Billal

Clip 3: ‘Life upside down’

Taken from the documentary Billal (1996)

Original title classification M – this clip chosen to be PG

Curator’s clip description

Late teen Lebanese-Australian Billal, permanently brain damaged from a car accident, is undergoing an operation for the third time. The surgeon explains that fluid has built up in Billal’s brain causing him to gain weight and to exhibit disinhibited violent and sexual behaviour especially towards the female hospital staff. Billal says he understands the details of the operation. He wants to live at home but his behaviour has prevented him from doing so.

In the waiting room, Billal’s mother discusses her feelings with Alissar, the film’s interpreter, who becomes a character in the film in her own right. Over time she falls into the role of counsellor to Amal.

Curator’s notes

The subjects are all extremely open and frank about their feelings, giving us a real sense of involvement with the events.

Damien Parer, curator

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows the effects of an acquired brain injury (ABI) on Billal Etter and his family. To the sound of haunting background music, a surgeon in a Sydney hospital describes Billal’s symptoms and his next operation. Billal then talks about what the operation will involve and says he wants to be able to go home. The rest of the clip focuses on Billal’s mother, Amal Etter, and the film’s interpreter, Alissar Gazal, as they wait for the operation to end and discuss Amal’s personal situation and the family’s difficulties. Subtitles are used.

Educational value points

According to the Brain Injury Association of Queensland, symptoms such as aggression and inappropriate behaviour are not uncommon following an ABI and, as with Billal Etter, an ABI can lead to permanently impaired abilities and changes in cognition and behaviour. Etter’s ABI is of the traumatic type – when he was hit by a car, the soft tissue of his brain was propelled against the hard bone of his skull and bounced backward, causing major damage and leading to coma.

Every year in Australia many thousands of people, like Etter, develop hydrocephalus, excessive cerebrospinal fluid accumulating in the brain, as a result of accidents, tumours, bleeding or infection. Without treatment, hydrocephalus results in compromised mental functioning, visual disturbances and other issues. For patients with a shunt draining the fluid, problems with their eyes such as Etter displays can be a sign that their shunt is malfunctioning.

The effect on the carer and on the family unit as described by Amal Etter is relatively common following a violent crime or traumatic accident. Although Amal and Abdul Etter have been able to sustain a ‘satisfactory’ relationship, Amal’s health has been affected and one of their three sons, Ahmed, has left home. The family ‘no longer lives as a unit’.

Billal was intended to be a documentary about the situation facing young Lebanese-Australians in south-west Sydney about to leave school and their highly uncertain job prospects but, as is often the case with Tom Zubrycki’s films, the focus sharpened onto a particular situation. Zubrycki believes that it is ‘only when you engage at a really deep level with your subjects and with the story that you get those key revelatory moments’ (http://www.tomzubrycki.com).

Because Zubrycki’s documentary style uses many of the dramatic storytelling techniques from fiction, it is hardly surprising that the crew’s community liaison officer and interpreter, Alissar Gazal, becomes a central character in her own right. In the film she is seen tackling the housing authorities on the family’s behalf and in this clip it can be seen that she has become a friend, able to be trusted with personal information about family relationships.

A striking cinematic feature of the clip is the variety of shots used and this is particularly evident in the opening scenes with their use of ground-level and eye-level shots, and in the final sequence in the clip where long shots of Etter and Gazal in discussion alternate with close-ups. This juxtaposition is complex and subtle, with the close-ups eliciting an empathetic response but the long shots showing that the women are on their own, dependent on their own resources.