ONE OF US NOW is a film by and with Maya Stein­berg. Being her­self a sec­u­lar and fem­i­nist Israeli, Maya’s lifestyle devi­ates a lot from the one of her father, who had a late reli­gious awak­en­ing. Maya has a strong long­ing to know more about her father’s world, but also tries to find out if this world pro­vides space for women and queer people. By vis­it­ing the gravesite of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Galilee, which is an impor­tant place for Maya’s father, the film­mak­er tries to grasp this ultra-ortho­dox reality. 

The film wit­ness­es the fas­ci­nat­ing encounter between a place and its people, medi­at­ed and facil­i­tat­ed through the expe­ri­ence of Maya and the rela­tion­ships which unfold. ONE OF US NOW enables us to feel the strong field of ten­sion in a con­text where the pos­si­b­li­ty of social inclu­sion and exclu­sion fol­lows highly rigid rules and tra­di­tions.  

Pinkas, a 75-years old agri­cul­tur­al worker from Moshav Rehov in the Beit Sh’an Valley, wakes up one morn­ing trou­bled by a dream in which his sister Simha has appeared. When he immi­grat­ed to Israel 50 years ago, she remained in Kur­dis­tan and he hasn’t seen her since. His dream leaves him no peace and so Pinkas sets out on a long jour­ney to the place of his birth. In a remote vil­lage in the moun­tains of Kur­dis­tan he does find his long-lost sister and her Muslim husband. 

On the spot, Pinkas decides to bring the extend­ed family to Israel. And so begins an ‘aliyah’ and absorp­tion process orga­nized by one man. Pinkas finds new pur­pose in life and he mobi­lizes all his ener­gies on behalf of his newly dis­cov­ered family. He some­how man­ages to bring fifty mem­bers of his family to Israel, and to house them in var­i­ous vil­lages in the area. Each day he takes his trac­tor to check on every­one. As time passes, the harsh real­i­ty of the dif­fi­cul­ties of adapt­ing, of being Mus­lims in a Jewish coun­try, of their long­ings for their remote vil­lage in Kur­dis­tan, become apparent.

The film focus­es the prob­lems of sephardic Jews in Israel. Three women, three gen­er­a­tions who strug­gle to sur­vive, to have a mean­ing­ful life and to express their voice in the new Israeli soci­ety, which is under­go­ing a process of social crum­bling and frag­men­ta­tion while at the same time its loos­ing its social­ist beliefs. 

A soci­ety that mar­gin­al­izes cul­tur­al­ly, social­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly 50 per­cent of its pop­u­la­tion (the ori­en­tal Jews who are con­sid­ered as the »blacks«) just because of their origin, their skin colour and their cul­tur­al back­ground. The director’s mem­o­ries are shown in the char­ac­ter of Elinor, a 15-year old girl who lives in Jaffa but stud­ies in a middle-class Ashke­nazi school in the north of Tel Aviv. The sto­ries of the director’s 89-years old grand­moth­er Ida inspired her to travel to the Balka­ns to a Greek Vil­lage, where Ida was born and to Bul­gar­ia, where she sur­vived the Holocaust.

Mosa­hav Shekef is an agri­cul­tur­al coop­er­a­tive in the Lachish region. It is inhab­it­ed by Israelis – some are sabras, some were born in Maroc­co, Argenti­na or Iraq. Today there are 40 fam­i­lies, half of them vote for the left, the other half vote for the right. In the neigh­bour­hood, on the other side of the Green Border Line, the Pales­tin­ian vil­lage of Beth-Awah is sit­u­at­ed. Before the Intifa­da had start­ed the agri­cul­tur­al work­ers of Shekef came from this village. 

After the murder of a moshav member, the moshav decid­ed to cease employ­ment of all Pales­tin­ian work­ers. The murder case still hasn’t been solved. Shekef was the first moshav receiv­ing the per­mis­sion to employ agri­cul­tur­al work­ers from Thai­land. Since 1988 most of the inhab­i­tants of Beth-Awah are unem­ployed. A tri­an­gle is formed between Thais, Pales­tini­ans an Israelis – all live around the same place (makom); work (avoda) is the link between them. The film expos­es the ten­sions, fears and uncer­tain­ties which are con­cealed behind the peace­ful green exte­ri­or of the moshav.

A car­a­van camp in a desert­ed mil­i­tary base is the first home in Israel for immi­grants arriv­ing from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia. Peter from the Ukraine and Chan­nan from Samark­land meet with Fit­igch from Gandar and Gavru from Addis-Ababa. Their cross-cul­tur­al encounter height­ens the already strong feel­ings of uproot­ing, dis­lo­ca­tion and alien­ation. The film fol­lows Peter’s efforts to real­ize his pre-immi­gra­tion dreams of a »Fan­tak­ti­ka Israel« described in offi­cial brochures and his attempts to bring his mother and sis­ters out of the Ukraine. During the six months of prepa­ra­tion and research for GOOD OR BAD, BLACK AND WHITE I vis­it­ed most of the trail­er home (car­a­van) camps which had sprung up with great haste through­out Israel. My ini­tial emo­tion­al reac­tion was empa­thy for the thou­sands of new immi­grants that had arrived from the former Soviet Union and Ehtiopia. Their dream of making a new home in the ancient Jewish land, turned now a modern coun­try, seemed to have col­lapsed in a dusty cloud of iso­la­tion and despa­ra­tion. How else could one feel about the dis­turbing­ly ugly view of end­less rows of car­a­van homes set in a barren land­scape under a scorch­ing sun?

»An old Ethiopi­an woman with a shy smile com­pared her car­a­van home to a tree. – ‘How is that?’ I inquired. – ‘Like a tree’ she said ‘it moves with the wind, back and forth«, refer­ring to the thin spikes some 30 cen­time­ters off the ground, on which her car­a­van was placed. (…) I found an end­less array of human sto­ries at the Bat Hazor Car­a­van Camp, some pes­simistic and tragic, others inspir­ing and opti­mistic. Yet beyond the per­son­al sto­ries there seemd to be a larger over­whelm­ing prob­lem which slowly revealed itself. In a camp where there are such extreme cul­tur­al, lin­gual and racial dif­fer­ences between Rus­sians and Ethiopi­ans the threat of vio­lence hung heavy in the dusty air. It was clear right from the start that although they shared a common reli­gion they could not find it in them­selves to accept each other as equals. What about assim­i­la­tion in this kind of atmos­phere? The camp’s iso­la­tion and dis­tance from any Israeli urban cen­ters only served to com­pli­cate an already charged sit­u­a­tion.« (Amit Goren)

»Ten years ago, I went to Ethiopia to film the people known as ‘Falashas’ or black Jews, who were mal­treat­ed for their strict obser­vance of the Jewish reli­gion and who long remained unrec­og­nized by Israel. Two years later, Israel orga­nized a huge air­lift and admit­ted them into the coun­try. Ten years on, I went look­ing in the huts of the Tel-Aviv sub­urbs to find the people I had pre­vi­ous­ly met in Ethiopia.« (François Mar­golin, 1996)

THE INNER TOUR is an Israeli/Palestinian copro­duc­tion por­tray­ing a jour­ney by an organ­ised tour-group of Pales­tini­ans from the West Bank and Gaza, The tour-group travel through Israel, which for them is the lost home­land and the origin of their occu­pa­tion. The events of the film fea­ture the expe­ri­ences of the group as they stop along their sight­see­ing tour. The film offers an unique­ly humane and polit­i­cal­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed por­trait of the Pales­tin­ian people and their expe­ri­ence. It pro­vides view­ers – with anoth­er look at Israel. through the eyes of these travellers. 

Israeli film­mak­er Anat Zuria exam­ines the “Tharat Hamish­pa­ha” (family purity), the ancient laws and rit­u­als which shape wom­en’s lives and sex­u­al­i­ty within Jewish Ortho­doxy, giving a subtle voice to female rebel­lion within the reli­gious world. Zuria presents her own expe­ri­ences adher­ing to Ortho­dox prac­tices, as well as those of her friends Natal­ie, Katie and Shira. At the heart of their sto­ries is the “nidda” - a ten to twelve day period restrict­ing women from touch­ing or engag­ing in sexual inti­ma­cy with their hus­bands, which cul­mi­nates with a trip to the “mikve” (cleans­ing baths). Their open­ness in front of the camera breaks a pro­found taboo of silence rooted in 2000-year-old laws, as they speak of the rigid­i­ty and con­fines of Ortho­dox rit­u­als. Beau­ti­ful­ly incor­po­rat­ing lyri­cal and med­i­ta­tive images with inter­views, “Purity” presents the hidden strug­gle of reli­gious women to main­tain their cul­tur­al tra­di­tions and indi­vid­ual needs within the frame­work of strict reli­gious law. The topic has barely ever been doc­u­ment­ed on film. 

Pales­tini­ans, in the midst of the ear-split­ting noise of bull­doz­ers, defy­ing the logic of war. “I wanted to show the emer­gence of the wall, to record this his­tor­i­cal moment, when the wall goes up, when people under­stand that the wall is no longer an idea but real­i­ty” says 44 the Israeli film direc­tor Simone Bitton. Her film is an his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment because it shows the erec­tion of the wall, a real­i­ty made of con­crete. It is also an attempt to make the real­i­ty of every­day life under­stand­able.” I have the impres­sion that the real­i­ty of every­day life is becom­ing cra­zier, with­out any logic. But the wall is the height of lunacy. How on earth can one come to the con­clu­sion that a wall could be the solu­tion? I thought at the time: Now they have gone crazy.” MUR is an impres­sive tes­ti­mo­ny, a cin­e­mat­ic med­i­ta­tion on people and land­scapes. In the end one com­pre­hends what the wall has done. 

In Sep­tem­ber 2004, in Kara vil­lage, the first Jewish-Arab school locat­ed within an Arab vil­lage, has opened. 100 chil­dren, half Arab and half Jewish, study at this school. The school gives equal rep­re­sen­ta­tion to both lan­guages, reli­gions and cul­tures. For a year and a half the film­mak­er fol­lowed close­ly the par­ents, who were able to estab­lish this school despite all the dif­fi­cul­ties on the way. What seemed like an impos­si­ble mis­sion, given the social and polit­i­cal atmos­phere in Israel since the rising of the second Intifa­da and the Octo­ber 2000 events, has soon become an opti­mistic real­i­ty that brings hope during hard times for both Arabs and Jews. How­ev­er, the ten­sion and dis­agree­ment did not dis­ap­pear the day the school opened. On the con­trary; every day poses new chal­lenges to the teach­ers, par­ents and chil­dren. Every­one relat­ed to this school goes through a deep and mean­ing­ful process which is at the core of this movie. The school serves as a crit­i­cal turn­ing point for each and every­one of the char­ac­ters we follow. They find them­selves having to deal with basic exis­ten­tial thoughts that do not per­tain strict­ly to the Arab-Jewish con­flict, but also to con­flicts about male vs. female, reli­gious vs. sec­u­lar, par­ents vs. chil­dren, and more.