power and pitfalls of the cultural portrait

I thought that States of Unbelonging was a great example of a cultural portrait. The film gave us the entire spectrum, beautiful images of the scenery and also horrifying stories of war and violence. The entire country’s tumultuous relations with neighboring cultures is portrayed in an interesting manner. The story of Revital and her family is incredibly heartbreaking and at times it made the movie difficult to watch, especially the footage of her and Noam in the airport together. The story moves in an interesting way, beginning with solely two outside views (like the viewer him/herself), one being Lynne in NY, and the other being Nir, who seems to have just settled in Israel. Then we move in to a closer view of the scenery and we find out about the story of Revital. Then we zoom out a bit, and see the landscape as a whole, the beautiful scenery, but also the scenery around the wall in Israel…it created a really powerful lens for the viewer to examine the situation.

On the other hand, I thought that Surname Viet Minh-ha was almost too much at once. The viewer is immediately thrown into a barrage of images and film and cultural music, and the narration doesn’t start for a little bit. For a cultural portrait, I felt almost overwhelmed, like I was just clearly an outsider. It moved into the film quickly, and the thesis wasn’t apparent, so I felt kind of thrown in to the film, and it caused me to lose interest and not pay as much attention to it. I will probably try watching it again at another time, though.