ODESSA ODESSA

Michale Boganim
France, Israel 2004 | 96 Min. | 35 mm, OmU

Michale Boganim’s lyri­cal doc­u­men­tary picks up on the theme of van­ish­ing Jewish cul­ture. The three part film depics a jour­ney from the Ukraine to ‘Little Odessa’ in Brook­lyn New York and Ashdod in Israel, where the Jewish émi­grés are sur­prised to dis­cov­er they are seen as Rus­sians. Through dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters, the film address­es hopes, illu­sions and dreams of free­dom. This jour­ney into time and place is the story of all the dias­po­ras. “All my char­ac­ters are on a search, an exis­ten­tial search for a pos­si­ble some­where else, an ide­al­ized else­where. They go, they come, but their orbits are anchored to an unreal Odessa. At the same time, those who are in Odessa also live in exile and fan­ta­size about an ideal place: Amer­i­ca or Israel. Final­ly, all of them are wan­der­ing per­ma­nent­ly, with­out end. They live with the absence of a place. And this absence becomes an obses­sive figure in the film. The open­ing of the film is done with a system of sym­bol­ic fig­ures, the exact memory of the film. It arrives, having already lived the voyage towards which it is taking us. One begins the film with his mem­o­ries; the remain­der – is it his memory, his imag­i­na­tion or his view? All that merges togeth­er.” Michale Boganim
Michale Bogan­im: geboren 1972 in Haifa/Israel, aufgewach­sen in Paris. Poli­tolo­gie-Studi­um an der Sor­bonne, Studi­um der Sozi­olo­gie, Philoso­phie und Geschichte in Israel. Film­studi­um an der NFTS. Filme: DUST (2002).