Emad Burnat stands looking at a row of cameras laid out on a steel table in his house. Two have been bashed in, another two riddled with bullets, and the last rendered useless by a thorough soaking of noxious gas from Israeli grenades. Emad originally set out to use these cameras to film the birth of his fourth son, but over the last six years they’ve become tools for documenting the spread of Israeli settlers and their eventual takeover of his West Bank village. Emad’s fittingly titled film, 5 Broken Cameras, was cut together from over 500 hours of footage. It’s part of the New Directors/New Films festival that begins this week at Lincoln Center and MoMA.
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