Hateip Ha'adom

I saw this short film as one of the most inspired portraits of Jerusalem. A boy finding a red electronic toy. A toy like a coin , from owner to owner. Beautiful cinematography, lovely music. Inspired end. Because it is just a succesful try to give realistic slice of the reality from the great city. People, gestures, intentions, CCTV cameras. A Palestinian boy as part of a large circle. He and his radio toy. A beautiful film about the old city.

A young Arab boy finds a red electronic toy as he picks his way across a dump as part of his trip to his school in Jerusalem. As he carries it though, it gets confiscated and thus begins a trip through several levels of authority on both sides of the city.

For the majority of the time this is quite a nice little film because it has an air of whimsy about it as we follow the toy of the title through the various paths it takes from the point of the young boy taking it. It has a certain humour in the journey and the characters and I liked how it was filmed – in my head I was even writing this comment and thinking how nice it was to see a film from this part of the world that doesn't have the conflict as its theme. Of course this film then started to go that way and in the end the presence of the CCTV cameras suspiciously following the toy are what we are left with and the film moves away from the lighter touch. The irony is that the same point had been made by this point, but had been made in a way that there was still other aspects of the film to enjoy – the conclusion leaves you with little but this memory because it does suddenly come on strong on the "message".

I totally understand why the theme is there (it is everywhere) but it does just suddenly get ladled on a bit thick at the end, which I felt was a shame. Otherwise it is a nice little short film that moves well across the streets using the oddity of this embarrassing red toy as a device.