Arab Israeli Dialogue (1974) Lionel Rogosin (EN-FR sub)

Palestinian poet Rashid Hussein and Israeli journalist Amos Kenan met in the basement of Rogosin’s Bleecker Street Cinema. Old friends, but also representatives of two peoples who, in the 1970s, were only at the beginning of a long and far from complete journey towards mutual understanding and coexistence on shared territory. Their distant homeland, inaccessible even to Hussein in exile, is recalled by the director by inserting iconic shots of the locations and people under discussion. A similar ambivalence is reflected in the dialogue between the two intellectuals, fiercely resisting the imposed position of enemy for the other.