In a lab­o­ra­to­ry-like setup, The View­ing Booth recounts a unique encounter between a film­mak­er and a viewer. The film explores the way we make mean­ings for non­fic­tion images, and how what we see in such images, is relat­ed to our belief sys­tems. Ra’anan Alexandrow­icz, whose ear­li­er films have exposed dif­fer­ent aspects of the Israeli occu­pa­tion, com­piles online video footage depict­ing the harsh real­i­ty of Pales­tin­ian exis­tence under Israeli mil­i­tary rule. He then shows this footage to Amer­i­can stu­dents and films their reac­tions, focus­ing on one of them, Maia Levy, an enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­er of Israel. Six months later, Alexandrow­icz invites Levy to watch more footage. This time, Maia views edited footage of her­self while she was watch­ing the images of the occu­pa­tion. What is revealed in the process is multi-lay­ered, puz­zling, insight­ful and extends beyond the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict. Maia’s candid and reflec­tive analy­sis of her pre­vi­ous com­men­tary gives the viewer a stag­ger­ing demon­stra­tion of the idea that seeing is not always believing.

Ra’anan Alexandrow­icz was born in Jerusalem in 1969. He stud­ied film­mak­ing at the Sam Spiegel Film and TV School in Jerusalem and already his final thesis short RAK B’MIKRIM BODEDIM (Self Con­fi­dence Ltd, 1996) received sev­er­al awards. Since MARTIN (1999), the por­trait of a KZ sur­vivor in Dachau, Alexandrow­icz turned to doc­u­men­taries trying to find inno­v­a­tive modes of expres­sion. THE INNER TOUR (2001, Freiburg­er Film­fo­rum 2001) fol­lows a sight-seeing bus tour of a group of Pales­tini­ans through Israel. The film was released during the second Intifa­da and cre­at­ed much con­tro­ver­sy. It was shown at many fes­ti­vals world­wide and cel­e­brat­ed as a rare doc­u­ment of the con­flict between Israel and Pales­tine. In 2003 fol­lowed the fea­ture film JAMES’ JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM about an African pil­grim. Alexandrow­icz became a polit­i­cal activist and set out to explore the exis­tence of a par­al­lel legal system that applied to Pales­tini­ans under the occu­pa­tion. THE LAW IN THESE PARTS (2011) won sev­er­al awards a. o. the Grand Jury Prize at Sun­dance. The film had a broad ecu­ca­tion­al turnout and from his expe­ri­ences with the audi­ence, the film­mak­er pub­lished „50 Years of Doc­u­men­ta­tion“, an analy­sis of the nature of polit­i­cal doc­u­men­tary film. Sev­er­al times he worked as an edit­ing advi­sor for the Sun­dance Doc­u­men­tary Fund.

Direc­tor: Ra’anan Alexandrowicz
Cin­e­matog­ra­phy: Zach­ery Reese
Edit­ing: Neta Dvorkis, R. Alexandrowicz
Sound­de­sign: Rotem Dror
Pro­duc­tion: R. Alex­anandrow­icz, Liran Atzmor
Con­tact: R. Alexandrow­icz theviewingbooth@gmail.com