Nina paley this land is mine 1943

Ever since her remarkable animated feature film Sita Sings The Blues, I&#;ve been a great admirer of animator, cartoonist, and free-culture activist Nina Paley&#;s creative and meta-creative work. The recent situation in Gaza makes Paley&#;s animated short film This Land Is Mine &#; &#;a brief history of the land called Israel / Palestine / Canaan / the Levant&#; &#; particularly timely.

Using the visual storytelling tropes of comics and videogames, genres characterized by expressive over-the-topness, Paley captures the subtleties and complexities of the interplay of religion, geopolitics, and the fatal human hunger for power underpinning the region&#;s long history of conflict.

On her blog, Paley offers a viewer&#;s guide to who&#;s killing whom, &#;because you can’t tell the players without a pogrom.&#; Her work, like Brain Pickings, is supported through donations, so consider making one on her site.

Due to horrific recent events, This Land Is Mine has gone viral again.

Here&#;s a reminder that you don&#;t need permission to copy, share, broadcast, post, embed, subtitle, etc. Copying is an act of love, please copy and share. Yes means yes.

As for the music, it is Fair Use. This Land Is Mine is a PARODY of &#;The Exodus Song.&#; That music was sort of the soundtrack of American zionism in the &#;s and 70&#;s. It was supposed to express Jewish entitlement to Israel. By putting the song in the mouth of every warring party, I&#;m critiquing the original song.

I envisioned This Land Is Mine as the last scene of my potential-possible-maybe- feature film, Seder-Masochism, but it&#;s the first (and so far only) scene I&#;ve animated. As the Bible says, &#;So the last will be first, and the first will be last.&#;

This Land Is Mine from Nina Paley on Vimeo.

Because you can&#;t tell the players without a pogrom!

Early Man
This generic &#;cave man&#; represents the first human settlers in Israel/Canaan/the Levant. Whoever they were.

Canaanite
What did ancient Canaanites look like? I don&#;t know, so this is based on ancient Sumerian art.

Egyptian
Canaan was located between two huge empires. Egypt controlled it sometimes, and…

Assyrian
&#;.Assyria controlled it other times.

Israelite
The &#;Children of Israel&#; conquered the shit out of the region, according to bloody and violent Old Testament accounts.

Babylonian
Then the Baylonians destroyed their temple and took the Hebrews into exile.

Macedonian/Greek
Here comes Alexander t

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