"9 Star Hotel" (KCET, tonight, 10 p.m.). A haunting fly-on-the-wall documentary by Ido Haar that follows a group of undocumented Palestinian workers building the Israeli planned city of Modi'in in the days before the Separation Wall made even illegal work impossible. (Although the film doesn't say so, the city was planned by Moshe Safdie, who famously designed Expo '67's Habitat in Montreal, as well as L.A.'s own Skirball Cultural Center.) Living in low-lying improvised complexes of cardboard and tin in the hills above the town, they cook, sing, scavenge, try to stay warm, hide or run from the police -- not always successfully. And they talk, about all sorts of things, from attractive female border guards, to the Holocaust, to their families and their disappearing work. There is no rancor, only confusion and resolve. The film...
[read full story]
Your Web Site
