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 … read more

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 its trans­for­ma­tion into a three-story house in 1980…
This West Jerusalem build­ing is no longer the micro­cosm it once was 25 years ago. Its inhab­i­tants dis­persed, this common space has dis­in­te­grat­ed, but remains both an emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal center at heart of the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian sit­u­a­tion. Con­crete real­i­ty has trans­formed into scat­tered sto­ries and mem­o­ries. A new iden­ti­ty, a new dias­po­ra, have evolved.
With NEWS FROM HOME, Amos Gitai com­pletes the tril­o­gy which began with 1980’s HOUSE and con­tin­ued in 1998’s A HOUSE IN JERUSALEM. Cre­at­ing a sort of human archae­ol­o­gy, Gitai explores the rela­tion­ships between the house­’s inhab­i­tants, past and present, between Israelis and Pales­tini­ans. Each in his or her own way becomes a sign of the region’s, the world’s, destiny.