Films with: Gitai, Amos

Alila

For the apartment dwellers, every action creates a ripple unknowingly felt by all. Goreous libertine Gabi's loud, violent trysts with her physically dominant, emotionally unavailable lover Hezi bring down the wrath of their disgusted neighbors. Mali reluctantly joins her neurotic ex-husband Ezra in his search for their army deserter son. Ezra's illegal construction site and undocumented immigrant workers in turn prompt the hermit Schwartz to relive the horrors of the Nazi death camps, as his Filipino campanion Linda helplessly looks on.

DVD 3526

Berlin Jerusalem

This moving drama of the birth of Israel focuses on two women - Else Lasker-Schuler, a German poet, and Tania Shohat, a Russian revolutionary. They meet first in Berlin, where utopian ideals and fear of the Nazis force their escape to Palestine. Re-united in Jerusalem, they confront a harsh reality in the city idealized in their dreams.

DVD 2322

Esther

In this beautiful transposition of the biblical story, Amos Gitai updates the passionate tale about the ruler of a great and sprawling kingdom who chooses as his queen a beautiful peasant girl named Esther. But when Esther hides her Jewish identity from her husband, a vicious cycle of revenge begins.

DVD 2321

Field diary Yoman sadeh /

"Shot in the occupied territories before and during the Isaraeli invasion of Lebanon, Field Diary consists of about 50 sequence shots, mostly filmed from a moving car. Like an endless traveling shot, the film weaves hypnotically through occupied zones, occasionally slowing down or pausing to underscore a moment. The film's view of the occupation was controversial in Israel, leading to Gitai's decade-long exile from his native country. In Arena of Murder, Gitai investigates the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin three weeks after the event. He travels through the country for several months, filming random encounters to paint a melancholic portrait of a country in turmoil."--Container.

DVD 4188

Free zone

An unlikely relationship begins for an American girl living in Jerusalem, a cab driver on her way to Jordan, and a Palestinian woman living in an Economic Free Zone.

DVD 5549

Golem : l'esprit de l'exil Golem : nedudim = Golem : the spirit of exile /

The famous story of a patriarch whose sons are murdered, and whose widow forges an enduring friendship with her daughter-in-law Ruth, is transposed to Paris. Here, in a world of immigrants, the two women are exiled from France and wander the seas. Fuses Biblical tales of exile with the legend of the Golem into a parable for our time.

DVD 2324

Golem, le jardin pétrifié Golem: The petrified garden

This wry and humorous film follows Daniel, an art dealer, who travels to Siberia to claim his inheritance of an art collection, which includes a giant statue of a Golem. The long journey across Russia becomes an ironic encounter with the lost ideals of the Soviet Union after its collapse.

DVD 2325

House Une Maison à Jerusalem = [a house in Jerusalem] / Agav Films, La Sept Arte presentent un film de Amos Gitai.

Two thematically linked films, House and A House in Jerusalem explore the history of a house in the city's German Colony and the changes in ownership it has undergone as a microcosm for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Produced yet censored by Israel Broadcasting Authority, the first film House (Bayit) (1980) chronicles the inhabitants of the house, abandoned during the 1948 war by a Palestinian doctor and requisitioned by the Israeli government as "vacant." Eighteen years later, Gitai returns in A House in Jerusalem (1998) to observe the changes in the new residents as well as in the neighborhood.

DVD 4223

Kadosh

"Set in the Mea Sherim quarter of Jerusalem, an encalve of the utlra Orthodox, Kadosh explores a hermetic world almost never seen on the screen. Here for ten years the pious Rivka has devoted herself to her husband Meir, but their marriage remains childless. Presumed barren, she is rejected in her community, which prizes children above all else. The story that follows relates the harrowing fate of Rivka, and also her beloved sister Malka -- in love with a young man who has fled the community to lead a secular life" -- container.

DVD 1293

Kedma

A group of European Jewish refugees arrive in Palestine in the critical year of 1948. Carried on deck of the freighter, Kedma, they come ashore to find not the Promised Land, but a war torn desert in the bloody throes of transformation into the state of Israel. Rescued from a British Army ambush at beachside by Palmach Jewish guerillas, the refugees are remade into soldiers expected to offer their lives to defend a nation that does not yet exist in a land they have never known.

DVD 3544

Kippur

Film takes place in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War in which Egypt and Syria launched attacks in Sinai and the Golan Heights. We are led on a day that begins with quiet city streets, but ends with death, destruction and devastation of both body and mind.

DVD 3531

Naissance d'un Golem Birth of a Golem /

This totally original dreamlike film "notebook" features Annie Lennox of The Eurythmics in an imaginative exploration of the Golem myth. The myth of the statue made of clay that comes to life becomes a platform for a parable about the art of filmmaking and the creative process.

DVD 2323

Plus tard One day you'll understand /

As the 1987 trial of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie unfolds on television, Victor Bastien reviews old family documents and finds a distressing "Aryan declaration" authored by his late father. This new discovery throws Victor's conception of his family's history into darkness. His mother, Rivka, keeps a stubborn silence about the past, while Tania, his sister, defends their father's declaration. At the same time, Victor's wife and children grow concerned about his increasing distraction. Burning with the need to unearth the truth, Victor takes his family to the tiny village where Rivka's parents were forced to hide during the war.

DVD 6745

September 11

Eleven filmmakers from eleven countries reflect on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in short films each lasting 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame. Samīrā Makhmalbāf presents a female teacher, at an Afghani refugee camp in Iran, organizing the children for a minute's silence; meanwhile the adults express fears of an American bombardment. Claude Lelouch presents the tale of a World Trade Center tour guide who is on the verge of a breakup with his deaf girlfriend when the terrorist attacks occur. Yūsuf Shāhīn presents a young American soldier who comes to haunt a famous film producer and they engage in a highly conflicted dialogue. Danis Tanovič presents the women of Srebrenica (a town where thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred Serbs on July 11, 1995) continuing their monthly protests, despite the September 11th terrorist attacks. Idrissa Ouedraogo presents a young boy in Burkina Faso on the trail of a man he believes to be Osama Bin Laden. Ken Loach's presents a Chilean refugee who offers his condolences to the American victims; he then, in an open letter, describes the CIA-sponsored coup d'ťat of September 11, 1973, which installed the dictatorship of General Pinochet. Alejandro Gonzl̀ez Iñàrritu presents flashes of images of bodies falling from the World Trade Center, accompanied by chanting. Amos Gitaï presents a preening television news journalist enraged that her report about a Palestinian bombing in Tel Aviv will not be broadcast because of late breaking news about the attacks. Mira Nair presents a New York Muslim suspected of being a terrorist, but who is actually a heroic rescue worker. Sean Penn presents a lonley widower who lives in an apartment that is shaded by the World Trade Center. Shōhei Imamura presents a Japanese soldier who returns home from fighting in World War II. He is convinced that he is a snake, and he refuses to eat anything other than live rats.

DVD 8659

Wadi 1981-1991

Wadi 1981-1991 and Wadi Grand Canyon depict a group of Palestinians and Israelis who nurture a fragile coexistence over a span of twenty years in Wadi Rushmia. Gitai first filmed the intimate story of Yussuf and Isha (an Arab family), Iso and Salo (a Jewish family), and Miriam and Skandern (a mixed couple) in 1981. The film was released as "Wadi." He returned ten years later to shoot Wadi 1981-1991, about how the lives of the couples had changed and then again in 2001, when the site had been entirely changed by developers.

DVD 4301