Provocative in its cinematic simplicity, “The Viewing Booth” recounts an encounter between a filmmaker and a viewer, exploring the way meaning is attributed to non-fiction images in today’s day and age.
In “The Viewing Booth,” documentarian Ra’anan Alexandrowicz brilliantly dissects both the power and limitations of images. Originally, Alexandrowicz filmed several young Jewish-American Temple University students but ultimately focused on Maia Levy, a staunch supporter of Israel.
In the titular dark viewing booth, Alexandrowicz’s camera focuses on Maia while she views forty videos from Israel, twenty by the leftist human rights organization B’tzelem, and twenty made by Israeli right-wing conservative groups. Maia can choose any video she wants with the control to pause, skip at any time. Over headphones, Maia describes to Alexandrowicz her interpretations and feelings in real-time. Alexandrowicz’s inspiration came from the Spanish Civil War. Virginia Woolf received a letter from a renowned lawyer in London who asked the author: “How, in your opinion, are we to prevent war?” Woolf replied with a thought experiment. “What would happen, she asks him, if we both observe the images of war that are published every week?” “Let us see,” she writes, “when we look at the same photographs, we will feel the same things?”
Watching Woolf’s theory put to the test, Maia continues to be skeptical, thinking anything by B’tzelem is inauthentic. One video shows a squad of gas-masked soldiers entering a Palestinian family’s home at 3 a.m., ordering their children to come out. Maia thinks this is “staged and over-dramatic.” A video, that is clearly staged, showing IDF soldiers hugging a young Muslim child is ridiculed by Maia. Whenever a Palestinian is being detained or confronted on camera, Maia believes they are intentionally causing a provocation for views.
Six months later, Alexandrowicz invites Maia to come back and rewatch the same footage while recording her reactions again. The result is a meta-head trip of dueling footage. Maia isn’t more receptive to the experience since she doubts editing and camerawork. She mentions most Israelis don’t want to see anything that would challenge or shatter their worldview, similar to how people only have a favorite news channel that fits their narrative of the world. If you showed most people footage from a rival network or an unknown source, they would doubt it. It’s frustrating to see the constraints of media but a reminder to not limit ones’ knowledge to images and videos.
Now playing at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image and on BBC REEL August 18th
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