Israeli Cinema Research Articles

פוסט־טראומה והסכסוך הישראלי-פלסטיני בראי הסרטים עטאש ושנת אפס

Can films bridge between worldviews? Can they ease an unbearable reality? Do they operate within it and influence it, or do they merely provide a perspective from the outside, from which something can be learned or to which one can briefly escape? Can the side-by-side analysis of an Israeli film and a Palestinian film elucidate a catastrophic reality that, with all of its potential explanations and interpretations, we have almost given up trying to understand? Can it be of any help in reaching a solution? This article is an attempt to grapple with these questions and offers a possible answer by analyzing the films Atash by Tawfik Abu Wael and Year Zero by Yosef Pitchhadze. Both films were created here, in Israel-Palestine, during the days of the Second Intifada and were released in 2004. They are complex and layered films that do not lend themselves easily to analysis, and it is difficult at first glance to identify the connections between them. This ambiguity, this mystery, draw the analytical gaze that seeks to explore what lies beneath the visible surface. Uncertainty and restless curiosity are my starting points in this article.

Different Binding: The Myth of the Binding of Isaac in Two Israeli Documentary Films on Combat Stress Reaction

Abstract: This article seeks to point out a phenomenon in Israeli cinema: a return to the story of the binding of Isaac [the akedah ] in its biblical version. Against the background of the traditional casting of the akedah myth in Israeli art, where the miracle of Isaac's rescue is replaced by his death, and the ram is missing from the picture, recently Israeli documentary films have appeared that deal with combat stress reaction, which shapes the story of the akedah in a way that is faithful to the biblical story. They reinstate within the plot the story of Isaac's replacement by a ram and describe life after Isaac saw the knife raised over him, where the traumatic memory of the past upsets the routine of the present. At the same time, the films are informed by the Israeli art tradition, with one film adopting the hegemonic view of Abraham, who raises the knife, while the other adopts the critical view of Sarah, the mother, who identifies with the victim.

Seeing Again, Seeing Anew: Documentary Reenactments in Contemporary Israeli Cinema

Abstract: This article examines the various forms of reenactment in contemporary Israeli documentary cinema. It argues that current documentary reenactments challenge—along the axes of nationalism, gender, class, and ethnicity—the traditional distinctions between past and present, documentary and fiction, reference and representation. They offer the possibility of bringing the past into the present, and simultaneously awarding a new aesthetic form to the historical event appearing on the screen for the first time. The reenactments give presence to the past, while at the same time showing the impossibility of returning to it in its entirety. They put into question the very borders of documentary cinema as well as raising ethical issues about the ontological status of documentary "truth." Moreover, through reenactments, contemporary documentaries aspire to retrieve lost voices and bodies, forgotten testimonies and histories of Israeli society's Others, and to give them new visual form so that they can find new listeners.

Reading for Material: Our Boys and Foxtrot

Abstract: The point of departure for this article is the observation that materialist critique is the dominant critical practice today, rather than being subservient to idealist criticism. However, Marxist critique, I argue, has been absent from Israeli cultural critique and should be distinguished from other forms of materialist critique, in particular the materialist interpretive philosophies of surface reading and speculative realism. I argue that Marxism should be seen as these approaches' antagonist, as it refuses the primacy of objecthood, asserted in both of these other philosophies. Instead, I argue, faced with today's materialist hegemony, Marxism remains true to materiality precisely by focusing on the contradictions, self-negations, and incompletenesses of the supposedly objective world. I then offer a brief Marxist interpretation of the Israeli film Foxtrot and the TV show Our Boys . I show how a Marxist critique differs from what would be the dominant materialist interpretation of these, as reflecting on Israel/Palestine. In Our Boys , the formal representation of crowds makes them into figures for working-class threat across the Palestine/Israel divide. Foxtrot , alternately, allegorizes the process of Israeli films' autonomous meaning-making, rendering its very freedom the carrier of proletarian revolutionary possibilities. These interpretations, I suggest, are the Marxist alternative to Our Boys and Foxtrot 's hegemonic materialist reading, whose horizon — by now reified and predictable — would be the politics of Palestine/Israel.

הצנזורה על סרטי קולנוע ערביים במדינת ישראל, 1967-1948

This article examines government censorship of Arab films in the first two decades of the State of Israel, through extensive archival use of documents of the Israeli Film and Theater Censorship Board. The state authorities had wanted to ban altogether the import of films made in Egypt, where the majority of Arab films were produced, but this was impossible due to the entertainment needs of the Arab minority in Israel, and of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries. The article sheds light on the government's efforts to restrict as much as possible the showing of Arab films and censor their content. The censorship's dual purpose was to prevent Arab films from awakening the national and political consciousness of the Arabs living in Israel, and to distance Jewish immigrants from their Arab culture, in order to promote their assimilation into hegemonic Israeli culture. However, the censorship's attempts at political control over Arabs and cultural control over Jews was doomed to failure due to the emergence of a new means of communication and entertainment in the Middle East – television. This ended the cinema theaters' monopoly over the consumption of Arab films, and thus the Film and Theater Censorship Board's ability to censor them.

Representations of Jewish Functionaries in the Holocaust in Israeli Documentary Cinema

Abstract The role of Jewish functionaries during the Holocaust has fueled heated debates internationally, as well as in Israel since the 1940s. For decades, however, the topic was marginalized in Israeli cinema. The documentary, Kapo (Tor Ben-Mayor and Dan Setton 1999) was the first to include filmed testimonies of former Jewish female functionaries in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The documentary, We Wept Without Tears (Itai Lev and Gideon Greif 2021) is the first to include testimonies by members of the Sonderkommando (“the special squad”) i.e., prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau, primarily Jews, who were forced to work in the killing installations. This article analyzes the ways these documentaries deliberately suspend judgment to provide a more complex perspective on these individuals. Kapo and We Wept Without Tears are examined in the context of how Holocaust memory has changed in Israeli society and cinema. The discussion centers on the ways these films generate a non-judgmental narrative, and the similarities and differences between them in approaching this sensitive topic. It shows that Kapo endeavors to maintain cinematic ambivalence, whereas We Wept Without Tears deliberately highlights the protagonists’ lack of agency and avoids rendering judgment.

Ari Folman’s Made in Israel (2001): Traces of Trauma in the Israeli Cinema Landscape

In the Israeli collective memory, the Yom Kippur’s battles in the Golan Heights have become synonymous with a long lasting national scar that fails to disappear. Interestingly, until the release of Yaron Zilberman’s recent television series Valley of Tears (She’at Ne’Ila, 2020), this war, which was traditionally associated with the pictured northern landscape, had appeared in few documentaries, but was almost absent from Israeli feature films. This article analyzes one of the very few attempts to deal with this memory, Ari Folman’s feature film Made in Israel (2001). Using a science fiction narrative structure, Folman adopts historian Anita Shapira’s contention about the link between this war and the Holocaust, because both confronted the Jewish people with its fear of extermination. His narrative invites the viewer to participate imaginatively in a road movie set against the snow-covered landscapes of the Golan Heights, where a number of hitmen attempt to catch the last surviving Nazi and bring him to trial in Jerusalem. Interestingly, what begins as a Zionist mission in the hegemonic spaces of the State of Israel gradually transforms into various European landscapes as the snow piles up and the Nazi feels increasingly at home.

Ethical dilemmas of minority creative workers in the cultural industries: Palestinian actors in Israeli films and dramas

Ethical dilemmas of minority creative workers in the cultural industries: Palestinian actors in Israeli films and dramas

When Mainstream and Alternative Media Integrate: A Polysystem Approach to Media System Interactions

In a diverse media ecosystem of transitions and integrations, this research uses polysystem theory to conceptualize the integration of alternative media systems within their mainstream media counterparts. These interactions are examined using interviews and participant observations through three case studies—(1–2) Integration of two independent web-content creator groups into mainstream Israeli television system and (3) integration of ultra-Orthodox filmmakers into mainstream Israeli cinema system. The findings show that stiff and flexible systems are two main forms of characterizing relations between alternative and mainstream systems—defined based on the specific interests and implications for each media system, including integrated content, producer perceptions, and audience reception. It includes themes of recognition, conservatism, novelty, freedom, and authenticity. The interactions reveal processes of diffusion or symbiosis of the source system’s products. The findings contribute to a theoretical model of media interactions that offers ways of examining and defining the characteristics of media system interactions.

Far from “Fauda”: creators with disabilities in an established-outsider figuration in the Israeli film and television industries

PurposeAmple literature has demonstrated that workers in the creative industries are excluded in terms of gender, race and class. Fewer studies, however, have examined the career advancement challenges faced by creators with disabilities. Drawing on insights from the established-outsider theory, this study aims to fill this lacuna.Design/methodology/approachThe participants were 24 creators in the Israeli film and television industries (FTIs) contending with severe forms of mental or physical and sensory impairment. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore practitioners’ conceptions of the challenges they face in making careers in the FTI, as well as how they contend with these challenges.FindingsIntergroup dynamics yield an established-outsider figuration that situates creators with disabilities in a marginal occupational position in the FTI. Creators with disabilities' lack of access to networks of prominent creators place them in a disadvantageous position in the ongoing struggles over scarce resources in the FTI. The structural features of the FTI, which are intertwined with the social mechanisms of stigmatization and exclusion, make it difficult to breach any figuration once established. In defiance of their occupational figuration, creators with disabilities utilize two tactics aimed at professional advancement: hyper-meritocracy and advocacy. These tactics yield only partial success.Research limitations/implicationsThis study does not represent the voices of decision-makers in the film and television industries in Israel.Practical implicationsImplications are suggested regarding the role of culture funds as well as policymakers in advancing workforce diversity and opportunity in the film and television industries.Originality/valueThis study addresses covert and unspoken barriers to equality in the creative workforce. The findings also shed light on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on workforce diversity and opportunity in the FTI.

פגיעה במעצמה ידידותית: הצנזורה על הקולנוע בישראל והמלחמה הקרה, 1967-1948

The article examines the impact of the Cold War on film censorship in Israel during the first two decades of the state and sheds light on the Israeli Film Censorship Board’s collaboration with other government bodies, above all the Foreign Ministry in the censorship of western anti-communist films, and to a lesser extent, Soviet anti-American films. Such Cold War-related film censorship was carried out in response to domestic criticism but also to prevent any possible damage to Israel's diplomatic relations, particularly with the Soviet Bloc, owing to the large number of films imported from the United States. In addition to discussing film censorship policies and practices, the article demonstrates the crucial impact of Cold War culture on the political world in Israel, particularly during the early years of the state. The article's main argument is that the diplomatic impetus for censoring Cold War films attests to Israel’s insecurity vis-à-vis its international status prior to the 1967 War as well as to the ultimately unsuccessful attempt by the government to preserve what was left of its deteriorating relations with the Soviet Bloc.

Beyond homonationalism: queer temporality in contemporary Israeli gay and lesbian cinema

ABSTRACT The article explores the homonormative and homonational politics and the discourse of LGBT rights in contemporary Israeli cinema. Some Israeli films such as Yossi and Jagger, The Bubble, and The Secrets promote homonormative and homonational discourse that is guided by a progressive trajectory from traditional societies to modernity, from shame to pride, from homophobia and the secrecy of the closet to gay sexual liberation and identity that follows Western standards. In contrast, films like Joe + Belle, Blush and the Arisa Mizrahi party line videos critique logical temporal conventions of development and progress, maturity, adulthood, and responsibility, and the social scenarios which regulate identities into national, sexual, and ethnic normativity. They offer new ways of being in the world, life and relationships based on queer temporality that are not necessarily founded on past lessons or future expectations, but rather derive from the desire for the “here and now.”

“I was born a man - I'm close to myself”: Israeli film directors and cinema in the MeToo era

The MeToo movement exposed distinct inequalities between men and women on and offscreen. It shed light on the latent politics of power relations between the sexes and tremendously influenced various aspects of Israeli social life. Nevertheless, the question, addressed in this study, of how senior male film directors perceive the change in the gender power dynamics, has not yet been sufficiently addressed.This qualitative study is composed of semi-structured extended interviews with 13 award-winning Israeli directors, who are in the second half of their lives. Applying interpretative phenomenological analysis, the findings indicate that the directors acknowledged that the power relations between men and women have changed. However, the findings also demonstrate remaining difficulties and a backlash in reaction to the change. Based on the findings, two models have emerged. The first, The Phases of Change, demonstrates the process of change as consisting of awareness, avoidance, diversity, women's stardom and support. The second, The Cycle of Perseverance, elaborates the resistance to change as consisting of tokenism, neutrality, androcentrism and persistence.

Postcolonial art and cinema in the thought of Ella Habiba Shohat

To read art and cinema from the vision of an Eastern Jewish woman, which in itself constitutes a challenge and an assimilation of the dimensions of the Zionist colonial pattern, and its ethnically- founded difference in the direction of human groups to which it has been moved ,His concept of the occupation of the land,which often crystallized in the context of stereotypical bias as it appeared simultaneously with the Zionist nationalism.Therefore, this research presents the vision of Shohat's work in its critique of the Zionist colonial cinematic narrative that oversaw the Israeli film industry. Through her studies, she shows the transcendent position of the Western point of view towards a lack of representation of Eastern Jews in their films, as a result of the policy of isolation practiced by the transcendent Western stance against them, by questioning their Judaism, which did not find an echo in the midst of European Jewish nationalism, as the research explores Shohat reading of the artistic field. Through the works of Michael Rakowitz and his evoked representation of the Jews of the East by his re-representation of the Gulf War and his founding of the Dar Al sulh, in which he evokes Iraqi foods at peace tables between all sects of Arabs and Muslims for the purpose of asking to return again from exile to the original homeland.

Forbidden Melodies: Music and Arab-Jewish Identity in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema

This article explores the role Arab music has played in forming Mizrahi identity in contemporary Israeli cinema, focusing on the films “The Ballad of the Weeping Spring”, “Testimony” and “Three Mothers”, which second and third generation Mizrahi filmmakers born to Jewish immigrants from Arab and Muslim countries made in Israel. Using Arab music, these films display the vast array of historical and imaginary relations between the Jew and the Arab, West and East, Israel and the Middle East. Memory of the Arab-Jewish past is a place that cannot be revisited, even if one can travel to the geographical territory that appears to be a place of ‘origin.’ As members of the second and third generations born in Israel, these Mizrahi filmmakers cannot reclaim the Arab-Jewish past of which they never really were a part, and so they try to trace musical routes that will take them to places, histories and encounters with people they have not known before. The grounded certainty of their Mizrahi roots is replaced in the films by the contingencies of the routes that the music enabled.

The Wounded Lion - Ageism and Masculinity in the Israeli Film Industry.

One of the intriguing issues connected to power relations in the world of cinema that has yet to be adequately explored is what has happened over the years concerning the dominance and privilege of masculinity as signifying preferred social status. This qualitative study explores this subject based on transcribed semi-structured interviews with 13 award-winning Israeli directors over the age of 55. The research examines two questions: How has the film industry changed its relation to leading, award-winning film directors as they grow older? And, what challenges confront the directors, in terms of their own self-perceptions? These questions capture the collisional intersection between hegemonic masculinity and ageism, because they examine the loss of power attributed to men in the film industry as they reach the second half of their lives. The findings led to the formation of a theoretical model of ageism within the cinematic industry, allowing for the dismantling of the different factors that create obstacles for directors as they get older. The four layers of the model are: arbitrary ageism, manifested in the demands of a rapidly changing industry in a changing world; passive ageism, expressed through encounters with negative attitudes; active ageism, reflected in preventing older directors from receiving funding and from screening their films; and self-ageism, manifested in the directors’ attitudes toward themselves.

THE ETHOS OF THE AUTEUR AS FATHER OF THE FILM CRAFT – ON MASCULINITY, CREATIVITY AND THE ART OF FILMMAKING

Research of the world of cinema often deals with the manner in which movies replicate the social balance of power, creating a symbolic order based on an essentially masculine world-view that puts the man at its center. The price women pay for this phallocentric approach – their persistent objectification in cinema, and the very small number of female screenwriters and directors – has become a much-discussed topic in contemporary research. However, the question of the price paid in the male artistic creation process has yet to receive the attention it deserves. This qualitative study addresses the lacuna in contemporary research, with reference to three metafictional films that focus on male directors, as an auteur for whom cinema is the pivotal center of their being: the Israeli film Peaches and Cream (2019, directed by Gur Bentwich), the Spanish film Pain and Glory (in Spanish: Dolor y gloria, 2019, directed by Pedro Almodóvar), and American film All That Jazz (1979, directed by Bob Fosse). They all are viewed as having an affinity with the ancient Greek comparison of male creativity with female procreativity, which is still reflected in contemporary studies. The films paint a picture of the male creative process shadowed by a sense of danger and loss of self. All three expose the feelings of anxiety inherent in film directors’ work, and the possible resultant breakdown, not only in an emotional sense but in a real, potentially fatal physical or medical sense as well. In all three movies, the director conceives of his ability to restore his sense of inner wholeness and male identity in a manner that contradicts the conventional balance of power, while customary power-relations are revealed as another road to loss of identity and sense of self. Each of the films ties the director’s ability to renew his sense of personal wholeness to developing a relationship with his surroundings, facilitated by audience appreciation, critical praise, or empathy from those close to him – all of which reinforce his feeling of belonging and significance. Without these aspects, the “absolute artist”, whose life revolves around his art, is shown to be at death’s door, whether symbolically or in reality.

Jews, Blood, and Post-Zionist TV: The Mizrahi as Vampire inJuda

The success of the Israeli vampire–crime–comedy series Juda is not at all trivial, to say the least. It dared to adopt a controversial subgenre that is associated with antisemitism and blood libels. Moreover, it deals with social traumas and the ethnic conflict between the Zionist Ashkenazi hegemony and the Mizrahi sector, which accuses the hegemony of oppression and discrimination. Juda expresses a critical agenda: a dissolution of Zionist values as the only solution and chance for redemption, both for the hero and for society. Thus, despite emerging at a time when the horror genre had experienced a late blooming on Israeli screens, its appearance is connected to two other central processes in contemporary Israeli film and television: the incorporation of religion and the ascendancy of the Mizrahi hero. Juda overcomes the inherent problem in the image of the Jewish vampire—first by creating a distinction between a Jewish vampire and a gentile vampire, and second by having a protagonist who is a Mizrahi Jew.

Destined Failure of Interactions between Israeli-Arabs and Jews— An Analysis on Creative Works’ Presentation of Issues from the Jewish Side

Sociological research have investigated factors to account for the ethnographic conflicts between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Different from previous studies, this paper inquires the factors on the Jewish side that prevent successful interaction between the two ethnographic groups by looking at crucial scenes in creative works of books and films produced by Israeli authors/directors. The first scene is from the Jewish perspective in Amos Oz’s memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, in which young Oz, a Jewish boy, attempts to interact with Aisha, a young Israeli-Arab girl, but eventually failed because of an accident. The second scene is from a short Israeli film Bus Station which, from an outsider perspective, depicted a brief encounter between an Arab woman and a Jewish woman in Jerusalem. The third scene is the initially successful yet eventually failed relationship between Eyad, a Palestinian boy, and Naomi, a Jewish girl, in an elite Israeli high school from the 2014 film A Borrowed Identity, which is depicted through Eyad’s Arab perspective. Through the analysis of these three narratives, this paper argues that the burden of national responsibility, family influences, and Israeli government’s discriminatory policies are the three main factors on the Jewish side, in ascender order of importance, that make Arab-Jewish interaction hard in Israel.

Screening the Conflict, Reaping the Benefits: Yana’s Friends and the Politics of Representation of Russian-Speaking Jews in Israeli Cinema

W wyniku powszechnej fali imigracji, zapoczątkowanej w roku 1989, około miliona Żydów radzieckich trafiło do Izraela. Doświadczenie przesiedleń dla większości repatriantów naznaczone zostało napięciem pomiędzy potrzebą asymilacji w nowych warunkach kulturowych, a chęcią zachowania „rosyjskiej” tożsamości kulturowej. Niniejszy artykuł analizuje politykę (auto)reprezentacji radzieckich imigrantów w Izraelu na przykładzie filmu Arika Kapłuna Przyjaciele Jany (1999), który wyznaczył nową granicę w kinie rosyjsko-izraelskim. W przeciwieństwie do wcześniejszych filmów tworzonych w Izraelu przez filmowców z byłego ZSRR, w których doświadczenie przesiedlenia z reguły nacechowane było nostalgią, poczuciem utraty I podwójnej alienacji, Kapłun w przedstawianiu tożsamości rosyjsko-żydowskiej rezygnuje z nostalgii za radziecką przeszłością i kultywowania rosyjsko-żydowskiej niepowtarzalności. Chociaż bohaterowie filmu starannie i z pietyzmem zachowują niektóre aspekty kultury rosyjskiej (muzyka, sztuka, kulinaria), to łatwo rozstają się z innymi (akcent, alkoholizm, język rosyjski i radzieckie wzorce męskości). Analiza filmu ujawnia zmiany w strategiach autopozycjonowania tożsamości rosyjsko-żydowskiej w kontekście wielokulturowego Izraela.