WALTZ WITH BASHIR World Cinema

Beginning with unnerving images of a pock of dogs racing through the streets of Tel Aviv-on emblem of tormented conscience-writer-director and former Israeli soldier Ari Folman offers the most powerful statement yet about the agony of years of Middle East violence. Using of times otherworldly, atmospheric animation , Folman reconstructs a notorious atrocity that occurred in Palestinian refugee comps during the 1984 invasion of Lebanon, one that he witnessed but, for reasons he can’t understand, cannot remember Folman proves adept both as on investigative journalist and as a visual poet, delivering his story through the expressive, painterly animated frames. Dreams and block comedy gracefully enrich the facts he rigorously gathers, including eyewitness testimony from both his friends and comrades in arms and from military and political leaders This documentary-style narration serves as a powerful counterpoint to the surreal, magical , insistently subjective drown images: a man floating through the ocean nestled between the breasts of a naked woman, soldiers playing heavy-metal air guitar with their weapons as bullets fly post. WALTZ WITH BASHIR’s hybrid form becomes more than a skilled reconstruction of a tragedy. It is, like the masterpieces of Alain Resnois and Chris Marker , a universal meditation on the interaction of historical and personal memory.