SHAKING OFF (Palestine, 2008)

When Palestine is in the news, it is generally for bloody conflicts and political quarrels. Seldom does anyone report on the difficult details that are a part of everyday life, about ordinary people and the extraordinary choices they must make just to keep going. In SHAKING OFF Linda Forsell documented the sometimes by our standards immoral situations that arise from living on fiercely contested land: the Palestinian who, to earn his bread, joins in constructing the wall that will imprison him; the colonist who does not have the money to move and carries along his machine gun when he goes shopping. ‘This is not objective journalism,’ warns Forsell. ‘This is the story that I encountered in my bewilderment. It is what I have learned about life in Palestine.’