You Cannot Forget Hell, but You Can Not Remember it

From September sixteenth to the eighteenth In 1982 Christian Phalangists entered into the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in west Beirut and massacred 1,800 refugees (Shen; Siegel; Turbi). Ellen Siegel, working as a nurse in a hospital in the Sabra camp, remembers one particular event on the evening of Thursday, September sixteenth, “A few other health-care workers and I climbed to one of the top floors of the hospital…We watched for a time as flares were shot in to the air, brightly illuminating different part of the camp” (Siegel 92). A nineteen year-old Israeli soldier named Ari Foleman also saw the flares illuminating the sky above the Sabra and Shatila camps. For Foleman his connection to the massacres that unfolded within the camps was so atrocious, that he repressed his memories of the events. It wasn’t until twenty four years later when a friend came to tell Foleman about a haunting dream form his time in the First Lebanon War in 1982, that Foleman realize he did not recall major events from the war. After this realization Foleman embarked on a journey to uncover what it was that he did not remember from the First Lebanon War. His journey would become Waltz with Bashir (2008 d. Ari Foleman) and Foleman would use his experience to show how every soldier reacts the hell on earth that is war. Yet for Foleman the horror of remembering Sabra and Shatila massacres is so incomprehensible that animation is used to cope with visualizing reality.

To understand Waltz with Bashir as an animated documentary the choice to employ animation in the production of the film has to be explored. In the case of Waltz with Bashir the animation is used to both shield the view of the audience from the horrors of war and to inject more ...

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...ch Premier. Web. 9 Nov. 2009.

Murrary, Joathan. "Walz with Bashir." Cineaste 34.2 (2009): 65-68. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Nov. 2009.

Shen, Ivy. "The Sabra and Shatila Refugee Camps, Lebanon, 2009." Palestine - Isreal Journal of Politics, Economics & Culture 15/16.4/1 (2008): 96-98. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Nov. 2009.

Siegel, Ellen. "After Nineteen Years: Sabra and Shatila Remembered." Middle East Policy 8.4 (2001): 86. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Nov. 2009.

"Technique of the Month: Documation." Esquire Jan. 2009: 22-22. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Nov. 2009.

Turbi, Omar A. "World Affairs Council Delegation Visits Sabra/Shatila on Annersary of Massacre." Washington Report on Middle East Affairs 21.9 (200): 28. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Nov. 2009.

Waltz with Bashir. Dir. Ari Folman. Perf. Ari Foleman. Sony Picture Classics, 2008. DVD.