Israeli Reflections on the Middle East Conflict

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 … read more

A couple make love in a car some­where in the Israeli desert on a narrow and wind­ing road, not far from a mon­u­ment. Just a year ago on the same … read more

Two Israeli sol­diers escape an attack in the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries. They hide at the home of a couple of Arabs, who they take hostage. Unex­pect­ed­ly, they find some­thing in common. 

The voice of this film is that of the Israeli author S. Yizhar, who reads the first few chap­ters of his auto­bi­og­ra­phy ”Mik­damot” (”Pre­lim­i­nar­ies” or ”Pref­aces” in Hebrew). Direc­tor Anat Even accom­pa­nies Yizhar’s voice with her gaze, which con­tin­ues it and stands against it at one and the same time. S. Yizhar describes a dra­mat­ic day in the life of infant Yizhar, (1917) a story that is a dia­logue of love and reck­on­ing with his father, with the found­ing gen­er­a­tion, and the Zion­ist dream. Even, who sees Yizhar as a member of that found­ing father gen­er­a­tion, exam­ines this score-set­tling up close through purely visual means. Yizhar Smi­lan­sky (b. 1917, known as S. Yizhar), is con­sid­ered to be the great­est Israeli author of 20th cen­tu­ry Hebrew writ­ing; he is a part of the lit­er­ary-cul­tur­al canon in Israel. His work spans over 60 years of writ­ing and uses a unique lan­guage to draft the geo­graph­i­cal and human land­scape of Israel before, during and after the estab­lish­ment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Aban­doned by its Pales­tin­ian owner in the 1948 war; req­ui­si­tioned by the Israeli gov­ern­ment as vacant; rented to Jewish Alger­ian immi­grants in 1956; pur­chased by a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor who under­takes … read more