Dirty Pictures

Dirty Pictures is the seventh part of the Hotel Diaries series by the important and multi–award–winning director John Smith. In a minimalist style, Smith draws us into the atmosphere of his hotel room near Bethlehem and later in eastern Jerusalem. In one unbroken shot of the ceiling tiles lilting in a draught and hotel furnishings, the director delivers a monologue on among other things his opinion of the existence of checkpoints. The alien environment of a hotel room corresponds in a disturbing way to our non–participatory understanding of world conflicts as relayed to us in a fragmentary manner by news television. An eloquent shot from the hotel window of the wall separating Israel from the Palestinian territory does not require any commentary.