Beyond its value as a chronicle of a specific and ongoing culture of protest, the rallying against Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and Columbia University’s galvanizing role in the effort, the compelling new documentary The Encampments arrives with timely and local resonance. The timing of the release of the film, a year in the making, is uncanny, with the recent arrest and illegal detainment of Columbia graduate student and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil, a key spokesperson in the protests and articulate talking head in this film.
On the local front, the broadly dispersed influence of Columbia’s encampment concept led to similar projects around the nation and the world, including at UCSB, where an encampment and occupation of Cheadle Hall last year drew national attention. The general message of the encampment movement was outrage over the alleged genocidal blitzkrieg unfolding in Gaza; the specific demands concerned pressing universities to divest from investing in companies fueling the war machine and Israel’s bellicose overkill.
Directed by Michael Workman and Kei Pritsker, and with the executive producer cachet and public buzz of hiphop star Macklemore’s direct involvement, The Encampments goes beyond sound bites or piecemeal journalistic reports. With a ground-level immediacy, the film tells the story of what was officially known as the Columbia University Gaza Solidarity Encampment, including the back story and the highly charged and police and congressional assault on the student revolt.
In a telling intro tactic, the film opens with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson railing against the incidence of protest on campuses, choosing his words recklessly: “Little Gazas are setting up on college campuses.” “Little Gazas?” As in ripe targets for attack and destruction?
The film takes us to the streets — of Columbia’s campus and the occupation zone there but also to the horrifically war-ravaged Gaza. One startling juxtaposition in the film contrasts the orderly beauty of Columbia’s campus versus the shocking destruction of all of Gaza’s universities by leveling missile strikes, with gleeful howls of triumph by Israeli soldiers, as if they’re on a video game high.
Protests concerning the plight of Palestine existed before Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7, but as Khalil explains, that terrorist flash point “gave them more opportunity to crack down on us.” As relayed by well-spoken protest leaders Khalil, Sueda Polat, and Grant Miner, the protestors began with alternate forms of protest, from traditional peaceful means to strategic disruptions, met with indifference by the Columbia administration. “We had to resort to something that couldn’t be ignored.”
Enter the tent city “encampment” on campus, a k a the “liberation zone,” starting on April 17, 2024. Before long, the concept had spread to campuses worldwide, amassing a passionate level of student solidarity and protest not seen since the Vietnam war era dissent. In the factoids scrolling by at film’s end, we learn that there were some 300 such encampments, and 3,100 arrests in said sites. At Columbia, Zionist counter-protesters — some armed — and riot police commissioned by NYC police head Eric Adams, turned the encampment into little ground zeroes of conflict, doomed to be dismantled.
But as Khalil insists in the film, “the moment we stop advocacy for Palestine is the moment we die.” The moment he lost his freedom, under the Trump Administration’s tyrannical rule, was on March 8.
As strong and affecting as the doc may be, especially to those of us of similar political sentiments and those seeking seriously embedded reportage beyond the mainstream, its utter lack of objectivity will likely keep it away from the eyes of viewers who most need to see it. It will not make the playlist of your MAGA uncle or other-side-of-the-aisle types, an inherent problem with today’s radically divisive and formatted news-scape.
The Encampments is a story of youthful bravery in the face of stacked odds and potentially dangerous consequences — as Khalil and others have learned. Call it a drama of horrifically real and deep dimensions. Stay tuned for daily updates.
View trailer here.
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