The First 54 Years: An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation(HKAFF 2021)

Israeli director Avi Mograbi has been making films about Israel’s occupation of Palestine since the 1980s, but his latest work may be his sharpest and most cutting. Dubbed a “manual for a military occupation”, this discomfiting documentary features Mograbi speaking extensively to the audience, framing his evidence of political violence – first-person accounts from former Israeli soldiers, archival footage recounting Israel’s decades-long annexation of Palestine –as a “how-to” guide to seizing and subjugating the lands of others. The result is a sardonic documentary that subverts its own self-stated raison d'etre – by depersonalising the methods of the Israeli occupa-tion, Mograbi powerfully magnifies its cruelty, its inhumanity, and its hopelessness.