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Welcome To Hebron

In the last few years the explosion of online writing by passionate individuals using Bloging technology has called into question the role of journalism, professionalism and the very nature of truth. Old systems of belief in the media – via television and especially the printed press – are judged at best by the Internet generation as naïve, and at worst, blind to underlying corporate agendas.

We’ve just released Welcome to Hebron, a street-level view of life in one area of the occupied West Bank. Though it’s directed and edited by an outsider, its two main voices are people who live and breathe a situation we usually only see through the prism of journalists, professionals struggling to bring balance and dispassion to what is a highly emotive situation. This teenager and ex-soldier happily give their opinions based upon experience and a passionate desire for things to change. They haven’t had to check sources, go through a news desk, hit that day’s editorial deadline, or try and understand a culture they were never born into. They give a subjective, biased, and personal view of what their life has been like, and will likely continue to be.

So does that make what they say untrustworthy? Does that make Welcome to Hebron something to be wary of?

I’ve never believed that documentaries are the truth. If anything they are the complete opposite - not so much in terms of being a lie, but rather, in the very best sense, being “authored” by the filmmakers and their participants. To be a true author of anything requires commitment, drive and a passion to communicate something of value from yourself to others – something that no amount of professionalism or legal framework can engender within an individual, let alone a global audience.

The world is complex, people aren’t perfect, and if you want to know how much you’ll never know about the world, just walk into any library and count how books you will never ever read in your lifetime. But like documentaries, books, and now blogs, are a distillation of passion from individuals, rather than collective time-managed packets of information. Given the choice, I know which I’d rather trust.

To find out more about ‘Welcome to Hebron’, visit the official film website.

Editor Ben