If you have never seen the documentary film Waltz with Bashir, I highly, highly recommend you see it. It is an animated documentary detailing an Israeli man's attempt to remember his involvement in the massacres at Sabra and Shatila in September of 1982. The overall Palestinian-Israeli conflict is something I have had the chance to study on multiple occasions during my career, including touching on it in multiple history and international relations courses at Wartburg and spending an entire semester on the topic during my time in Nantes, France.
The goal of having us watch the film was not necessarily to educate us more about the subject itself, but to show us how fickle memory can be. The main character has no memory of the incident himself, and so attempts to learn details from those he believed may have been there with him. The whole idea of the changing nature of a memory makes for some frustration for those attempting to conduct interviews in oral history, which we will be doing later this semester.
Overall though, it is a darkly moving film that I recommend watching on a day when it is okay to be sad and more than a little shaken up after the viewing. As to how tricky my own research in oral history will prove, only time will tell.
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