Closed Zone by Yoni Goodman

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Yoni Goodman, the director of animation for Waltz with Bashir, created this public service announcement for the human rights organization Gisha–Legal Center for Freedom of Movement. It’s a good example of how to use animation to communicate an important political issue with clarity and precision. There’s also a short making-of video in which Goodman talks about the piece, as well as a website for the film at ClosedZone.com.

(Thanks, Mats Grorud)

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  • http://super-macho.com Jorge R. Gutierrez

    That was fantastic!

  • http://tomboycomics.blogspot.com Emily

    The “hand barrier” idea is pretty clever. Reminds me of the inevitable experiments we did with ants as kids. It’s weird to see such serious content contrasted with, I’m not sure what to call it, surf rock?

  • Isaac

    Surf rock with middle-eastern influences. A sanitized approach, for sure. Why on Earth did they think a cartoon could reflect the severity of the situation?

  • Matt Sullivan

    Nice animation and all, but I’m not sympathetic. Maybe if they’d stop bombing restaurants, hospitals, homes, and innocent people they wouldn’t be looked on with such suspicion. I feel the same way about the southern border. I’d welcome more immigrants if they didn’t bring so much drugs, violence, drug resistant TB, non-assimilation, and rampant overpopulation.

    Sorry, but not every person who works to preserve the safety of their people, country, and culture are racists. Sometimes they just do it to maintain prosperity.

  • http://dailygrail.com/blog/8389 red pill junkie

    I think the message is very clear. Doing it in animation like this helps people to view the problem from a different perspective, specially when the audience is predisposed or tired of the usual gruesome live footage exploited by the TV networks.

    Thank you for posting this, Amid.

  • Dock Miles

    The music is by Ori Drumer, an Israeli electronica/industrial musician and multi-media dude, who has expressed sympathy with this animation’s outlook in the past.

    http://www.oridrumer.com/

    I thought the light, spooky touch very apt. Agony-agony music would have made the spot much more heavy-handed.

  • ItHastoSaid

    > Maybe if they’d stop bombing restaurants, hospitals, homes, and innocent people they wouldn’t be looked on with such suspicion.

    You clearly aren’t familiar with Middle Eastern conflict history at all. The separation of the Palestinians has nothing to do with suspicion and everything to do with them not being the preferred ethnicity (i.e, since they are not Jews, their right to citizenship is not recognized) of the Israeli state. Even before violence from the Palestinians started, the Israelis were actively expelling Arabs from the state and encamping them in Gaza and the West Bank, which continues to this day.

    As for the message of this video, I find that it is futile since it inspires the same kind of ignorant responses as the one I answered to. In the context of this conflict, the restriction of movement of Palestinians is just one small aspect of a state that systematically rejects the rights of an ethnicity to preserve its dominance in the region.