In more than 40 years of filmmaking experience, Bill Jersey has learned that audiences crave two things: catharsis and clarity.
His new documentary, “Campus Battleground,” offers neither.
“There’s catharsis — ‘Oh, I knew those Arabs were the worst people in the world’ or ‘I knew those Zionists created a new apartheid’ — and clarity — ‘Oh, now I understand what must be done.’ So, we don’t offer that,” said the longtime Berkeley resident, whose film records six months in the lives of U.C. Berkeley and Columbia University pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian activists in 2006.
“The world needs more help toward healing and not just an affirmation of rage. I don’t make films about how terrible people are.”
Actually, that was the initial assignment for Jersey. The original title for his film was “Teaching Hatred.” Yet, try as he might, he couldn’t get the so-called hate teachers on the U.C. Berkeley and Columbia campuses to come off as hate-mongers on screen. So, he took a gamble. He decided to stay on campus from January to June of last year and see what happened.
Bay Area filmgoers can watch the resultant film at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 28 at a joint Jewish Film Festival-Arab Film Festival screening at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center, or at 11 p.m., Dec. 25 on KQED.
Jersey, a non-Jew who describes himself as apolitical, quickly decided that if he was going to spend six months wading through Middle East campus politics, he might as well have interesting company. The young people featured in his film are all intelligent, well-spoken and compelling.
“I didn’t want the reductio ad absurdum types; I didn’t want the sloganeers,” the 80-year-old filmmaker said.
“I had the choice of picking people you couldn’t dismiss even when they — especially when they — articulated a view that made you uncomfortable.”
In his Oscar-nominated 1965 film “A Time for Burning,” Jersey took pains to portray how a kind-hearted white Southerner could desire equality between the races yet still not want black people to sit next to him.
“I wanted audiences to understand how that could come from a rational, caring, intellectual person, not a monster. And that’s not easy.”
It was the same challenge he brought to presenting the Zionist and anti-Zionist views of his film’s young protagonists.
Jersey faced other challenges as well. When he filmed dueling Columbia appearances by arch-enemies professors Norman Finkelstein and Alan Dershowitz, critics asked him why he gave 50 seconds of screen time to Finkelstein and 180 seconds to Dershowitz — “as if the weight of an argument is a function of time.”
And, when filming a pro-Palestinian rally on U.C. Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, Jersey was chagrined that a much larger rally critical of U.S. immigration policies was taking place simultaneously.
“I tried to shoot it so it didn’t look like there were too many people there. Most of the people there were protesting immigration policies,” he said.
Finally, Jersey acknowledged that distilling six months of campus life to its core could give the impression that every day at Berkeley and Columbia is marked with a flag-waving, raucous protest. And of course, that’s not so.
“Most [students] are worried about getting a job,” he said with a laugh.
“But this film is not reportage. It’s a story film. In my view, you focus on the stories of the individuals you want the audience to meet.”
“Campus Battleground” will screen 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 28 at the Yerba Buena Center, 701 Mission St., S.F., with Jersey leading a discussion afterward. Tickets: $8
general, $6 students, seniors and YBC members. Information: www.sfjff.com or (415) 978-2787.