Due to horrific recent events, This Land Is Mine has gone viral again.
Here’s a reminder that you don’t need permission to copy, share, broadcast, post, embed, subtitle, etc. Copying is an act of love, please copy and share. Yes means yes.
As for the music, it is Fair Use. This Land Is Mine is a PARODY of “The Exodus Song.” That music was sort of the soundtrack of American zionism in the 1960’s and 70’s. It was supposed to express Jewish entitlement to Israel. By putting the song in the mouth of every warring party, I’m critiquing the original song.
The aptness of this piece of art cannot be overstated in current world events, tragic though that fact is.
This is a masterpiece, a true 21st century work of art to be remembered. Give us more Seder-Masochism! Are you going to animate the whole Torah in this manner? That would be awesome.
Nina – did you use Anime Studio for this?
“That land is mine” – here is the bast tell of human history I`ve ever seen before. We can imagine some artists and scientists at the far background, and may be some civilians on the bottom but it doesn`t make any changes to the ways world runs from ancient times till today.
However the angel of death is not the main actor of the scene. He is just a representative of the power which produces another players and the curcle of life itself. We feel the small picture correctly, just as it is on the movie, and it is right. Some steps out of it, and we can see something more.
The exellent movie, as well as “Sita”.
PS. Nina, I have some questions like what the soft you use for it and for Sita, for movie and for sounds to attach. So brilliant synchronization.
What an absolutely brilliant piece. I so agree with the others, a masterpiece, a work of art to be remembered, and the best tell of human history. Nina Paley, you are now immortal (well, as immortal as we humans can ever get). I hope this work lives on a long long time, and soaks into the brains of people everywhere.
Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it!
PS I wish you had more sharing options so we can also share it to Twitter, FB, etc.
Did you consider making a movie about this? Kickstarter or sites like can be useful to fund your work…
Hi, Nina. I am a brazilian cartoonist and would like to say that your animation movies are fantastic. You have a so european style that I almost doubted that you were from USA! Nice to see that the country of animation industry can have genious like you… Great job! I’ve shared at AQC SP Facebook page. It’s a Sao Paulo cartoon and comics association. Congratulations!
Here you can download my Cartoons&Comics Zine, written in portuguese and french. I’ve participated on FIBDA, Argelia Comics Festival last year… http://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7AN-VIyO82OVlJtOTJSRHlwT1NGNkpwT1paLTdFcHZwU3ln/edit
Dear Nina Paley,
We got the point of your overly simplified, anti-Zionist, sterotypical comic strip, and your critique of the sappy Exodus song, you didn’t have to explain it all. Funny how most Israeli Jews do not think that “God gave this land to me”–funny, too, how most of them (us) are non-religious, and yet you chose to represent us as orthodox, fitting the stereotype of Jews as a religious group, which is erroneous, since most Jews everywhere are non-observant and non-affiliated. Oh, if only we Israelis and Palestinians could be enlightened and beyond nationalism like you Americans, who, by helping to destroy Iraq, have promoted the spread of Islamic fundamentalist fanaticism throughout our region!
If you made prints of the final image of Death at the end, I would buy them.
please more of that <3
Dear Nina Paley,
Your short film has got me into tears – real, unusual, bitter tears. I cannot recall the last time a piece of art affected me so deeply as to that point. For that, I thank you.
The image of civilizations that mount (or found themselves upon) piles of corpses, leading to such unfortunate pessimistic an ending, has only stressed to me the dead-endness we find in the very heart of every realistic analysis of land conflicts around the globe. In a different way, different proportion and with different actors involved, land conflict is also an issue here in Brazil. As brutal, as cruel and just as pointless conflicts, your film could suit us just as well.
In fact, in my point of view (against the apparent common sense that viralized your film as ‘a summary of the Israel-Palestine conflict’, as well as against comments accusing you of simplification and stereotypification), the quality of the film is precisely that it transcends dualities such as good-guys/bad-guys, villains/victims, this/that side of the border. It’s all about a human and humanly tragedy. ‘Human’, because it affects directly the lives of thousands of human beings. ‘Humanly’, because it can only be tackled from within the scope of our humanity.
If art is there to express the unreachable contradictions of the world, and the ultimate paradox of life and death itself, maybe I can appease myself with the optimistic thought that, however sad and pessimistic your film might seem, and probably because of that, it has the power to reach out for people, as it did for me. This is a reason for hope. I guess no one would bother creating a film like this, if they did not have a glimmer of hope of awakening humanity in mankind.
Well, I share your pessimism, but I also share your hope.
Thank you.
Hi Nina.
Thank you for creating this eye-opening video. It helps put it all into perspective.
Now that I’m on your site I realize you also made Sita Sings the Blues, which I watched in college in 2009. I’ve had a copy on my computer ever since!!
Thank you!!
Hi, Nina. Just wanted to tell you that I loved your video and I think it’s brilliant. Keep up the good work.
Wow – the talent and laser-targeted poignancy have blown me away.
Nina, you are a genius.
Hi Nina, I am not usually an internet commenter but your short animation moved me to do so. It’s great and your other work looks interesting as well (I particularly like your depiction of the angel of death and noticed that you also used it in a piece about the Sader). You’re going to take some shit for this, and probably already have but keep it up!
thank you. great. you are cool and great and I now want you.
This video is in accurate and so are your last parts about “Palestinians” living there you have absolutely no clue about the region or the recent history. The jews arrived in the 1800’s, they were athiest secular jewry and palestenians are both jews/arabs who lived in the mandate of palestine.
félicitation et belle vidéo this land is mine .Cris du cÅ“ur d un amour intemporel réel . impossibles de par la pêche originel qui nous a tous divisé humanité vas elle relevé le défis ou sombre par ignorance. Univers et comme un fractal de cette union .aussitôt crée qui s’est rependu avant attendre le verdict de s est parent source. Certain on reçu en fonction de sa réalité et de son erreur .bises signes le gaulois.
I Salute you.
Great animation.
Can you put its lyrics here?
LYRIC:
The Exodus Song, “This Land is Mine”
(Lyrics by Pat Boone. Sung by Andy Williams)
This land is mine
God gave this land to me
This brave and ancient land to me
And when the morning sun
Reveals her hills and plains
Then I see a land
Where children can run free.
So take my hand
And walk this land with me
And walk this lovely land with me
Tho’ I am just a man
When you are by my side
With the help of God
I know I can be strong.
Tho’ I am just a man
When you are by my side
With the help of God
I know I can be strong.
To make this land our home
If I must fight
I’ll fight to make this land our own.
Until I die this land is mine
As with any work of art the vid is selective and aims at appealing to the emotions and common prejudices of those who will find a “good” piece of art. (I don’t).
ALWAYS be suspicious of any work that makes you feel very comfortable in your own choices.
This particular artifact fails in many ways but I will point out one glaring fault: It assumes that there were no Jews in Palestine before European Jews began to arrive there. This is wrong on two counts: First, European Jews had been immigrating to the land of Israel for centuries, in greater or lesser numbers. Second, Sephardic Jews had been inhabiting the land since they became subjects of the Ottomans. The talented artist ignores and/or erases this historical record. The question is why? Is it because she wants to re-inforce a perverted narrative that is not historically correct? I think not. It is more likely that she suffers from the malady of Orientalism, so brilliantly diagnosed by Edward Said. That is, “a pervasive Western tradition, both academic and artistic, of prejudiced outsider interpretations of the East” in which the Sephardic Jews of Ottoman Palestine simply disappear from the record of a Euro-centric view of the Middle East. Thus, pfft, entire Sephardic communities in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, Jaffa, Haifa, etc become invisible. The only Jews that matter in this vid are the European Jews.
Tsk. Tsk. Remember that what you do to other people’s history can be done to your preferred people’s history.
Loved this land is mine but the british bit is historically inaccurate. We came in ww1 and ww2 to liberate it from Germans. In both cases the locals turned on each other. Still thinking we should come back a third time and kick out all the killers.
Brilliant, funny, moving, and terrifying. Thank you for this work.
—>Noga.
The Israeli history is not the point in the comic, I suppose (by the way, did you read the Shlomo Sand book “The Invention of the Jewish People”? Very interesting for open minded.)
A fact worthy of attention the Nina Paley’s story underlines: the war is endless just because there are people of different languages/religions/colours that think the same, shameful thing – “I deserve to live (here) and you do not.”
The many hateful comments here merely validate Nina’s artistic statement about thousands of years of bloodshed motivated by greed, a sense of entitlement, and, well, hatred.
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!!!! Brilliantissimo! My hat’s off to you. Keep up the extraordinary work.
Dear Nina
I watched your film “The land is mine” with great pleasure. From the Jewish point of view, there are a lot of inaccuracies. But his pacifist idea is expressed by means of art simply and clearly: “How long will be a war in the Middle East! What is the end of the conflict”
I did in my website directory “Jewish theme in world cinema” (he’s Russian) I’ll put back annotation to your interest movie with a link to your site. I look forward to your next work, “The execution of the Egyptian firstborn”
A. Margolis. Israel
Very nice video. Unfortunately not so factual when it comes to the Zionists. The Zionists are non-religious and never conquered any land. Israel is not fighting a Holly war.
Learn the truth here:
http://israelandfacts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/is-israel-fighting-holy-war.html
Hmm. Nina, my suggestion is, don’t spend any more time on this. It doesn’t get the history right, and I fail to see the personal connection. That’s what made “Sita Sings the Blues” brilliant. The personal connection, the working out of the creator’s connection to a very ancient story — that’s where the meat was. This? This is just preachy and tendentious, almost a self-parody in how cookie-cutter it is. And inaccurate, and that’s not beneficial either. Saying “it’s just a cartoon” doesn’t cut it when you are dealing with the history of current events. Also, why the focus on Israel? People have been fighting over land and resources for centuries, everywhere, for all sorts of reasons. So really, since you can’t come up with a genuine artistic vision for this and it simply lends itself to propagandism, why not find something more worthy to spend your time on, something truly artistic?
Ten years on, and it is out again. Sadly.
I had never seen this video before today. I shall be sharing it as widely as I can.
Your video is a good demonstration of why the “Yeah, but they started it” arguments on social media since last October are ridiculous.
I decided to become a war preventer on realising the futility and stupidity of war. Thank you for making this video which highlights one of the many arguments why killing is not righteous.
Good luck with the medical treatment.