by MATTHEW HAYS

Upon hearing about the NFB documentary Discordia, I let out a loud groan. Though I like to think I'm somewhat open-minded, there is already a strong sense of overkill (a sense shared by many, not just me) surrounding the so-called "Sept. 9" issue of the planned Concordia Netanyahu lecture that was aborted due to protest.

I pictured a desperately boring, PC rant against the university, a tedious re-run of what happened when pro-Palestinian activists clashed with activists belonging to Hillel, the university's Jewish students' group. Worse, I still didn't have the nasty taste out of my mouth from the last, desperately horrid documentary produced about the incident, the Asper-backed, Global bit of idiocy Confrontation at Concordia. That film rose to new heights of absurdity by comparing a smashed window at Concordia's Hall Building with Kristallnacht, the infamous night of Nazi tyranny of Jewish merchants and citizens in Germany.

It's a relief to report that Discordia, the 70-minute documentary created by two graduates of the university, Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, is a superb retelling of the rift that gripped Concordia and captured so many international headlines. Rather than relying on cheap sensationalism, like much of the superficial news reporting around the events did, while also sidestepping the ludicrous oversimplification of Confrontation at Concordia, Discordia is strong precisely because it does what solid documentary filmmaking should do: it shows us the variations in degrees, humanizing those we'd previously seen as extreme.

Discordia begins logically enough, outlining the buildup to and riot on Sept. 9, when Netanyahu's lecture had to be called off due to protest. We then see the fallout and ensuing conflicts, including the university's questionable decision to enact a cooling off period, in which discussion of Mideast issues was put on hold. (That didn't stop students from booking celebrated and controversial war correspondent Robert Fisk from speaking; university brass, amazingly, apparently didn't know who he was.) We meet the activists once more, only this time we're given a far better sense of them as actual people, not mere rhetoricians. Most appealing is a former VP on student council, Aaron Maté, an outspoken critic of Israel who also happens to be the son of a Holocaust survivor. At one point, Maté is so overcome by the charges that he is a self-hating Jew, he ventures to visit Noam Chomsky for advice on how to cope with that claim; in one of the film's intriguing digressions, the cameras capture his visit.

But Discordia's best asset is its ability to show us so many different perspectives, none of them clearly wrong or right. Our sympathies are made to constantly shift - not the sign of indecisiveness on the part of the filmmakers, but rather intelligence. Though never stupid enough to attempt objectivity - always a questionable stance on the part of documentary filmmakers - Addelman and Mallal have managed no small feat: to get behind the headlines surrounding this event and personify the complex issues faced by students of conscience.

Discordia screens Monday, Feb. 2 at Concordia's Hall Building at 7pm (Admission free) and will be broadcast on CBC Newsworld on Wednesday, Feb. 4 at 10pm

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