"Some of My Best Friends Are Zionists"
About this project
Bruce Robbins writes:
I’m making a documentary film about American Jews who take an independent line on Israel and the Middle East. The film (which will obviously be different in many ways from the trailer) will be called “Some of My Best Friends Are Zionists.” As the title suggests, the film will try to strike a tone on these subjects that’s less paralyzed by stereotypes than we’re used to.
I’ve interviewed ten people so far including Tony Kushner, Judith Butler, James Schamus, Alisa Solomon, Marilyn Neimark, and Alan Sokal. The center of the film is the story of how people changed their minds: what they were told about Israel and their Jewish identity as they were growing up, what they went through as they started looking at things differently, what Israel and Jewish identity mean to them now. The moral of the story is that people CAN change their minds– not something that has been obvious on this issue.
I’m looking for funds to do a couple more interviews, to link up the talking heads (who are amazingly passionate and articulate, but still talking heads) to visual images from their personal pasts and from the history of the Middle East that help make sense of their personal transformations, and of course to do all the work that needs to be done to get the film edited and circulated.