Absent checking points

In the last six months I saw more or less recent Israeli movies, but very often, because of various time contraints I was unable to dedicate time to anything but watching. I am still optimistic about the possibility to succeed in writing at least a couple of lines about each of them.

And I will start with the freshest one, Yoav Shamir's Checkpoint. I liked from the very beginning the idea: filming - between 2001 and 2003 - at various checkpoints in Israel could offer various sociological, human, historical opportunities. Anyway, the category of the film is "documentary". And I was expecting at least some background information about the situation from the ground, some other aspects helping a viewer living outside the area to understand the context: why do you need controls, why the curfew in Jenin was introduced, why the rules were changing from an hour to another. Or why, for example, you need to control carefully children - in order to do not blow themselves up because they parents or relatives wanted to used them for various political reasons. The "documentary" is failing to explain this. And, instead, it is offering the image the Western viewer expect to see: "poor" Palestinians, aggressed by sometimes brutal youngsters with guns.

Now, I have to think about a recent problem: how much art is misusing and manipulating reality mostly in tensed political contexts? Yes, I know the benefactory influence as a soft power. I want to learn more about the bad side of the story.