The Promised Band

It takes a lot to get a band together, even in America. But what if, in order to meet up with your bandmates for rehearsal, you had to cross a heavily guarded border, cover up your car's identifying markings, and hide your face since it was illegal for you to be in the area in the first place? In Jen Heck's documentary THE PROMISED BAND, she follows a rock and roll band whose members are drawn from both sides of the border between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The normal rock-and-roll movie conventions suddenly acquire new meaning as each of them seems to correspond to patterns in the larger societies around them. (Sarasota Film Festival)