Location and pain in contemporary Israeli feature

   11.12.07

Notes towards a lecture in Spiegel school regarding a few recent creations from local cinema.

1. Bufor, Yosef Sider (2007)

Timecode: 00:57- 01:0330

When I was offered to deliver this presentation , I have tried to understand what they meant by the word "location". Certainly not the technical cinematic expression.

What is the connection between location and pain?

Then I thought about  Jerusalem. Holy Jerusalem.Every stone here is stained with blood. Ancient blood and recent blood.

You could make a film about holiness and beauty, but you’ll have to paint it in red. These walls are tainted in red. like any holy place. Invisible red, blood-colored. The blood of Jews and Arabs who were killed here.

Yosef Sider’s “Bufor”, which won a few international prizes included the Berlin prize. The  film takes place in a Lebanese 12th century monastery, where thousands of soldiers fell throughout the years.

I chose to start with a war film, since this is the constant state here. Most films here are done either in a direct context of war or in an escape from it. You can’t talk about Israel without realising we're a nation at war.

Israeli films made a huge progress lately- got very important prizes, much because of the pain, the neverending pain of wars.

Films are done here with intensity, with blood. Many films which are done here

Use blood as the energy source behind the wheels which turn the camera on. 

As often happens a lot in film history, deep wounds are turning the wheels of the creation of films here.

Of Course the great big bang of it all of it all was the holocaust. Many films were made here on this subject. Personally i never agreed to do one because:

1. I never understood it

2. Because the media has an important role to play in questioning society, Not necessarily the repetition of the image of being the victim .

Most of my life I worked in television in the only station that existed here for over 20 years. We built public consciousness. it was a major responsibility.

A Public channel draws for consensus, but we were looking for truth. 

Because the media has a role in history.

I’ll rely on Hegel.

History is full of tragic heroes. My variation of Friedriech Hegel’s definition of the tragic hero: Those who came before their time and history erased, and those who came after their time and history mocked.

"For Friedrich Hegel the tragic heroes of history were those who came too late. Their reasons were noble. They were right in the previous era , but if they continue to insist on them they will be crushed by history. 

But those who came too early , striving in vain to speed up the course of history are also history's tragic heroes. They failed to understand that freedom is only the conscious recognition of necessity, which solves only those problems that are capable of solution.

This is a horrible situation. There is no free will , you choose what would have been chosen anyhow .

We are in the middle between both poles. 

Many Israelis still believe in old Zionist slogans – like – "a land without people To people without a land" or the dream of  "greater Israel" which include the West Bank and Gaza .

Those Israelis believed and still believe that you can disregard the millions of Arabs who live there. That power alone is enough.

During the last 20 years or so some of our leaders have recognized that power is not enough.

It may have been too.

It is the time of  weapons of mass destruction, the time of terrorists. 

They became tragic figures. Because the time is not yet ripe. 

How can the time be ripe, or ready ? 

First because of economic reasons, are ripe - as said good old Marx , but  Secondly by preparing public opinion for the change.

We, which means some of  the film makers , as well as writers , playwrights or intellectuals, at least some of us are trying to make the time ripe for our society.  But until recently society made us unimportant.

2. “9 Star hotel”- Documentary, Ido Har (2007)

The city of Modi'in is defined as the most planned city in Israel. It's located right in the center between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, in an occupied area. An area which before 67' belonged to the west bank, or to Jordan. 

A middle class looking for space arrives to the town. The city is built by Palestinian Arabs from the west bank who arrive without license.

Contractors employ them for a low wage, still high in terms of the Palestinian authority.. Police chases them and incarcerates them.

They bypass the barriers, and sleep in the houses they build.

3. Children of the sun- Documentary, Ran Tal (2007)

Starting from the beginning of last century , hundreds of cooperative settlements were established in Eretz Israel-Palestine . Their founders undertook to create  a pure society based on economic equality and spiritual connections.

The kibbutz.

One of the ideas has been to abolish the bourgeois  family.

The film examines the beauty  but also the absurdity of idealism. We judge it from above from our decadent / consumeristic/ individualist society.

The only ones who still practice this idealism are religious people. 

The film lets us feel the violence & child abuse of this ideology, together with the grief for the fact that it all went to hell.

The Kibbutz and the Hebrew language, two Zionist phenomenon with universal implications. The language remained. The Kibbutz is no more.

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4. Vasermil- Mushon Salmona (2007)

The stars of the movie are the people of Be’er Sheva, The Jews who were brought here and located in the desert. They remained the lower class, at least whoever didn’t manage to escape.

5. Seeds of Summer- Documentary, Hen laskar

In here as well we here the text of someone who is never seen, the director. In here as well a direct connection between what’s seen and who’s behind the stage. In here as well, a great pain.

The film also focuses on same-sex relations which are built in military life, a life in which a person is disconnected from his day to day self. A Place in which the body and sould of others provide intimacy & comfort. In here as well, there is no enemy.

6. Divine Intervention- Elia Sulieman (2003)

A Fragmented and  highly symbolic film.  

A pressure cooker is boiling underneath us and it may blow every minute. 

Episodes from everyday life, highly stylized  , but still giving the impression that they are taken from reality, combined with scenes which are sheer imagination. 

Imagination is the best weapon of the oppressed, against the oppressor. 

It starts with a driver who drives down the road of an oriental , Middle eastern town. 

He waves to passers by, but curses each and every one of them under the cover of 

The closed doors of his car. Indirectly, he is accusing the occupation for  this situation.

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Sulieman attempts to avoid stereotypical Palestinian cinema. to open a more universal space. but the volume of oppression  does not allow him to completely run away from it as a theme.

In one scene,  an invincible ninja woman takes out all her Israeli foes, but the director is in his kitchen, cutting an onion and crying. The Palestinian woman fighter against the Palestinian man crying artificial tears.

This can have many interpretations. Is it ironic? is it blunt?

7. The Band’s Visit- Eran Kolirin (2007)

Winner of the European Oscar for best lead actor & best director

In the midst of the honeymoon between Israel and Egypt, Alexandria’s police band is invited to Israel. No one awaits them.

They're invited to play in Petach Tikva, a well known city in the center of Israel whose name means “The opening gate to hope”.

Yet they arrive to an artificial settlement founded in the desert called Beit HaTikva, meaning ‘The house of hope”

A Comparison between “The Band’s Visit” and “Divine Intervention”

Both films are fantasies. movies which place imagination in front of tough reality. 

The Palestinian, Having lost all of his lan and his honor hopes to regain what he lost and seeks a renewal of his sense of  self worth.

Of victory. Of Success. 

 The Israeli, Having already accepted everything he wished for in terms of land and national identity, except for quiet times, longs for a peace in which everybody loves everybody. Something natural, simple, childlike, naive.

Until we, The strong, occupying people won’t understand this fundamental different between the two sides, we’ll keep paying lip service for peace, and keep dreaming on. 

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