Also Directed by Amos Gitai
A young couple marry in France in the 1940s and the film follows the arc of their marriage over the next decade. As France recovers from the trauma of the war, the wife finds herself increasingly caught up in acquiring material possessions while the husband prefers a more traditional lifestyle.
Life in a Tel Aviv apartment complex, an urban mosaic whose seedy characters, try as they might, can't get out of one another's faces. Gabi, a bobbed haired sexpot, and her lover Hezi—who's older, balding and married—rent a room to have an affair, while Ezra, a pot bellied divorcee, supervises an illegal construction site next door. All this racket drives Schwartz, a Holocaust survivor, to a mental breakdown. Other characters include illegal Chinese immigrants, a teenage boy who's afraid to serve in the army, and a corrupt police detective.
The first of four installments in the groundbreaking Heartbeat of the World anthology film series. Comprised of several short films by some of the world's most exciting directors, Words with Gods follows the theme of religion - specifically as it relates to an individual's relationship with his/her god or gods...or the lack thereof. In Words with Gods, each director recounts a narrative centered around human fragility, as well as environmental and cultural crises involving specific religions with which each has a personal relationship; including early Aboriginal Spirituality, Umbanda, Buddhism, the Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, and Atheism. An animated sequence by Mexican animator Maribel Martinez is woven through each of the film segments, with each segment narratively connected as a feature-length film.
1992. In Wuppertal, in Germany, two skinheads killed a man who claimed to be Jewish. Amos Gitai questions the witnesses, the residents, and the protagonists of the trial.
Itzhak Rabin's murder ended all efforts of peace, and with him the whole left wing of Israel died. The movie shows the last of his days as prime minister, and what led to his murder.
Documentary about a house and its politically divided ownership over time.
Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.
With the feel of experimental film, Gitai mixes storytelling, readers' theater, cityscapes (usually seen from moving trains), and desolate landscapes to mediate on the act of creation. What if a golem were fashioned out of dirt, much like Adam, and came to life? The film imagines it, in the desert and in Moscow. Interspersed are stories of a 14th-century Tuscan artist's creation of a tower that plays music when the wind blows, of a film director, and of Jeremiah and Sirat. In what ways is making a movie like creating a golem?
1974 Gitai super8 short film
Also Directed by Elia Suleiman
The second Gulf War from 1990 to 1991 represents in the collective Arab memory a turning point in regards to the Arab nationalism’s self-perception as well as a moment of deep historical and existential insecurity. Five Arab directors discuss the events from their personal perspective.
Tweed, Bird, and Johnny are three outcasts who just want to belong. Obsessed with computer games they buy one from a street peddler and end up entering an alternate universe, much like theirs but instead they're the most popular boys in school. The alternate universe is their dream world and they have to choose whether or not to leave.
Chronicle of a Disappearance unfolds in a series of seemingly unconnected cinematic tableaux, each of them focused on incidents or characters which seldom reappear later in the film. Among the many unrelated scenes, there is a Palestinian actress struggling to find an apartment in West Jerusalem, the owner of the Holy Land souvenir shop preparing merchandise for incoming Japanese tourists, a group of old women gossiping about their relatives, and an Israeli police van which screeches to a halt so several heavily armed soldiers can get off the car and urinate.
A Palestinian filmmaker is writing a script in his New York apartment during the first Gulf war. As much as he tries to shut himself off from the exterior world, images of past wars in the Middle East come back to haunt him.
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
This highly kinetic tableaux of uprooted sights and sounds works most earnestly to expose the racial biases concealed in familiar images. Relying on valuable snippets from feature films such as "Exodus", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Black Sunday", "Little Drummer Girl", and network news shows, the filmmakers have constructed an oddly wry narrative, mimicking the history of Mid East politics.
Santa Claus tries to outrun a gang of knife-wielding youth. It's one of several vignettes of Palestinian life in Israel - in a neighborhood in Nazareth and at Al-Ram checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Most of the stories are droll, some absurd, one is mythic and fanciful; few words are spoken. A man who goes through his mail methodically each morning has a heart attack. His son visits him in hospital. The son regularly meets a woman at Al-Ram; they sit in a car, hands caressing. Once, she defies Israeli guards at the checkpoint; later, Ninja-like, she takes on soldiers at a target range. A red balloon floats free overhead. Neighbors toss garbage over walls. Life goes on until it doesn't.
Filmmaker Elia Suleiman travels to different cities and finds unexpected parallels to his homeland of Palestine.
The Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman goes in search of his past and possible future in occupied territory. Wherever he looks, he feels surrounded by images and places that have a political significance. Can a landscape be free of meaning, is there any point in striving for an approach that transcends all ideology?
An examination of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through to the present day. A semi-biographic film, in four chapters, about a family spanning from 1948 until recent times. Combined with intimate memories of each member, the film attempts to portray the daily life of those Palestinians who remained in their land and were labelled "Israeli-Arabs," living as a minority in their own homeland.
