struggle exemplifies that there is a standard of rights that apply to all people, not just a selected people.”
As part of the national film tour, the movie will be screened in Cape Town today and tomorrow at the University of Cape Town, and then on Sunday at the Joseph Stone Auditorium in Athlone.
It will also be screened in Johannesburg today at the University of Witwatersrand at 3pm.
This screening will run concurrently with the Stellenbosch University screening, as well as the Factory Cafe screening in Durban, and it will also be shown at the Trade Route Mall in Lenasia, Johannesburg, at 8pm.
The movie will then move to the Ipelegeng Community Centre in Soweto tomorrow at 10am, and then hit the University of Pretoria at 12.30pm.
It will be screened at Rhodes University in Grahamstown and Polokwane on Saturday and then finally on Sunday at Modimolle at 2pm and at the Al Ansaar Hall in Durban at 10am.
zwelakhes@thenewage.co.za