Rubber Coated Steel
2016 · 22m · Jordan/Palestine
Directed by Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Genres: documentary, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, provocative
A forensic audio investigation presented as a fictitious trial, examining whether Israeli soldiers used rubber or live bullets when they shot and killed two unarmed Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank in May 2014. The film replaces courtroom visuals with a shooting range, advancing photos and spectrograms as subtitled trial transcripts unfold in silence.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Abu Hamdan stages an audio-ballistic trial in a shooting range with no audible gunshots and only subtitles — forensic art that's actually evidence. The most rigorous experimental film of the 2010s.
Abu Hamdan turns forensic audio analysis into a chamber piece about silence itself — possibly the most rigorous use of subtitle-as-soundtrack I know. Only a trailer on Vimeo, regrettably.
Setting the entire forensic trial in a shooting range where no gunshots are heard - just automated target machinery as soundtrack while subtitled transcripts unfold - is the formal inversion that gives the film its weight. The trailer is what's on Vimeo, full work needs another source.
Reviews
Abu Hamdan situates viewers in a broken telephone network, where the idea of silence as such is little more than an alibi for what we can't or won't listen to.
The film does not preside over the voices of the victims but seeks to amplify their silence, questioning the ways in which rights are being heard today.
Festivals
- International Film Festival Rotterdam 2017, Tiger Award for Short Films
- Toronto Palestine Film Festival 2017
- Viennale 2017
- 25 FPS Festival