Koudelka Shooting Holy Land

Koudelka witnessed some of the most important moments of our times through his lens. He was there when the Soviet Union crushed the seed of freedom growing in Prague in the late 60s. His photographs are a part of our collective consciousness about this and other important events.

This film follows Koudelka as he takes on an exquisite assignment: to create a photographic record of the wall dividing the "Holy Land." For this he used special panoramic film cameras that emphasize the long horizontal nature of this wall tearing the land like a scar. "I don't like walls," he says. After all, he grew up and started his career in a land separated from the rest of the world by a wall, the iron curtain.

Josef doesn't talk much. His pictures do. Many years ago I bought his book "Wall" that is the result from this assignment. Masterful, impactful, inspiring. This film is a great companion to the book, and so relevant today.

The movie is boring to the extreme. The narrative is biased, toying at times with Israeli propaganda. Don't expect to hear about his practice, decision making process, anything. Just see the guy taking photos. And the very few moments when he does talk I'd much prefer him to stay silent. He makes some comments that fall too much into ambiguity. The only thing that is worth watching here is the pictures themselves, but they're rather sparse, so you're much better looking for them online, getting the book or finding another way to see this body of work, which will be much more pleasing than this bad try of a movie.