Hatred

Description

This wide ranging documentary travels from Berlin to Harlem to the Middle East and Australia to investigate the connection between hatred on a personal level and hatred between nations. Is there a connection between the hatred that leads to mass violence and the hatred we all feel from time to time? The filmmaker s father was a refugee from Nazi Germany in 1939. The film opens with their return to his birthplace in east Germany. For the first time, the filmmaker understands what it must be like to have been the object of hatred, as she watches her father s reaction to the places of his childhood. Returning to New York the filmmaker found increasing tension between blacks and Jews. Calvin Butts, Pastor of the Abysinnian Baptist Church, talks about the history of discrimination faced by American blacks. Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton feels that groups chose a designated victim to scapegoat in order to assert their own identity. Others interviewed are Michele Wallace, author; jazz musician Milt Hinton; Akbar Ahmed, academic and author; and Prof. Yehuda Bauer of Hebrew University. Traveling to Egypt and Israel, the filmmaker constantly asks people who and what they hate. In this explosive part of the world, no one ever admits to hating anyone. Yet their deeply felt passions of nationalism, religion and race belie this denial. The filmmaker concludes "it is easier to hate another than to see hatred in yourself.".

Runtime

57 min

Creator

Goldman, Mitzi

Subjects

Genre

Date of Publication

1997

Database

Alexander Street

Direct Link