Tantura

Tantura is an astute documentary which investigates controversial and tragic war events which happened long ago in a Western Asian country. When the state of Israel was established in 1948, war broke out and Palestinian villages saw their populations decimated. The true nature of these events still prompts heated debate: for Israelis, it’s the “War of Independence;” but to Palestinians, it’s known as the “Nakba,” or the “Catastrophe.” A dark moment in Israeli history, the Nakba has become such a taboo topic that it’s rarely discussed. In the 1990s, graduate student Teddy Katz interviewed hundreds of people while researching a rumored civilian massacre in the village of Tantura during the war. Based on his findings, Katz concluded the brutal killings did occur. After being sued for defamation, threatened, and stripped of his academic credentials, Katz learned the state would go to great lengths to protect its established version of events. Since then, his hundreds of hours of tapes sat in silence. But decades later, director Alon Schwarz revisits the controversial recordings—this time presenting them to former Israeli soldiers, scholars, and government officials, many of whom insist the massacre never happened. Tantura explores the enduring power and purpose of protected narratives and free speech. Taking a historiographic approach, Schwarz examines why nations struggle to acknowledge problematic parts of their own history. [2022, Israel, 95 min, in Hebrew with English subtitles, Rating: Not Rated] Roger Daniels of RogerEbert.com exclaims, “Infuriating [and] jaw-dropping.” Siman Abrams of TheWrap writes, “Schwarz does a fine job of selectively expanding the scope of Katz’s story from a highly subjective he-said/they-said dispute into a bigger story about cultural amnesia.” Venue: Cinema Art Theater. Presenter: Rehoboth Beach Film Society.