Susan Sontag’s
Promised Lands
aka La Dechirure (The Tear, or Torn)
Susan Sontag’s third directorial
effort and her only documentary, Promised
Lands (1974) which scrutinizes
the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and the growing divisions
within Jewish thought over the question of Palestinian
sovereignty, shot in Israel during the final days and immediate
aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Sontag structures the film as an antiphony
between two sets of images. The first consists of observational
sequences detailing moments from modern Israel: desert
landscapes, patrols of roadside soldiers, old men and women at
the Wailing Wall, Israeli grocery stores and movie theaters,
the Jerusalem War Cemetery, a military psychiatric ward, and a
wax museum depicting the official history of the state.
Intercut throughout are conversations with two intellectuals:
writer Yoram Kaniuk, a supporter of Palestinian rights who sees
Israel shifting from its socialist roots to an American-style
commercial culture, and physicist Yuval Ne’eman, who
argues for the endemic nature of Arab anti-Semitism.
“Though the film grants no direct
access to Arab or Palestinian voices, its clear elaboration of
the debate prompted Israeli censors to ban its initial release,
claiming it would be ‘damaging to the country’s
morale.’ Stateside, Stanley Kauffmann praised the
film’s Hegelian quality, writing that it presents
‘not a struggle between truth and falsehood but between
two opposing, partial truths.”
– Ed Halter, Light Industry
Promised Lands
was produced by Nicole Stéphane (producer of Marguerite
Duras's Destroy, She Said, and also star of Jean-Pierre Melville's Les Enfants Terribles).
The writer David Reiff (Sontag's son) served as the film's
Assistant Director.
“Using the Arab-Israel War as a
metaphor for the human condition, Susan Sontag has made a
strong, clear, intelligent film. It is unlike any film that I
have seen.”
– Roberto Rossellini
"Susan Sontag's film on Israel is a
beautiful, important work. To see it powerfully moves the
emotions and immensely deepens our understanding. Promised Lands is
saturated in tragic dilemma, in a world of suffering and
necessity, in the pain of strong and noble human beings trapped
in endless conflict. The scenery - bright, dry, and beautifully
glaring - shares its meaning with portraits of some of the most
interesting minds and ideas ever put on film. Compassion and
intelligence lift Promised Lands far beyond a documentary intention and make
it a work of the imagination."
– Elizabeth Hardwick
“Promised
Lands hardly tells all the
truths there are about the conflicts in the Middle East, about
the October War, about the mood of Israel right now, about war
and loss and memory and survival. But what the film does tell
is true. It was like that. To tell the truth (even some of it)
is already a marvelous privilege, responsibility, gift.”
– Susan Sontag, VOGUE, 1974
Artist Paul Chan has designed a new,
signed and numbered screen print on the occasion of the release
of Promised Lands, and in support of Film Desk.
27 x 41 inches
Signed Edition of 100
$350.00
