Sinai Field Mission

This 1978 Frederick Wiseman documentary shows routine activities of diplomats and electronics technicians involved in the U.S. Sinai Field Mission, the early warning system established in 1976 to help facilitate the disengagement between Egypt and Israel after the 1973 war. James Brown (Los Angeles Times) observed, Wiseman gives us a community. We sense the isolation, the harsh climate, the numbing drudgery of the paperwork...by filming the story of Sinai Field Mission from the inside out, by incorporating all of the elements that make it up rather than a rote narrative of what it does and how it came to be. The Mission's major purpose: to monitor approaches to strategic passes and to verify the operations of Egyptian and Israeli surveillance stations in the Sinai Buffer Zone.
Director: Frederick Wiseman