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Choosing expression over violence.Choosing expression over violence.Choosing expression over violence.
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Now more than ever, we need this film
I'm a teacher at Independence High School, the stateside setting of the film. Many of the students portrayed in Bethlehem to Brooklyn are in my classes. As this project was progressing last school year, I saw my students grow in a number of ways. First, simply communicating with others halfway across the planet made their own world that much smaller. "There" became a lot closer. Anyone who has ever had an international pen pal knows that feeling. Very quickly, those communications led to the realization that "us" and "them" didn't make a lot of sense. None of this is new territory. What makes this particular pairing of demographics so intriguing, and thus the film that much more fascinating, is the oppression they share. While my kids don't live in refugee camps, they do live in neighborhoods where getting patted down for no reason is common. And like their Palestinian brethren, they have to deal with the taint of guilt they carry as a result of those few among them that are indeed troublemakers. It was this recognition, that teenagers 10,000 miles away were going through the same exact struggles, that really woke my kids up. They not only felt validated - something they are rarely led to feel - but they came to understand the universality of struggle. When they learned that, they learned empathy.
This is an important film and a touching one.
This is an important film and a touching one.
helpful•10
- tbboy
- Nov 23, 2009
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Top Gap
By what name was Bethlehem to Brooklyn: Breaking the Surface (2009) officially released in Canada in English?
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