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Jewish Economic History (Jewish Studies)

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  1.  
  2. Introduction
  3. The canon of Israeli/Jewish/Hebrew cinema studies proposes a unitary conception in regard to the major periods, genres, and trends that have characterized this corpus since its inception (1910 for nonfiction and 1932 for fiction films). The ongoing endeavor of both Israeli fiction and nonfiction cinemas is to constitute national identity cinematically and document Israel as a community of memory and as a national/regional cinema of conflict. The Israeli corpus is defined in research according to how it addresses issues of identity (trans)formation and negotiation of the I- (ethnic) other in a condition of incessant conflictual (and traumatic) relations: Zionist Realism films (1930s–1960s) were dedicated to the establishment of three myths—Aliya (immigration to Israel), Mizoug Galuyot (integration), and the Sabra (New Jew)—all of which oppose the Jewish Diaspora and embrace Zionism. The heroic-nationalist genre (1930s–1950s) represents the Sabra as an ideal warrior figure. During the mid-1960s, two new types of films emerged—modernist and popular. The former (also known as personal cinema, the Israeli New Wave, or the New Sensibility) was low budget and focused on urban Tel Aviv. Using experimental techniques, it staged an aesthetic opposition to the scarifying ideal elevated by the heroic-nationalist ethos. Criticism of Zionism and the Sabra and a desire to disconnect filmmaking from hegemonic politics stand at its core. At the same time, popular cinema formulated as ethnic comedy (the Bourekas genre) depicted the inter-ethnic conflict between Ashkenazi Jews (of European origin) and Mizrahi/Sephardi Jews (of Middle Eastern or North African origin) ambiguously solved through mixed marriage, ostensibly reaffirming the integration myth. Dealing, albeit through escapism, with the repression of the Mizrahi/Sephardi Jew, the Bourekas films subverted the Zionist-national heroic films. The golden years of the genre ended with the 1977 rise to power of the right-wing Likud, a Mizrahi/Sephardi-oriented party. Cinema made during the 1970s, after the Yom Kippur War (1973), including the beginnings of women’s cinema, further subverted previous masculine and feminine hegemonic concepts. Critical cinema of the 1980s paved the way to representation of the Palestinian as a positive protagonist (the Palestinian Wave), simultaneous with the total breaking of all previous Israeli masculine myths. Thus, it is not by chance that the major scholarly works on Israeli cinema began to appear during these years. The First Intifada (Palestinian uprising) (1987), and especially the Second Intifada (2002), marked both a continuing debate over the issues of victimhood and perpetration and the enthusiastic international and local reception of the New Israeli cinema.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
  6. The first major studies of Israeli cinema were published in the late 1980s (after the First Lebanon War, which marked a major crisis in national ideals) and during the 1990s. Both Gross and Gross 1991 and Kronish 1996 offer un-theorized historical surveys and are accessible to readers at all levels. The other studies referenced are more suitable for advanced undergraduates and offer the same paradigmatic overview of the corpus, despite their differing ideological stances. The postcolonial critique of Israeli cinema as complicit with the Zionist enterprise by Shohat 1990 and Shohat 2010 raised heated debate that still continues into the early 21st century, but was also material in setting the boundaries of future scholarship. Bursztyn 1990, Gertz 1993, and Ben-Shaul 1997 discuss different aspects of this debate: the face, literature adaptations, and the siege, respectively.
  7.  
  8. Ben-Shaul, Nitzan. Mythical Expressions of Siege in Israeli Films. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1997.
  9.  
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  11.  
  12. A cognitive and psychological-based comprehensive analysis of Israeli films and society, this study looks particularly at expressions of siege mentality in Israeli films from 1948 to 1997. It focuses on how the cinema addresses the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, inter-ethnic tensions, Zionist-socialism, Zionist-statism, post–Six Day War euphoria, dramatic turnover of political power to the Right in the 1977 election, and the Israeli Left.
  13.  
  14. Find this resource:
  15.  
  16. Bursztyn, Igal. פנים כשדה קרב. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1990.
  17.  
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  19.  
  20. A pioneering study reflecting on the image of the human face throughout the history of Israeli cinema as a mirror image of changes in Israeli society and culture. In Hebrew. Translated as “Face as battlefield.”
  21.  
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  23.  
  24. Gertz, Nurith. סיפור מהסרטים. Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, 1993.
  25.  
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  27.  
  28. Proposes three models through which Gertz delineates the history of Israeli cinema and its cultural context: national cinema, personal cinema, and the cinema of the Other during the 1980s. Presents five case studies of paradigmatic adaptations from literature to film that embody these models. In Hebrew. Translated as “Motion fiction: Israeli fiction in film.”
  29.  
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  31.  
  32. Gross, Yaakov, and Nathan Gross. הסרט העברי, פרקים בתולדות הראינוע והקולנוע בישראל. Jerusalem: Gross & Gross, 1991.
  33.  
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  35.  
  36. A pioneering survey of periods and topics of pre-State and Israeli cinema, based partially on the recollections of filmmaker Nathan Gross. Rich historical documents are intertwined with personal comments, particularly in regard to the early decades of Hebrew/Israeli propagandist films, termed “Zionist realism” for the first time. In Hebrew. Translated as “The Hebrew Film: The History of Cinema in Israel.”
  37.  
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  39.  
  40. Kronish, Amy. World Cinema: Israel. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996.
  41.  
  42. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  43.  
  44. Survey of filmmaking in Israel that covers films and filmmakers from the early pioneering newsreels and documentaries through the establishment of the State of Israel. Includes topics such as the heroic period, the post–Six Day War period, women, and the New Wave. It includes a filmography up to the 1990s.
  45.  
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  47.  
  48. Shohat, Ella. “Master Narrative/Counter Readings: The Politics of Israeli Cinema.” In Resisting Images: Essays on Cinema and History. Edited by Robert Sklar and Charles Musser, 251–278. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
  49.  
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  51.  
  52. Provides a brief overview of Israeli cinema up to the 1980s. In line with her paradigmatic early work on Israeli cinema, Shohat contends that reading this corpus allegorically is an inevitable act. She reflects on its importance to the understanding of the subversive stance in this corpus toward the Zionist master narrative.
  53.  
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  55.  
  56. Shohat, Ella. Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. Rev. ed. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010.
  57.  
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  59.  
  60. This revised edition of Shohat’s work (published only in Hebrew in 1991), includes a new postscript that reflects on the book’s polemical reception and points to new trends in the cinematic representation of Israel and Palestine. Shohat offers a postcolonial deconstructionist reading of cinematic Zionism, space, and prominent figures.
  61.  
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  63.  
  64. Reference Works
  65. Online databases, such as the Internet Movie Database, are the most useful tool for finding updated, easily searchable technical information on films and filmmakers. Reference works on Israeli cinema by Gross and Gross 1991, Schnitzer 1994, and Kronish and Safirman 2003 expand in a somewhat arbitrary fashion on the Internet Movie Database. Gross and Gross 1991 and Schnitzer 1994 appear in Hebrew and include information relating to the cultural context, major themes, etc., in addition to purely technical information.
  66.  
  67. Gross, Yaakov, and Nathan Gross. הסרט העברי, פרקים בתולדות הראינוע והקולנוע בישראל (The Hebrew Film: The History of Cinema in Israel). Jerusalem: Gross & Gross, 1991.
  68.  
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  70.  
  71. In addition to a historical overview (see also Gross and Gross 1991, cited under General Overviews), this privately published book includes sections devoted to specific directors, producers, camera operators, production companies, and a filmography of Israeli cinema. In Hebrew.
  72.  
  73. Find this resource:
  74.  
  75. Internet Movie Database.
  76.  
  77. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  78.  
  79. IMDb, the international movie database, includes a wide range of Israeli fiction films and, to a lesser degree, nonfiction films. Hebrew or Arabic titles often appear both transliterated and translated.
  80.  
  81. Find this resource:
  82.  
  83. Kronish, Amy, and Costel Safirman. Israeli Film: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT, and London: Praeger, 2003.
  84.  
  85. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  86.  
  87. A reference guide that provides a survey of major Israeli films (technical information, synopses, etc.), as well as biographies of major Israeli filmmakers; a summary of major trends in Israeli film; and indexes of film titles, subjects, and a list of international awards won by Israeli feature films by year.
  88.  
  89. Find this resource:
  90.  
  91. Schnitzer, Meir. Israeli Cinema: Facts/Plots/Directors/Opinions. Jerusalem: Kinneret, 1994.
  92.  
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  94.  
  95. Encyclopedia with entries on 407 feature films produced since 1932, theater-released documentaries, and 190 filmmakers. The entries, usually one page long, are sorted by decades and include production details, plot summary, still photographs, and a review by the author. Also available in Hebrew.
  96.  
  97. Find this resource:
  98.  
  99. Anthologies
  100. The list of anthologies on Israeli cinema is still too short compared to the volume of studies of other national cinemas. Gertz, et al. 1998 and Talmon and Peleg 2011 offer rich collections of essays that address major topics typical to the field that read films in terms of their relation to politics, social conflicts, and ideology, mainly through the prism of Zionism/post-Zionism. Topics such as the representation of Others to the hegemonic Zionist ethos—Palestinians; Mizrahim/Sephardim; women; members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered (GLBT) community; Orthodox Jews; and immigrants—stand at the core of the discussion. Yosef and Hagin 2013 focuses on the issues of trauma, post-trauma, and memory that are part and parcel of this corpus.
  101.  
  102. Gertz, Nurith, Orly Lubin, and Judd Ne’eman, eds. מבטים פיקטיביים – על קולנוע ישראלי (Mabaṭim fiḳṭiviyim: ʻal ḳolnoʻa Yiśreʼeli). Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, 1998.
  103.  
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  105.  
  106. This anthology, one of the first to emerge, is a collection of articles about Israeli cinema from the 1930s to the 1990s. Deals with issues such as the war widow; the New Sensibility; the Holocaust complex of Israeli cinema; women, nationalism, and ethnicity; and religious emotion in Israeli cinema. In Hebrew. Translated as “Fictive looks—On Israeli Cinema.”
  107.  
  108. Find this resource:
  109.  
  110. Talmon, Miri, and Yaron Peleg, eds. Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.
  111.  
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  113.  
  114. This collection represents current research of Israeli cinema from early Zionist cinema of the 1930s to the first decade of the 2000s. It is divided into thematic sections: the nation imagined on film, war and its aftermath, an ethno-cultural kaleidoscope, Holocaust and trauma, Jewish Orthodoxy revisited, filming the Palestinian Other, and new discourses.
  115.  
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  117.  
  118. Yosef, Raz, and Boaz Hagin, eds. Deeper than Oblivion: Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
  119.  
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  121.  
  122. This collection focuses on trauma and memory as two intertwined major perspectives that offer insights into Israeli society. Examining both fiction and nonfiction films from the 1940s to the 2000s, the contributors confront the difficulties of representing trauma and address the vital issues and disputes in the field today.
  123.  
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  125.  
  126. Journals and Special Issues
  127. Except for Takriv (Close-up), an online magazine (in Hebrew) on Israeli documentary cinema, no academic journal is exclusively devoted to Israeli cinema. Nevertheless, an increasing number of articles are being published in various journals dealing with film and media studies, Israeli studies, Palestinian studies, Middle East studies, Jewish studies, etc. Since 1999, quite a number of journals have devoted special issues or sections to Israeli fiction and nonfiction cinema. Mikan: Journal for Hebrew and Israeli Literature and Culture Studies (see Yosef 2013) and Studies in Documentary Film (see Morag 2012) deal with questions of cinema, trauma, the Occupation, and ethics in the age of the Intifada. Israel: Studies in Zionism and the State of Israel—History, Society, Culture (see Yosef 2008) and Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies (see Gertz, et al. 2005) present an overview of the major themes related to the post–Second Intifada period, with special emphasis on questions of memory and history. Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History (see Rosenberg and Whitefield 2002), Theory and Criticism (see Shenhav 2001), and Israel Studies (Lubin 1999) devote articles to contemporary Israeli (and Palestinian) films. See also works cited under Major Themes: Holocaust Cinema—First, Second, and Third Generation, which includes Third Text’s special issue on Israeli cinema (see Loshitzky 2006) and those cited under Major Themes: Judaism, Religion, and Secularism, such as the relatively new journal Jewish Film & New Media (see Peleg 2013).
  128.  
  129. Gertz, Nurith, Anat Zanger, Nitzan Ben Shaul, and Judd Ne’eman, guest eds. Special Issue: Israeli Cinema. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 24 (2005).
  130.  
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  132.  
  133. The essays here offer a reading of Israeli cinema in its relationship with Israeli history: films that deal with guilt, the manifest and the suppressed, Holocaust memory, and the Palestinians. The essays analyze the feeling of dead end and despair that these films darkly depict.
  134.  
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  136.  
  137. Lubin, Orli, ed. Special Section: Films in Israeli Society. Israel Studies 4 (Spring 1999).
  138.  
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  140.  
  141. This multidisciplinary journal on Israeli history, politics, society, and culture includes articles on Israeli cinema from time to time. This special section from 1999 includes four articles on the New Sensibility movement, the book and film Exodus, Lebanon War films, and women in Israeli cinema.
  142.  
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  144.  
  145. Morag, Raya, guest ed. Special Issue: Israeli Documentary Cinema. Studies in Documentary Film 6 (April 2012).
  146.  
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  148.  
  149. This issue discusses how Israel’s moving-image Intifada documentary culture is currently configured. Fostering contribution to contextual differentiation between accepting the co-presence of cultural contradictions and the acute necessity to deconstruct major subject positions, the essays deal with sexual violence, ethnicity and colonial encounters, history/myth dialectics, and Holocaust third-generation postmemory.
  150.  
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  152.  
  153. Rosenberg, Joel, and Stephen J. Whitefield, eds. Special Issue: The Cinema of Jewish Experience. Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History 22.1–2 (2002).
  154.  
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  156.  
  157. Prooftexts provides a forum for the field of Jewish literary studies and in 2002 devoted a thematic issue to Israeli cinema, including articles on Israeli political films and Ram Loevy’s 1978 television film Khirbet Khizeh, space and gender in the New Israeli and Palestinian cinema, Yiddish in Israeli cinema, and the legacy of Arbeit Macht Frei.
  158.  
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  160.  
  161. Shenhav, Yehouda, ed. “תיאוריה וביקורת גיליון מיוחד: קולנוע". 18 (2001).
  162.  
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  164.  
  165. Theory and Criticism is a journal for the critical study of society and culture in Israel. The 2001 issue was devoted to Israeli and Palestinian cinema, including articles on such topics as masculine and feminine space in George Khleifi’s cinema and liminality in Israeli and Palestinian cinema. In Hebrew.
  166.  
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  168.  
  169. Takriv (Close-up).
  170.  
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  172.  
  173. An online magazine for discussion and critique of Israeli documentary cinema, and the only journal exclusively devoted to Israeli cinema. Published by the Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum and edited by two filmmakers (Anat Even and Ran Tal), Takriv offers a place for academic articles along with personal essays and poetic, philosophical, and political notes. As of March 2016, Takriv has published 11 issues devoted to subjects such as political cinema, the hero, sound, and the essay film. Also in Hebrew.
  174.  
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  176.  
  177. Yosef, Raz, guest ed. Special Issue: History and Memory in Israeli Cinema. Israel: Studies in Zionism and the State of Israel—History, Society, Culture 14 (2008).
  178.  
  179. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  180.  
  181. The special issue explores history and memory in Israeli cinema, including essays on trauma and remembrance in contemporary Israeli cinema; sound, terror, and memory; Mizrahi/Sephardi memory and inter-ethnic tensions; cinema and photography; and otherness and ethics in the films of Judd Ne’eman.
  182.  
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  184.  
  185. Yosef, Raz, guest ed. אתיקה ואחריות בקולנוע הישראלי). Mikan: Journal for Hebrew and Israeli Literature and Culture Studies 13 (October 2013).
  186.  
  187. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  188.  
  189. This special issue deals with questions of trauma and ethics and includes essays on abjection and otherness in Intifada documentary cinema, the ethics of the face in Avi Mograbi’s films, the ethics of death in the film Avanti Popolo, and guilt and accountability in the film Waltz with Bashir. In Hebrew. Translated as “Ethics and Responsibility in Israeli Cinema.”
  190.  
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  192.  
  193. Periods and Genres
  194. Research on Israeli cinema delineates the following periods and genres: early Zionist and pre-State cinema (the Zionist Realism films) until the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the heroic-nationalist genre (1950s–1960s), ethnic comedy/Bourekas genre (1960s–1970s), modernist cinema (1960s–1970s), critical-political cinema (1980s), First and Second Intifada cinema (1988–1993; 2000–2005), and New Israeli cinema (2000s). Especially during the Intifada age, the study of Israeli nonfiction film developed into a significant field of research heavily influenced by both post-Zionist thought and docu-activism.
  195.  
  196. Early Zionist and Pre-State Cinema
  197. Studies by Tryster 1995, Halachmi 2009, and Zimmerman 2001 concentrate on historical descriptions of early cinema while providing rich archival material. Shohat 2010 states the principal theoretical methodology that eventually became paradigmatic (albeit) polemical in relation to Zionism. Both Fedelstein 2011 and Horak 2011 focus on specific early cinema works, tracing its development in Palestine and emphasize a critical reading of Zionist propaganda films. Prestel 1998 and Gertz 2005 critically engage with two different Others—Holocaust survivors and women, respectively.
  198.  
  199. Fedelstein, Ariel L. “Filming the Homeland: Cinema in Eretz Israel and the Zionist Movement, 1917–1939.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion. Edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, 3–15. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.
  200.  
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  202.  
  203. Questions the all-embracing conception that interprets early Zionist cinema (1917–1939) as propagandist cinema, devoid of artistic value. Describes the diversity and differences that characterize various films of this period, claiming the filmmakers combine the Jewish national idea and their aspirations to express it artistically.
  204.  
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  206.  
  207. Gertz, Nurith. “The Early Israeli Cinema as Silencer of Memory.” In Special Issue: Israeli Cinema. Edited by Nurith Gertz, Anat Zanger, Nitzan Ben-Shaul, and Judd Ne’eman. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 24 (2005): 67–80.
  208.  
  209. DOI: 10.1353/sho.2005.0189Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  210.  
  211. Contends that Israeli documentary films of the 1940s and 1950s dealing with the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors reveal a personal repressed Holocaust narrative in an era when such a narrative was muted by the collective narrative of Holocaust and heroism. The survivors’ narrative sabotages the national narrative from within.
  212.  
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  214.  
  215. Halachmi, Joseph. רוח רעננה: פרשת הסרט הציוני הראשון בארץ-ישראל, 1902-1899. Jerusalem: Carmel, 2009.
  216.  
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  218.  
  219. A detailed description of Avraham Noyfeld’s failed proposition to Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl to produce a Zionist propagandist film in order to raise money for the Jewish Colonial Trust. Based on hundreds of letters and historical documents, Halachmi describes the stages that led to the final cancellation of the “Noyfeld Project” in 1902. In Hebrew. Translated as “Fresh Wind: The First Zionist Film in Palestine, 1899–1902.”
  220.  
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  222.  
  223. Horak, Jan-Christopher. “Helmer Lerski in Israel.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion. Edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, 16–29. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.
  224.  
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  226.  
  227. An analysis of Lerski, the most important filmmaker and photographer during the pre-State period, his modernist aesthetics, use of close-ups on his subjects, and lighting and dramatic contrasts. The chapter follows him from his early career in Germany to Zionist films such as Avodah (1933–1935) and Tomorrow Is a Wonderful Day (1947).
  228.  
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  230.  
  231. Prestel, Claudia T. “Arabs and Women: Constructing Zionist Images of the ‘Other’ in Pre-State Israeli Films.” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 1 (Winter 1998): 95–105.
  232.  
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  234.  
  235. A gendered reading of Arab and Israeli pre-State societies as depicted in early films such as Sabra (1933), this article paves the way for further inquiry into a feminist and postcolonialist reading of this cinematic period.
  236.  
  237. Find this resource:
  238.  
  239. Shohat, Ella. “Beginnings in the Yishuv: Promised Land and Civilizing Mission.” Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. Rev. ed. By Ella Shohat, 13–52. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010.
  240.  
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  242.  
  243. Originally published in 1989 (only in Hebrew). In this chapter, Shohat reads Zionist propaganda films such as Sabra (1933) through postcolonial theory, arguing that the Ashkenazi pioneers followed the footsteps of European colonialism in its encounter with the “uncivilized” Third World. She suggests to “unthink Eurocentrism” with its semi-liberalism and humanitarian inspirations.
  244.  
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  246.  
  247. Tryster, Hillel. Israel before Israel: Silent Cinema in the Holy Land. Jerusalem: Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive, 1995.
  248.  
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  250.  
  251. The history of silent cinema in Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine, outlining the histories and the major personalities involved in the productions. Describes the challenges facing Israeli industry as it developed during its initial stages.
  252.  
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  254.  
  255. Zimmerman, Moshe. סימני קולנוע תולדות הקולנוע הישראלי בין השנים 1896-1948 (Simane ḳolnoʻa : toldot ha-ḳolnoʻa ha-Yiśreʼeli ben ha-shanim 1896-1948). Tel Aviv: Diyonon, 2001.
  256.  
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  258.  
  259. Describes the ways in which Zionist cinema in Palestine from 1896 to 1948 (the foundation of the State of Israel) constructed and affirmed the Zionist myths. Provides detailed information about major films and prominent directors. In Hebrew. Translate as “Signs of Movies: History of Israeli Cinema in the Years 1896–1948.”
  260.  
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  262.  
  263. The Heroic-Nationalist Genre
  264. Narrating the nation through this genre, which only retrospectively was labeled “heroic-nationalist”—Baruch Diener’s They Were Ten (1961) being the prototype—led to two influential critical responses: total negation by Shohat 2010 and ambivalence by Ben-Shaul 1997, Gertz 1995, and Ne’eman 1999, who dedicated their works to an interrogation of what they perceive as the self-contradictory meanings and indeterminacies embodied in this genre, focusing on prominent films as their test cases.
  265.  
  266. Ben-Shaul, Nitzan. “1948–1967: Between Siege and Peaceful Coexistence.” In Mythical Expressions of Siege in Israeli Films. By Nitzan Ben-Shaul, 10–21. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1997.
  267.  
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  269.  
  270. Chapter 2 covers the period between the foundation of the State of Israel and the post–Six Day War euphoria, pointing to the contradictory representations of war from Thorold Dickinson’s Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer (1955) to Gilberto Tofano’s Siege (1969).
  271.  
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  273.  
  274. Gertz, Nurith. “The Book and the Film: A Case Study of He Walked through the Fields.” Modern Hebrew Literature 15 (Fall–Winter 1995): 22–27.
  275.  
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  277.  
  278. Discussion of the erosion of connection with the collective embodied in both Moshe Shamir’s book He Walked through the Fields and its film adaptation. The article highlights the dynamism and differences embedded in this genre in comparison to the American genres of westerns and war films.
  279.  
  280. Find this resource:
  281.  
  282. Ne’eman, Judd. “שדות הבידיון הדומיננטי”. Jewish Studies Journal of the World Union of Jewish Studies 39 (1999): 77–89.
  283.  
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  285.  
  286. Using Jacques Rancièr’s concept of the “dominant fiction,” Ne’eman examines the film He Walked in the Fields in order to reflect on how it relates to two different ideological approaches prevalent in Jewish Palestine in the post–World War II years. It shows how combatants in training and on the battlefield converted the social ethos from communalism to statism. In Hebrew. Translated as “The fields of dominant fiction.”
  287.  
  288. Find this resource:
  289.  
  290. Shohat, Ella. “Post-1948: The Heroic-Nationalist Genre.” In Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. Rev. ed. Edited by Ella Shohat, 53–104. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010.
  291.  
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  293.  
  294. This paradigmatic chapter in Shohat’s book (originally published in 1989 only in Hebrew), analyzes post-1948 Israeli cinema, which reflects the final unification of points of view with the heroic-nationalist mold. Shohat claims that the genre promotes negative and paternalist attitudes toward Arabs, with a number of films within this genre, such as Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer and Pillar of Fire, featuring virtually no Arabs.
  295.  
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  297.  
  298. Ethnic Comedy (Bourekas Films)
  299. Ne’eman 1979, followed by Shohat 2010, was the first to object to condemnation of the “vulgar” Bourekas genre in the name of “quality cinema” and to point to the genre conventions—most notably the melodramatic unification of the romantic couple at the end—as ideological strategies in the service of racist Mizrahi/Sephardi representations. Ben-Shaul 2005 focuses on economic circumstances as the cause for the genre’s commercial popularity. Naaman 2001 and Yosef 2004 follow the deconstructive postcolonial methodology embraced by Shohat, while pointing to alternative readings based on such strategies as passing and the grotesque.
  300.  
  301. Ben-Shaul, Nitzan. “The Euphoric Decade: Vulgar Poetics and Dishonesty in Post-1967 Israeli Films.” Modern Jewish Studies 4 (July 2005): 233–243.
  302.  
  303. DOI: 10.1080/14725880500133392Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  304.  
  305. Analyzes expressions of a euphoric mentality after the Six Day War victory. Claims that ethnic comedy, war films, and personal cinema owe their success to “vulgar poetics,” i.e., lack of inhibition, dishonesty in their excessive portrayal of action in war, sexual license and ethnic stereotypes, and quasi-capitalist freedom. See also Ben-Shaul 1997 (cited under General Overviews).
  306.  
  307. Find this resource:
  308.  
  309. Naaman, Dorit. “Orientalism as Alterity in Israeli Cinema.” Cinema Journal 40 (2001): 36–54.
  310.  
  311. DOI: 10.1353/cj.2001.0014Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  312.  
  313. Deals with the representation of Mizrahi Jews and Palestinians in Israeli cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, specifically the phenomenon of “passing,” whereby ethnicity and race are interchangeable in casting and plot. Such passing can empower Middle Eastern Jews to deconstruct ethnic stereotypes, while excluding Palestinians from participating in public discourse.
  314.  
  315. Find this resource:
  316.  
  317. Ne’eman, Judd. “דרגה אפס בקולנוע”. Kolnoa 5 (1979): 20–23.
  318.  
  319. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  320.  
  321. Pioneering article that establishes the academic discussion of both personal cinema and the Bourekas genre. Ne’eman critically claims that these entice Mizrahi/Sephardi viewers into the make-believe of inter-ethnic marriages as a path to social mobility. In Hebrew. Translate as “Cinema degree zero.”
  322.  
  323. Find this resource:
  324.  
  325. Shohat, Ella. “The Representation of Sephardim/Mizrahim.” In Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. Rev. ed. By Ella Shohat, 105–161. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010.
  326.  
  327. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  328.  
  329. In chapter 3 of this book (originally published in 1989 only in Hebrew), Shohat criticizes the genre’s Orientalist vision, typical to Israeli society at the time. Reading four major Bourekas films, she claims that they were widely viewed as popular comic entertainment about ethnic tension, but in fact shamelessly endorsed ethnic stereotypes and negation of the Mizrahi/Sephardi.
  330.  
  331. Find this resource:
  332.  
  333. Yosef, Raz. “The Invention of Mizrahi Masculinity.” In Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema. By Raz Yosef, 84–117. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.
  334.  
  335. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  336.  
  337. Focusing mainly on the Bourekas comedies of Ze’ev Revach, in chapter 7, Yosef analyzes their subversive strategies in regard to the construction of Mizrahi/Sephardi masculinity, staging their opposition to the Orientalist/racial tendency of mainstream Israeli cinema.
  338.  
  339. Find this resource:
  340.  
  341. Modernist Cinema
  342. Also known as “personal cinema,” the Israeli New Wave, and the New Sensibility. Research refers to this trend through two contrasting interpretations: Gertz 1993 and Shohat 2010 regard it as part of the Eurocentric tradition. In contrast, Ne’eman 1998, Ne’eman 1999, and Zanger 2003 suggest that the films criticize Zionist ideology. Schweitzer 1997 offers a book-length overview of this trend, its contexts, and its reception.
  343.  
  344. Gertz, Nurith. “הקולנוע האישי”. In סיפור מהסרטים (Motion Fiction: Israeli Fiction in Film). By Nurith Gertz, 37–47. Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, 1993.
  345.  
  346. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  347.  
  348. Discusses personal cinema through two adaptations from Israeli literature (see also pp. 97–171 for analyses of the films Three Days and a Child and My Michael). Gertz claims that Israeli personal cinema indistinctively imitates the European modernism. In Hebrew. Translated as “Personal Cinema.”
  349.  
  350. Find this resource:
  351.  
  352. Ne’eman, Judd. “המודרנים: מגילת היוחסין של הרגישות החדשה”. In מבטים פיקטיביים – על קולנוע ישראלי (Mabaṭim fiḳṭiviyim: ʻal ḳolnoʻa Yiśreʼeli). Edited by Nurith Gertz, Orly Lubin, and Judd Ne’eman, 9–32. Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, 1998.
  353.  
  354. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  355.  
  356. In Hebrew. See Ne’eman 1999 (the English version of this chapter “The moderns: The genealogy of the new sensibility”).
  357.  
  358. Find this resource:
  359.  
  360. Ne’eman, Judd. “The Death Mask of the Moderns: A Genealogy of New Sensibility Cinema in Israel.” Israel Studies 4 (Spring 1999): 100–128.
  361.  
  362. DOI: 10.1353/is.1999.0027Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363.  
  364. Ne’eman uses the expression “death mask” to define a particular cinematic rhetoric of the “New Sensibility”/modernist cinema consisting of a minimalist story and an extinguished pathos. It reflects the pain and fear suffered by children in time of war (World War II and 1948), described by would-be filmmakers of the 1963 to 1977 modernist wave of Israeli cinema. The original Hebrew version of the article appeared in 1998 as “The Moderns: The Genealogy of the New Sensibility” (Ne’eman 1998).
  365.  
  366. Find this resource:
  367.  
  368. Schweitzer, Ariel. Le cinéma israélien de la modernité. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997.
  369.  
  370. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371.  
  372. Focuses on detailed descriptions of the films in this genre and the social, economic, and cultural context of the New Sensibility, while referring to the influence of the French New Wave. Similar to Ne’eman 1999 and Shohat 2010, it relates to its inner connections to the Bourekas and other genres. In French.
  373.  
  374. Find this resource:
  375.  
  376. Shohat, Ella. “Personal Cinema and the Politics of Allegory.” In Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. Rev ed. By Ella Shohat, 163–213. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010.
  377.  
  378. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379.  
  380. Chapter 4 discusses the contexts, style, themes, and ideology of personal cinema. Originally published in 1989 in Hebrew, Shohat emphasizes the projection of allegories of solitude and displacement. Although these films tend to focus on Ashkenazi Israel, Mizrahi/Sephardi figures are portrayed. Nevertheless, the rootlessness of the Sabra still constitutes the basically Zionist orientation.
  381.  
  382. Find this resource:
  383.  
  384. Zanger, Anat. “Hole in the Moon or Zionism and the Binding (Ha-Ak’eda) Myth in Israeli Cinema. In Special Issue: Jewish Film. Edited by Lawrence Baron. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 22 (2003): 95–109.
  385.  
  386. DOI: 10.1353/sho.2003.0111Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387.  
  388. Two films by Zohar, Hole in the Moon and Three Days and a Child, are discussed and compared with Millo’s He Walked through the Fields and Bouzaglo’s Cherry Season. Israeli “personal cinema” of the 1960s is not only influenced by the central code but also prefigured its future course. See also Zanger’s work on the binding myth (Zanger 2011, cited under Major Themes: Judaism, Religion, and Secularism).
  389.  
  390. Find this resource:
  391.  
  392. Critical-Political Cinema of the 1980s
  393. Shohat 2010 defines the boundaries of the debate in regard to political cinema dominant in Israel from the late 1970s to the early 1990s (before the eruption of the First Intifada). Like Gertz 1999 and Gertz 2000, Shohat focuses on the partial criticism of Zionism typical to this trend, whereas Ne’eman 1995 claims the opposite, arguing that the films carry substantial criticism of Zionist views. In Ne’eman 2002 and Ne’eman 2005, Ne’eman further develops this claim in regard to submodels (conflict cinema, etc.) and demonstrates it through analysis of various films. Meiri 2011 expands the debate on the substance of this political trend by a close reading of the cinematic device of impersonation in the two films, arguing that they clearly expose the failure to acknowledge the Palestinian Other. For further discussion of this trend, see also works cited under Major Themes: Israeli-Arab/Palestinian Conflict, Major Themes: Men, Women, and War, and Major Themes: Holocaust Cinema—First, Second, and Third Generation.
  394.  
  395. Gertz, Nurith. “The Medium That Mistook Itself for War: Cherry Season in Comparison with Ricochets and Cup Final.” Israel Studies 4 (1999): 153–174.
  396.  
  397. DOI: 10.1353/is.1999.0023Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  398.  
  399. A comparison of three films about the First Lebanon War reveals different ideological and cinematic lines. However, in all of these films, Israeli reality, history, and identity dissolve and are replaced with aesthetic reflections, make-believe, stereotypes of warriors and war (as in Cherry Season), or stereotypes of urban lives (as in the other films).
  400.  
  401. Find this resource:
  402.  
  403. Gertz, Nurith. “A Different Perception of Space: Israeli Literature and Cinema in the 1980s.” In Myths in Israeli Culture: Captives of a Dream. By Nurith Gertz, 109–120. London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000.
  404.  
  405. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  406.  
  407. Gertz argues in this and the following chapter, “A Different Perception of Time: Israeli Literature and Cinema, 1960–1990” (pp. 121–134), that the 1980s political cinema attempted to dispute the Rightist-Jewish narrative by having Jews and Arabs switch places. However, it reached an impasse because the dichotomy was not broken, and the Arab voice was not heard.
  408.  
  409. Find this resource:
  410.  
  411. Meiri, Sandra. “The Foreigner Within and the Question of Identity in Fictitious Marriage and Streets of Yesterday.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion. Edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, 241–256. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.
  412.  
  413. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  414.  
  415. Analyzes Bouzaglo’s Fictitious Marriage (1988) and Ne’eman’s Streets of Yesterday (1989) through the notion of the “Other from Within.” The films compel us to reexamine the core aspects of the Hebraic Israeli identity in relation to the Palestinian Other by using the device of impersonation of a Palestinian by an Israeli character, played by a Jewish actor.
  416.  
  417. Find this resource:
  418.  
  419. Ne’eman, Judd. “The Empty Tomb in the Postmodern PI: Israeli Cinema in the 1980s and 1990s.” In Documenting Israel: Proceedings of a Conference held at Harvard University on May 10–12, 1993. Edited by Charles Berlin, 117–151. Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library, 1995.
  420.  
  421. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  422.  
  423. A survey and analysis of 1980s political cinema. The article delineates three distinct groups of films and describes their themes and style: “conflict films” dealing with Jews and Arabs, “shadow cinema” discussing the representation of the Holocaust, and “nihilist cinema” focusing on combat post-trauma.
  424.  
  425. Find this resource:
  426.  
  427. Ne’eman, Judd. “The Jar and the Blade: Fertility Myth and Medieval Romance in Israeli Political Films.” In Special Issue: The Cinema of Jewish Experience. Edited by Joel Rosenberg and Stephen J. Whitefield. Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History 22 (2002): 141–156.
  428.  
  429. DOI: 10.1353/ptx.2002.0005Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  430.  
  431. A demonstration of how the fertility myth cycle emanating from ancient mythology is sunk into the “conflict films” and how modern Jewish society impacts traditional Arab peasant society in transition to create an unexpected mythological context.
  432.  
  433. Find this resource:
  434.  
  435. Ne’eman, Judd. “The Tragic Sense of Zionism: Shadow Cinema and the Holocaust.” In Special Issue: Israeli Cinema. Edited by Nurith Gertz, Anat Zanger, Nitzan Ben-Shaul, and Judd Ne’eman. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 24 (2005): 22–36.
  436.  
  437. DOI: 10.1353/sho.2005.0197Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  438.  
  439. Points to guilt as characterizing several 1980s Holocaust-related films. Close reading of film sequences reveals how the guilt motif represented in the films derives from an unconscious anxiety about a specific analogy that emerges from a tragic juxtaposition of Zionism and Nazism.
  440.  
  441. Find this resource:
  442.  
  443. Shohat, Ella. “The Return of the Repressed: The Palestinian Wave in Recent Israeli Cinema.” In Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. Rev. ed. By Ella Shohat, 215–247. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010.
  444.  
  445. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  446.  
  447. Originally published in 1989 (only in Hebrew), this chapter analyzes the return of the Palestinian figure to the Israeli film during the 1980s. A comparison of this humanized figure with the Israeli Sabra, which has undergone a dehumanization process, stages a dialectic of presence and absence, hegemony and marginalization, between these semi-oppositional characters, marking the change as the result of the First Lebanon War.
  448.  
  449. Find this resource:
  450.  
  451. First and Second Intifada Cinema
  452. Naaman 2006 focuses on Israeli and Palestinian Second Intifada fiction films. Morag 2008 and Morag 2013 focus on the large corpus of films that depict either the reality of the First Intifada (victim-trauma films) or that of the Second Intifada (perpetrator-trauma films), grappling with a major identity crisis entailed in the transformation from victimhood to perpetration. Morag 2012 delineates six new subwaves/subgenres that emerge during the Intifada years. Zanger 2012a and Zanger 2012b expand the discussion of Jewish-Israeli identity by emphasizing territory and place as major factors. Similarly, Gertz 2012 (cited under Israeli Cinema of the 2000s) reflects on time as an option for alternative history, a replacement for the utopian time of nascent Zionism that promised to create a new society and provide justice and equality for all, but failed to keep those promises. For further discussion of this trend, see also works cited under Periods and Genres: Israeli Cinema of the 2000s and Periods and Genres: Nonfiction Film.
  453.  
  454. Morag, Raya. “The Living Body and the Corpse—Israeli Documentary Cinema and the Intifadah.” Journal of Film and Video 60 (Fall/Winter 2008): 3–24.
  455.  
  456. DOI: 10.1353/jfv.0.0016Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  457.  
  458. Discussing the shift in the politics of the body/corpse as an outcome of the “new” war allows us to compare ethical perspectives toward trauma resulting from suicide attacks in the Israeli documentary No. 17 Is Anonymous, in video recordings taken of suicide bombers, and in the Palestinian narrative film Paradise Now.
  459.  
  460. Find this resource:
  461.  
  462. Morag, Raya. “Radical Contextuality: Major Trends in Israeli Documentary Second Intifada Cinema.” Studies in Documentary Film 6 (April 2012): 253–272.
  463.  
  464. DOI: 10.1386/sdf.6.3.253_2Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  465.  
  466. This editorial delineates the Second Intifada’s major trends: victim-trauma films, occupation films, third-generation Holocaust films, (anti)religious films, perpetrator-trauma films, and “blood relations” films. Reflecting on the Israeli documentary as a new version of “docu-activism” in world cinema, it interprets the concomitant relationships between these competing, yet interrelated, trends.
  467.  
  468. Find this resource:
  469.  
  470. Morag, Raya. Waltzing with Bashir: Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013.
  471.  
  472. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  473.  
  474. Proposes a new paradigm—the trauma of the perpetrator—for cinema/trauma studies, to deal with national traumas. Focusing on a new wave of Israeli post–Second Intifada documentary cinema, the book theorizes this yet under-theorized field and analyzes perpetrator trauma in Israeli scholarly, representational, literary, and societal contexts.
  475.  
  476. Find this resource:
  477.  
  478. Naaman, Dorit. “Elusive Frontiers: Borders in Israeli and Palestinian Cinemas.” Third Text 20.3–4 (2006): 511–521.
  479.  
  480. DOI: 10.1080/09528820600901339Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  481.  
  482. Argues that Palestinian cinema represents borders, liminality, and geography in complex political terms, whereas Israeli fiction films produced primarily after the Oslo Accords and during the Second Intifada ignore the conflict and avoid addressing a clear notion of borders. Israeli cinema tends to mirror and reassert cultural and political concepts that stand in the way of any sustainable solution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
  483.  
  484. Find this resource:
  485.  
  486. Zanger, Anat. “Just Look at Yourselves: The Face and the Ethical Event in Israeli Cinema.” Studies in Documentary Film 6 (2012a): 291–306.
  487.  
  488. DOI: 10.1386/sdf.6.3.291_1Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  489.  
  490. Following Emmanuel Levinas’ theory on the face-to-face encounter, this article focuses on the way in which the “I” challenges the physical border demarcated by a checkpoint in order to reach the “Other’s” face. An analysis of Ben-Gurion, Borders, Checkpoint, and Avenge but One of My Two Eyes (2005) raises doubts concerning the Israeli viewers’ responsibility as observers and witnesses.
  491.  
  492. Find this resource:
  493.  
  494. Zanger, Anat. Place, Memory and Myth in Contemporary Israeli Cinema. London: Vallentine-Mitchell, 2012b.
  495.  
  496. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  497.  
  498. Examines several Israeli fictional and nonfictional films and shows how their portrayal of landscape and territory provides a unique perspective on Jewish and Israeli identity. It demonstrates how space and place are significant elements in the ongoing negotiations regarding Jewish and Israeli identity.
  499.  
  500. Find this resource:
  501.  
  502. Israeli Cinema of the 2000s
  503. The 2000s are characterized by the growing fame of the new Israeli cinema, both worldwide and locally, and by the increasing visibility of a new women’s cinema. Shohat 2010 reflects on current Israeli cinema through her critique of Eurocentrism, Orientalism, and colonial discourse two decades earlier. Gertz and Hermoni 2011 sees the connections between different phases of traumatic history as one of the characterizations of the new Israeli cinema, and Gertz 2012 further develops this frame of thought by raising the option of an alternative history written by these films. Zanger 2012b (cited under First and Second Intifada Cinema), Meiri 2013, and Morag 2013 (cited under First and Second Intifada Cinema) theorize the new Israeli cinema from diverse discourses, emphasizing the spatial, the psychoanalytic/Jewish, and the psychoanalytic/traumatic, respectively. Friedman 2012 is a pioneering work both in relation to women directors and its tackling of Israel’s identity crisis—not through masculinity, but through women survivors’ testimonies describing sexual violence against them. Utin 2008 includes interviews with a few women directors, thus expanding the discussion from their perspective. For further discussion of this trend, see also works cited under Periods and Genres: First and Second Intifada Cinema, Major Themes: Men, Women, and War, Major Themes: Trauma, Post-Trauma, and Memory and Major Themes: Nonfiction Film.
  504.  
  505. Friedman, Régine-Mihal. “Invisible Metamorphoses.” Studies in Documentary Film 6 (2012): 273–290.
  506.  
  507. DOI: 10.1386/sdf.6.3.273_1Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  508.  
  509. In the Israeli New Wave, some female directors attempt to find an appropriate cinematic language that is private, trans-historical, and transnational. Netalie Braun’s Metamorphosis (2006) and Michal Aviad’s Invisible (2011), discussed in this article, give pride of place to the victims’ narrated testimonies by relating to the founding myths of Western culture.
  510.  
  511. Find this resource:
  512.  
  513. Gertz, Nurith. “Recent Israeli Films: A New Option for a Different Israeli History.” In Reconstructing Jewish Identity in Pre- and Post-Holocaust Literature and Culture. Edited by Lucyna Aleksandrowicz-Pędich and Małgorzata Pakier, 167–182. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012.
  514.  
  515. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  516.  
  517. Several Israeli films reflect a search for an alternative history by connecting to American films and European art cinema. This article focuses on the way in which that blend of different aesthetics creates an ethical time that leads from the narrow time of the individual toward a broader, transcendental time, the time of the Other.
  518.  
  519. Find this resource:
  520.  
  521. Gertz, Nurith, and Gal Hermoni. “The Muddy Path between Lebanon and Khirbet Khizeh: Trauma, Ethics, and Redemption in Israeli Film and Literature.” In Just Images: Ethics and the Cinematic. Edited by Boaz Hagin, Sandra Meiri, Raz Yosef, and Anat Zanger, 35–58. Cambridge, UK: Scholars, 2011.
  522.  
  523. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  524.  
  525. Attempts to position three recent feature Israeli films about the First Lebanon War within the context of ethics and politics and to shed light on the language of post-trauma. Argues that these films use the war to represent previous, still hidden, traumatic events of previous wars.
  526.  
  527. Find this resource:
  528.  
  529. Meiri, Sandra. “From War to Creation and Redemption: On Udi Aloni’s Local Angel and Forgiveness.” In Trauma und Film: Inszenierungen eines Nicht-Repräsentierbaren. Edited by J. B. Köhne, 327–347. Berlin: Kadmos-Verlag, 2013.
  530.  
  531. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  532.  
  533. Examines Udi Aloni’s Local Angel (2002) and Forgiveness (2006), two films that generate a consciousness based on the acknowledgement that we are all survivors, involved in some way in the death of others. Aloni demands that life in Israel be based not on war but on an encounter with the Real of history; the remembrance of its victims through pain and mourning, achieved through a spiritual journey.
  534.  
  535. Find this resource:
  536.  
  537. Shohat, Ella. “Postscript.” In Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation. Rev. ed. By Ella Shohat, 249–325. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010.
  538.  
  539. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  540.  
  541. This new postscript details the major theoretical and cultural shifts in regard to the issues raised in the original 1989 publication of the first edition (in Hebrew): changes in politics of casting, multilingualism, representations of bodies– and spaces, and contemporary Palestinian and Mizrahi/Sephardi filmmaking.
  542.  
  543. Find this resource:
  544.  
  545. Utin, Pablo. קרחונים בארץ החמסינים: הקולנוע הישראלי החדש - שיחות עם במאים. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2008.
  546.  
  547. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  548.  
  549. Includes interviews by Utin with leading Israeli male and female directors who released films during this period: Joseph Cedar, David Volach, Eran Kolirin, Keren Yedaya, Mushon Salmona, Udi Aloni, Eytan Fox, Dror Shaul, Shira Geffen, Danny Lerner, Joseph Pitchhadze, Eran Riklis, and Shemi Zarhin. In Hebrew. Translated as “The New Israeli Cinema: Conversations with filmmakers.”
  550.  
  551. Find this resource:
  552.  
  553. The Nonfiction Film
  554. The ever-growing body of academic work on Israeli fiction cinema was expanded mainly during the 2000s to examine specific cultural concerns, political economy, local industries, and new developments of the documentary mode, especially through the issues of trauma, ethics, and memory. Duvdevani 2010 offers an analysis of several Israeli documentaries through the “I-movie” genre. Duvdevani 2013 reflects on the specific case of war documentaries. Morag 2012 and Morag 2013 analyze the shift from victim-trauma documentaries to perpetrator-trauma documentaries, while simultaneously proposing a new paradigm—perpetrator trauma. Focusing on space/territory as a major issue of Israeli documentary cinema, Zanger 2005 tackles the issue of filming the checkpoint in “roadblock” movies, and Walker 2013 further develops the spatial methodology taken in relation to this genre by examining one case through Google Earth navigation. Morag 2014 (cited under the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian Conflict) delineates and defines a group of new subgenres (e.g., “roadblock” films, “children’s resistance” films, and “blood relations” films) emerging in both Palestinian and Israeli documentary cinema. Whereas Alexander 1998 analyzes First Intifada documentaries, Bresheeth 2002 analyzes the Palestinian new documentary wave of the 1990s. For further discussion of this trend, see also works cited under Periods and Genres: First and Second Intifada Cinema, Major Themes: Men, Women, and War, Major Themes: Trauma, Post-Trauma, and Memory, and Major Themes: Holocaust Cinema—First, Second, and Third Generation.
  555.  
  556. Alexander, Livia. “Palestinians in Film: Representing and Being Represented in the Cinematic Struggle for National Identity.” Visual Anthropology 10:2.4 (1998): 319–333.
  557.  
  558. DOI: 10.1080/08949468.1998.9966737Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  559.  
  560. The article uses several documentary films to analyze the crucial impact of the Intifada on the development of local media in the Occupied Territories. It argues that alternative views of the conflict have been generated in Palestinian-produced documentaries through the use of film and ethnographic techniques developed in the West.
  561.  
  562. Find this resource:
  563.  
  564. Bresheeth, Haim. “Telling the Stories of Heim and Heimat, Home and Exile: Recent Palestinian Films and the Iconic Parable of the Invisible Palestine.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 1:1 (2002): 24–39.
  565.  
  566. DOI: 10.1386/ncin.1.1.24Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  567.  
  568. Characterizes an independent stream of Palestinian documentary cinema that appeared during the 1990s. The analysis focuses on questions of narrativity, mourning and melancholia, and memory in three films: A Chronicle of Disappearance (Suleiman, 1996) Ustura (Hassan, 1998) and 1948 (Bakri, 1998). Argues that the films are distinct from the mainstream of documentary film in Israel and connect to Third World cinema and Arab cinema.
  569.  
  570. Find this resource:
  571.  
  572. Duvdevani, Shmuel. גוף ראשון, מצלמה: קולנוע תיעודי אישי בישראל (Guf rishon, matslemah : ḳolnoʻa tiʻudi ishi be-Yiśraʼel). Jerusalem: Keter, 2010.
  573.  
  574. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  575.  
  576. Discusses the themes of recently made Israeli “I-movies.” Shows how the self-absorbed confessor of the “I-movie” positions himself/herself in the present within the context of the communal, national past for which he/she is accountable and to which he/she reacts with a sense of guilt. In Hebrew. Translated as “First person camera—Personal documentary in Israel.”
  577.  
  578. Find this resource:
  579.  
  580. Duvdevani, Shmuel. “How I Shot the War—Ideology and Accountability in Personal Israeli War Documentaries.” Studies in Documentary Film 7 (2013): 279–294.
  581.  
  582. DOI: 10.1386/sdf.7.3.279_1Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  583.  
  584. In recent years, a number of Israeli filmmakers have made personal documentaries during their reserve military service. This article deals with the issue of the public’s “right to know” and how it coexists with one’s accountability. It asks whether these filmmakers make their documentaries as a way of dealing with themselves being part of an ideological malady of “shooting and crying.”
  585.  
  586. Find this resource:
  587.  
  588. Morag, Raya. “Perpetrator Trauma and Current Israeli Documentary Cinema.” Camera Obscura 27 (2012): 93–133.
  589.  
  590. DOI: 10.1215/02705346-1597222Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  591.  
  592. Proposes a new paradigm for cinema trauma studies—the trauma of the perpetrator, driven by the emergence of a new wave of Israeli documentaries. The essay seeks to break the repression of the abhorrent figure of the perpetrator in cinema and analyzes the characteristics of perpetrator trauma.
  593.  
  594. Find this resource:
  595.  
  596. Morag, Raya. Waltzing with Bashir: Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013.
  597.  
  598. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  599.  
  600. Chapters 4 and 5 in Part 2, “Perpetrator Trauma” (pp. 129–179) focus on a new wave of Israeli post–Second Intifada documentary cinema (and literature). They analyze perpetrator trauma in several documentary films made by both men and women filmmakers, such as Waltz with Bashir (2008), Z32 (2008), and To See If I’m Smiling (2007).
  601.  
  602. Find this resource:
  603.  
  604. Walker, Janet. “‘Walking through Walls’: Documentary Film and Other Technologies of Navigation.” In Deeper than Oblivion: Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema. Edited by Raz Yosef and Boaz Hagin, 329–356. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
  605.  
  606. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  607.  
  608. Taking as a point of departure the “spatial turn” within cultural and trauma studies, Walker intertwines an analysis of Ido Haar’s 2007 documentary 9 Star Hotel with Google Earth imaging and first-person site-seeing to reflect on the geopolitical and epistemological implications of different spaces surrounding the Israeli city of Modi’in.
  609.  
  610. Find this resource:
  611.  
  612. Zanger, Anat. “Blind Space: Roadblock Movies in Contemporary Israeli Film.” In Special Issue: Israeli Cinema. Edited by Nurith Gertz, Anat Zanger, Nitzan Ben-Shaul, and Judd Ne’eman. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 24 (2005): 37–48.
  613.  
  614. DOI: 10.1353/sho.2005.0209Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  615.  
  616. This article examines the ways in which checkpoints are situated along the Israeli borders and scrutinizes the function of the movie camera vis-à-vis these checkpoints. Through the camera, these sites of transition in films are exposed as heterogeneous meeting points, located in the indeterminate space between surveillance, prejudices, and fears.
  617.  
  618. Find this resource:
  619.  
  620. Major Themes
  621. Scholarship on Israeli cinema has often focused on several recurring themes deeply embedded in Israel’s social, cultural, and political life, and especially influenced by the protracted Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The theoretical perspectives and discourses embraced by most scholars reflect the region’s uniqueness: postcolonialism, multiculturalism, trauma discourse, and Jewish studies, among others. Major themes are the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict; men, women, and war; first-, second-, and third-generation Holocaust cinema; post-trauma, trauma, and memory; inter-ethnic conflicts (Ashkenazim and Mizrahim/Sephardim); gender and sexuality (which embraces queer and gender theory); and Judaism, religion, and secularism.
  622.  
  623. The Israeli-Arab/Palestinian Conflict
  624. Cinematic analyses of the various representations of the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict in Israeli cinema are transformed about every six years due to the eruption of war or a military operation. Shohat 2010 (cited under Critical-Political Cinema of the 1980s) points to a major shift marked by the post–First Lebanon War as the point of return of the Palestinian to the Israeli screen. However, Shohat still sees the Israeli protagonists as those who focalize the films and criticizes their representation as innocent victims, devoid of responsibility to the Other. In a similar vein, Ben-Shaul 1997 highlights the siege mentality as reflecting an ethnocentric mindset, particularly typical to the films of the 1980s. Recent scholarship paves the way to works that are based on various comparisons between the two peoples. Describing mainly Palestinian films, Gertz and Khleifi 2003 stages the core issues of similarity under a nonsymmetrical reality, followed by a comparison suggested by Naaman 2008, who analyzes women on both sides. Taking this “comparison” route, Bardenstein 2005 reflects on several films that propose identity transformations, thus asking core questions regarding identity and acknowledgment of the other. Gourgouris 2015 defines the “limit condition” and the poetics of dispossession of Palestinian cinema, which stands in contrast to Israeli cinema. Examining the space as a major mediator and factor of the conflict, Zanger 2012b (cited under First and Second Intifada Cinema) reflects not only on Jewish mythology of garden, desert, etc., but also on borders, checkpoints, and military zones. Morag 2014 broadens the scope of this shift by pointing to shared genres (such as the “roadblock” film) and to new ones (such as the “blood relations” film), and by proposing a taxonomy of conflict cinema.
  625.  
  626. Bardenstein, Carol. “Cross-Cast: Passing in Israeli and Palestinian Cinema.” In Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture. Edited by Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg, 99–125. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
  627.  
  628. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  629.  
  630. Explores instances of “cross-casting” (passing, mimicry, and impersonation) of Palestinian actors as Israeli-Jewish characters, and vice versa, in films such as Avanti Popolo (1986), Fictitious Marriage (1988), and Cup Final (1991). Bardenstein argues that, although they blur fixed-identity hierarchies, they still remain quasi-utopian, unable to break hegemonic discourse.
  631.  
  632. Find this resource:
  633.  
  634. Ben-Shaul, Nitzan. “Cinematic Conceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” In Mythical Expressions of Siege in Israeli Films. By Nitzan Ben-Shaul, 47–82. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1997.
  635.  
  636. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  637.  
  638. Analyzes the transformations in the cinematic representation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in its relation to the “siege syndrome,” inter-ethnic tensions, and the 1977 election turnover of political power to the Right.
  639.  
  640. Find this resource:
  641.  
  642. Gertz, Nurith, and George Khleifi. “Bleeding Memories: Examining Cinematographic Treatment of Trauma by Palestinian Film Makers.” Palestine–Israel Journal 10 (2003): 105–113.
  643.  
  644. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  645.  
  646. The authors claim that study of the Palestinian cinema will reveal how intricately connected the Jewish and the Palestinian histories are, and how they nourish one another. Discussing prominent films by Michel Khleifi, Rashid Mashrawi, and Ali Nassar, the article describes the ways in which the films depict the drama of hostile encounters between Palestinians and Israelis that is woven into the plots.
  647.  
  648. Find this resource:
  649.  
  650. Gourgouris, Stathis. “Dream-Work of Dispossession: The Instance of Elia Suleiman.” Journal of Palestine Studies 44.4 (2015): 32–47.
  651.  
  652. DOI: 10.1525/jps.2015.44.4.32Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  653.  
  654. Argues that the language of Palestinian cinema is a “limit-language,” best expressed in Elia Suleiman’s work. Suleiman’s films run counter to the conventional representation of Palestinian existence and are arguably the sharpest expressions of what can be deemed to be the dream-work of that existence against its conventional representation.
  655.  
  656. Find this resource:
  657.  
  658. Morag, Raya. “‘Roadblock’ Films, ‘Children’s Resistance’ Films and ‘Blood Relations’ Films: Israeli and Palestinian Documentary Post-Intifada II.” In The Documentary Film Book. Edited by Brian Winston, 237–246. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
  659.  
  660. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  661.  
  662. Analyzes both Israeli and Palestinian documentary post–Intifada II corpora as cinemas of conflict that are blocked by intergenerational post-traumatic transmission of their constituted traumas—the Holocaust and the Naqba, respectively. Also outlines the new, regional subgenres and proposes a taxonomy of conflict cinema.
  663.  
  664. Find this resource:
  665.  
  666. Naaman, Dorit. “Unruly Daughters to Mother Nation: Palestinian and Israeli First-Person Films.” Hypatia 23 (Spring 2008): 17–32.
  667.  
  668. DOI: 10.1111/j.1527-2001.2008.tb01183.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  669.  
  670. Examines the Israeli documentary My Land Zion (2005) and the Palestinian documentary Paradise Lost (2005). Both films are critical autobiographical texts, and the women filmmakers in both negotiate their ideological ties with their cultures, histories, and nations. The women filmmakers discussed offer a particular gendered position rebelliously outside nationalism.
  671.  
  672. Find this resource:
  673.  
  674. Men, Women, and War
  675. Regardless of the chosen methodology or the line of theorization, most existing scholarship on masculinity and femininity in Israeli cinema reveals that both genders are discussed and problematized in the context of war. Analyses of Israeli gender outside the intersection of patriarchy with militarism is undecipherable, though desired by most scholars. Ne’eman 2005 and Yosef 2011 analyze traumatic masculinity in the shadow of war. Whereas Lubin 2005 emphasizes the social-cultural context for marginalization and reification of women in Israeli cinema, the other women scholars tackle specific, though wide-ranging, processes. Friedman 1993 discusses the war widow, and Zanger 1999 deals with transformations in representations of women in different periods of the war film. Zanger 2005 analyzes the case of Israeli women directors who enter liminal war zones, and Waldman 2013 follows Morag 2012, who defines and analyzes the female soldier as perpetrator, complicit in various acts of human rights violations. Ball 2008 evokes a model of nationhood that breaks away from traditional ideas of a feminized Palestine.
  676.  
  677. Ball, Anna. “Between a Postcolonial Nation and Fantasies of the Feminine: The Contested Visions of Palestinian Cinema.” Camera Obscura 23:3.69 (2008): 1–33.
  678.  
  679. DOI: 10.1215/02705346-2008-006Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  680.  
  681. Explores the ways in which Palestinian gendered and national identity are negotiated in Michel Khleifi’s Wedding in Galilee (1987) and Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention (2002), challenging representations of the contemporary Palestinian traumatized identity and psyche. The article examines the extent to which Khleifi and Suleiman manage to reconcile postcolonial and feminist commitments.
  682.  
  683. Find this resource:
  684.  
  685. Friedman, Régine-Mihal. “Between Silence and Abjection: The Film Medium and the Israeli War Widow.” Film Historia 3 (1993): 79–89.
  686.  
  687. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  688.  
  689. Psychoanalytic-Kristevian analysis of the mythic role of women in Israeli cinema. Notes a pattern in the films in which a male rejects mature sexuality with a woman and rejoins his male peers, where he is likely to die.
  690.  
  691. Find this resource:
  692.  
  693. Lubin, Orly. “The Woman as Other in Israeli Cinema.” In Israeli Women’s Studies: A Reader. Edited by Esther Fuchs, 301–316. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.
  694.  
  695. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  696.  
  697. Argues that the social and professional marginalization of women in Israeli society is exacerbated by a dominant visual mechanism of the penetrating gaze: a voyeuristic act that constitutes women’s identity, body, and sexuality in Israeli films. Originally published in 1994.
  698.  
  699. Find this resource:
  700.  
  701. Morag, Raya. “The New Wave of Documentary Cinema: The Female Perpetrator.” In Waltzing with Bashir: Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema. By Raya Morag, 154–179. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2012.
  702.  
  703. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  704.  
  705. Chapter 5 analyzes Tamar Yarom’s pioneering films on the unique experience of the female perpetrator. The films represent the female soldier’s encounter with the violent militaristic, spatial, ethnic, and gendered situation of the Intifada. The analysis shows how these representations shed light on both genders’ involvement in new war deeds.
  706.  
  707. Find this resource:
  708.  
  709. Ne’eman, Judd. “קמרה אובסקורה של הנופים הפדגוגיה הצבאית ואביזריה בקולנוע הישראלי”. In ביטחון ותקשורת: דינמיקה של יחסים (Biṭaḥon ṿe-tiḳshoret : dinamiḳah shel yeḥasim). Edited by Udi Lebel. Beersheba, Israel: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2005.
  710.  
  711. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  712.  
  713. A foray into Israeli militarism portrayed in 20th-century Israeli cinema. Traces the development of war-related films, suggests a chronological classification, and explores the various themes and rhetorical means that comprise the cinematic text. In Hebrew. Translated as “Camera obscura of the fallen: Military pedagogy and its accessories in Israeli Cinema.”
  714.  
  715. Find this resource:
  716.  
  717. Waldman, Diane. “Gender, the Military, Memory, and the Photograph: Tamar Yarom’s To See If I’m Smiling and American Films about Abu Ghraib.” In Deeper than Oblivion: Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema. Edited by Raz Yosef and Boaz Hagin, 51–72. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
  718.  
  719. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  720.  
  721. Focusing on the trauma of the female soldiers in the Occupied Territories, this chapter compares Tamar Yarom’s Israeli documentary To See If I’m Smiling with American films about Abu Ghraib, particularly reflecting on the ethics of taking pictures of atrocities.
  722.  
  723. Find this resource:
  724.  
  725. Yosef, Raz. “Traces of War: Trauma, Memory, and the Archive in Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort.” Cinema Journal 50 (Winter 2011): 61–83.
  726.  
  727. DOI: 10.1353/cj.2011.0006Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  728.  
  729. One of the most striking phenomena in contemporary Israeli cinema are the number of films that explore traumatic events from the First Lebanon War. This essay analyzes Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort, arguing that it exposes a traumatic rupture between history and memory, yet expresses a yearning for lost collective national memory.
  730.  
  731. Find this resource:
  732.  
  733. Zanger, Anat. “Filming National Identity: War and Woman in Israeli Cinema.” In The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society. Edited by Edna Lomsky-Feder and Eyal Ben Ari, 261–279. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.
  734.  
  735. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  736.  
  737. Deals with the representation of the collective versus the individual and the masculine versus the feminine in war films and argues that the two oppositional sets are defined and distinguished in conservative war films of the 1960s, whereas their boundaries are violated in postmodernist war films of the 1990s.
  738.  
  739. Find this resource:
  740.  
  741. Zanger, Anat. “Women, Border and Camera: Israeli Feminine Framing of War.” Feminist Media Studies 5 (2005): 341–357.
  742.  
  743. DOI: 10.1080/14680770500271586Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  744.  
  745. Discusses the unique instances in which Israeli women directors enter border areas that are “extraterritorial” and record with their cameras the power relations there, while their very presence affects these power relations. Exploring unknown territories, the films discussed are Detained, The Settlers, Ever Shot Anyone? and Border.
  746.  
  747. Find this resource:
  748.  
  749. Holocaust Cinema—First, Second, and Third Generation
  750. Zimmerman 2002 and Gertz 2004 offer studies that compare representations of the Holocaust in Israeli cinema in different periods. Ne’eman and Grossman 2013 devote their chapter to third-wave Holocaust films—all made after 2000—dealing with guilt and shame, expressing a wish not only for mourning work, but also for healing from the trauma of the Holocaust. Friedman 2002 analyzes complex memory processes, especially as they are expressed in second-generation Holocaust documentaries. In Friedman 2005, the pioneering analysis of second-generation testimonial films leads to the analysis in Kohen-Raz 2012 of a specific test case of a third-generation film—Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat. Meiri 2014 portrays the first reflection on trans-generational transmission of sexual violence trauma from the first to the second generation. Loshitzky 2006 proposes a critical reflection, emphasizing the abuses of Holocaust memory in Israel.
  751.  
  752. Friedman, Régine-Mihal. “The Double Legacy of Arbeit Macht Frei.” Prooftexts 22 (2002): 200–220.
  753.  
  754. DOI: 10.1353/ptx.2002.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  755.  
  756. Examines two 1990s films—Asher Tlalim’s Don’t Touch My Holocaust and Andres Veiel’s Chaos—about Arbeit macht frei, a 1990s stage play. The complicated problematics of Holocaust memory are analyzed using distinctions such as “common memory,” “deep memory,” and “postmemory” and reflect on the works of prominent Holocaust scholars.
  757.  
  758. Find this resource:
  759.  
  760. Friedman, Régine-Mihal. “Witnessing for the Witness.” In Special Issue: Israeli Cinema. Edited by Nurith Gertz, Anat Zanger, Nitzan Ben-Shaul, and Judd Ne’eman. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 24 (2005): 81–93.
  761.  
  762. DOI: 10.1353/sho.2005.0187Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  763.  
  764. Designated as “surrogate witnesses,” the testimonial films produced by the second and third generations summon the existence of a specific testimonial pact that provides a space of transference between survivor and interviewer and implies a particular quality of listening and empathy. Such is Tsipi Reibenbach’s Choice and Destiny.
  765.  
  766. Find this resource:
  767.  
  768. Gertz, Nurith. מקהלה אחרת: ניצולי שואה, זרים ואחרים בקולנוע ובספרות הישראליים. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2004.
  769.  
  770. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  771.  
  772. Discussion of the films made in the 1940s to 1960s tracking the hegemonization of the Zionist melting pot. Liberation of the Holocaust survivor from the controlling eye of Zionist Israeli is shown to be intertwined with the freeing of others who could then win a history and identity of their own. In Hebrew. Translated as “Holocaust Survivors, Aliens and Others in Israeli Cinema and Literature.”
  773.  
  774. Find this resource:
  775.  
  776. Kohen-Raz, Odeya. “Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat (2011): Ethics and Aesthetics in Third Generation Holocaust Cinema.” Studies in Documentary Film 6 (September 2012): 323–338.
  777.  
  778. DOI: 10.1386/sdf.6.3.323_1Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  779.  
  780. Unravels the memory work of a third-generation Holocaust filmmaker. Proposes an aesthetic dialogue between documentary filmmaking and art via the use of symbolism and artistic devices, which function as a bridge between past and present, enforcing secondhand witnessing and giving rise to ethics of listening.
  781.  
  782. Find this resource:
  783.  
  784. Loshitzky, Yosefa. “Pathologising Memory: From the Holocaust to the Intifada.” In Special Issue: The Conflict and Contemporary Visual Culture in Palestine and Israel. Edited by Haim Bresheeth and Haifa Hammami. Third Text 20 (2006): 327–335.
  785.  
  786. DOI: 10.1080/09528820600853761Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  787.  
  788. The article provides some reflections on the uses and abuses of the memory of the Holocaust by Israel with particular emphasis on the al-Aqsa Intifada. Discussing a new discourse on Israeli victimhood, the author suggests a critical look on what she calls a “surplus of Holocaust memory”; that is, the excessive nurturing of Holocaust memory and its mobilization for ultra-nationalist and racist ends.
  789.  
  790. Find this resource:
  791.  
  792. Meiri, Sandra. “Transgenerational Trauma: On the Aftermath of Sexual Violence Suffered by Women during the Holocaust in Israeli Cinema.” In The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema. Edited by Michael Elm, Kobi Kabalek, and Julia B. Köehne, 272–293. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2014.
  793.  
  794. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  795.  
  796. Explores two recent films that address the question of sexualized violence and its aftermath in Israeli society. Analyzing the 2007 film Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel, Meiri traces the connection between the Eichmann trial, the Stalags (pornographic literature about “lusty female SS officers sexually abusing camp prisoners [mostlyAmerican and other Allied POW])” (p. 275), and K. Tzetnik’s books. Burning Mooki (2008) raises the subject of transgenerational transmission of Holocaust sexualized violence.
  797.  
  798. Find this resource:
  799.  
  800. Ne’eman, Judd, and Nerit Grossman. “Last Train to the Holocaust.” In Deeper than Oblivion: Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema. Edited by Raz Yosef and Boaz Hagin, 263–297. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
  801.  
  802. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  803.  
  804. Using the distinction between guilt and shame to discuss Holocaust survivors’ guilt and the second-generation’s shame of being the children of survivors, the chapter offers an overview of third-wave Holocaust films, made after 2000, including films such as Made in Israel, The Debt, Burning Mooki, Spring 1941, and Once I Was.
  805.  
  806. Find this resource:
  807.  
  808. Zimmerman, Moshe. אל תגעו לי בשואה: השפעת השואה על הקולנוע והחברה בישראל. Lod, Israel: Zmora-Bitan, 2002.
  809.  
  810. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  811.  
  812. Historical study of the Holocaust in different periods in Israeli cinema, emphasizing Zionism’s failure in negation of the Jewish Diaspora. Detailed analyses of key films, their production, and reception. In Hebrew. Translated as “Leave My Holocaust Alone: The Impact of the Holocaust on Israeli Cinema and Society.”
  813.  
  814. Find this resource:
  815.  
  816. Trauma, Post-Trauma, and Memory
  817. Recent scholarship on Israeli cinema dedicated considerable attention to questions of trauma, post-trauma, and memory in various socio-psychological contexts. Gertz and Hermoni 2013 deals with the Nakba (the Palestinian expulsion in 1948). Yosef 2011 and Yosef and Hagin 2013 (cited under Anthologies) describe the prominent role of trauma, memory, and loss in Israeli cinema. Similarly, Zerubavel 2013 discusses multiple layers of memory: Jewish, Zionist, and Israeli. Relying on the rapid development of trauma discourse in the humanities since the mid-1990s, Israeli trauma scholars also developed a few new conceptualizations of the subject: Friedman 2002 (cited under Holocaust Cinema—First, Second, and Third Generation) develops the distinction between common memory and deep memory. Morag 2008 analyzes chronic trauma embodied in the Second Intifada’s terrorism and develops the notion of anti-memory. Morag 2013 (cited under First and Second Intifada Cinema) theorizes the notion of perpetrator trauma, emphasizing the new wave of Israeli films that represent it as a pioneering wave in world cinema, and Meiri 2014 develops the notion of “cinememory.” In a similar vein, Telmissany 2010 analyzes Palestinian cinema’s depiction of lost memory.
  818.  
  819. Gertz, Nurith, and Gal Hermoni. “History of Violence: From the Trauma of Expulsion to the Holocaust in Israeli Cinema.” In Deeper than Oblivion: Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema. Edited by Raz Yosef and Boaz Hagin, 223–263. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
  820.  
  821. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  822.  
  823. Locates the pivotal core trauma of Israeli society—from the Holocaust to the continuing trauma of the wars generated by the Arab–Israeli conflict. Shows how the events of the Holocaust that remain hidden beneath the war trauma hinder the Israelis’ ability to work through their pain and leave the Holocaust’s open wound unhealed.
  824.  
  825. Find this resource:
  826.  
  827. Meiri, Sandra. “Cinememory: Sexualized Trauma and Coming of Age in Holocaust-Related Israeli Films.” Journal of Literature and Art Studies 4 (2014): 264–276.
  828.  
  829. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  830.  
  831. Focuses on cinematic aesthetics termed “cinememory” realized in a subgenre of Holocaust-related films: coming-of-age films, which explore the lasting implications of growing up in the shadow of sexualized trauma and the unconscious transmission of memories and tactile experiences related to the ubiquity of sexual violence during the Holocaust.
  832.  
  833. Find this resource:
  834.  
  835. Morag, Raya. “Chronic Trauma, the Sound of Terror, and Current Israeli Cinema.” Framework 49 (Spring 2008): 121–133.
  836.  
  837. DOI: 10.1353/frm.0.0003Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  838.  
  839. Representation of the trauma of suicide attacks in Israeli narrative cinema during the Second Intifada is blocked by both the repression of the trauma and its chronic temporality, and by collectivization of personal memory; that is, by anti-memory. In contrast, films from the “tele-cinema” project Moments (and the film Close to Home) provide a befitting response to the time-trap of chronic traumatic temporality.
  840.  
  841. Find this resource:
  842.  
  843. Telmissany, May. “Displacement and Memory: Visual Narratives of al-Shatat in Michel Khleifi’s Films.” Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East 30.1 (2010): 69–84.
  844.  
  845. DOI: 10.1215/1089201x-2009-052Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  846.  
  847. Argues that Palestinian cinema has succeeded in establishing a recognizable cultural identity of the Palestinian people. Analyzing Michel Khleifi’s documentary and feature films as sites of a diasporic reconstruction of identity, the article focuses on the extensive use of the face and the landscape in his films, suggesting that it authenticates the Palestinian reality and fetishizes—through remembrance and material replacements—the lost land of Palestine.
  848.  
  849. Find this resource:
  850.  
  851. Yosef, Raz. The Politics of Loss and Trauma in Contemporary Israeli Cinema. New York and London: Routledge, 2011.
  852.  
  853. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  854.  
  855. Examines the crucial role of Israeli cinema in remembering traumas and losses that were denied entry into the shared national past. Israeli films deal with past traumatic events, such as the memory of the Holocaust, traumas from wars and terrorist attacks, and the losses entailed by immigration.
  856.  
  857. Find this resource:
  858.  
  859. Zerubavel, Yael. “Passages, Wars, and Encounters with Death: The Desert as a Site of Memory in Israeli Film.” In Deeper Than Oblivion: Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema. Edited by Raz Yosef and Boaz Hagin, 299–327. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
  860.  
  861. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  862.  
  863. Exploring the trope of the desert in Israeli films made between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s, through the experience of threat and death embodied in moments of crisis. Discusses how these films portray multiple layers of memory: Jewish, Zionist, and Israeli.
  864.  
  865. Find this resource:
  866.  
  867. Inter-ethnic Conflicts
  868. Discussions of representation of Jewish ethnicity were transformed after the mass immigration from the former Soviet Union. Prior to the 1990s, most of Israeli cinema scholarship adopted the Ashkenazi/Mizrahi (Sephardi) postcolonial anti-Eurocentric critique of Shohat 2010 (cited under Israeli Cinema of the 2000s), who criticized the hegemonization of Ashkenazi figures and mindset in Israeli cinema, mainly in the Bourekas genre. Ben-Shaul 1988, for instance, follows her line of thought through an analysis of the Bourekas films. In contrast, although they accept Shohat’s claim on Orientalist representation of Mizrahi/Sephardi and Ashkenazi hegemony, Lubin 1999, Naaman 2001, and Yosef 2004 offer subversive readings of these inter-ethnic conflicts in Israeli cinema. Gershenson 2011 suggests a yet different process in which, since the 1990s, Russian immigrants and their homeland began appearing in Israeli films, emphasizing the identification of Russian immigrants with the Israeli-Jewish nation, while simultaneously affirming their Russianness. See also the discussion in Periods and Genres: Ethnic Comedy (Bourekas Films).
  869.  
  870. Ben-Shaul, Nitzan. “הקשר הסמוי בין סרטי הבורקס לסרטים האישיים.” In מבטים פיקטיביים – על קולנוע ישראלי (Mabaṭim fiḳṭiviyim : ʻal ḳolnoʻa Yiśreʼeli). Edited by Nurith Gertz, Orly Lubin, and Judd Ne’eman, 128–134. Tel Aviv: Open University, 1988.
  871.  
  872. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  873.  
  874. This chapter views the apparently opposing 1970s Israeli film forms of popular comedies and formalist cinematic experimentations as ethno/class divergent expressions of the periods’ emergent capitalist market economy. In Hebrew. Translated as “The Hidden Relation between ‘Burekas’ and ‘Personal’ Films.”
  875.  
  876. Find this resource:
  877.  
  878. Gershenson, Olga. “‘Is Israel Part of Russia?’ Immigrants on Russian and Israeli Screens.” In Special Issue: Twenty Years Together: The “Great Aliya” and Russian Israelis in the Mirror of Social Research. Israel Affairs 17 (2011): 164–176.
  879.  
  880. DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2011.522076Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  881.  
  882. An overview of representations of Jewish Russian immigrants in Russian and Israeli films (and television series) from the 1960s to the 2000s, circulating through the Internet, transnational television channels, Jewish film festivals, and seen in Russia and elsewhere in the Russian Diaspora. The article argues that as Russian-Jewish immigrants transform themselves through migration, they also transform cultures around them.
  883.  
  884. Find this resource:
  885.  
  886. Lubin, Orly. “Body and Territory: Women in Israeli Cinema.” Israel Studies 4 (1999): 175–187.
  887.  
  888. DOI: 10.2979/ISR.1999.4.1.175Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  889.  
  890. A critical analysis of the representation of the margins of Ashkenazi hegemonic society in Israeli Mizrahi/Sephardi feminist cinema, focusing on the film Jacky (1990), which uses both the corporeal body as the agent of action and the stereotypical mark of female sexuality as modes of subversion.
  891.  
  892. Find this resource:
  893.  
  894. Naaman, Dorit. “Orientalism as Alterity in Israeli Cinema.” Cinema Journal 44 (2001): 36–54.
  895.  
  896. DOI: 10.1353/cj.2001.0014Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  897.  
  898. Deals with the representation of Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians in Israeli cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, specifically the phenomenon of “passing,” whereby ethnicity and race are interchangeable in casting and plot. Such passing can empower Middle Eastern Jews to deconstruct ethnic stereotypes, while excluding Palestinians from participating in public discourse.
  899.  
  900. Find this resource:
  901.  
  902. Yosef, Raz. “אתניות ופוליטיקה מינית: המצאת הגבריות המזרחית בקולנוע הישראלי”. Theory and Criticism 25 (2004): 31–62.
  903.  
  904. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  905.  
  906. Explores the representation of the Mizrahi/Sephardi male body and sexuality in mainstream Israeli films, arguing that they repeat the colonial fantasy of the dominant Ashkenazi discourse in which Mizrahi/Sephardi men are fixed into the sexual “savage” and hypersexual stud stereotype. Also examines Mizrahi/Sephardi filmmakers’ practices of resistance. In Hebrew. Translates as “Ethnicity and Sexual Politics: The Invention of Mizrahi Masculinity in Israeli Cinema.”
  907.  
  908. Find this resource:
  909.  
  910. Gender and Sexuality
  911. Since the late 1980s and 1990s, Israeli cinema has presented the interplay between gayness and the state. The body that became a fiercely contested site in both Western-Zionist and Eastern-Mizrahi/Sephardi epistemological discourses gains a reinterpretation by most of the scholars who deal with the subject. Peleg 2011 introduces an overview of the metamorphosis that the image of Israeli men has undergone on-screen from the 1950s to the 2000s. Gertz 2003, Yosef 2004, and Meiri and Munk 2008 discuss cinematic representation of gender and sexuality along the axes of nationality and ethnicity, both in the Diaspora and in Israel. Stein 2010 describes the Israeli gay revolution in the 1990s and its realization on various screens. Morag 2010 redefines cultural concepts in regard to representations of gender and sexuality in both Israeli and Palestinian cinema in order to analyze the physical, emotional, and epistemic violence entailed in interracial sex. Friedman 2012 (cited under Israeli Cinema of the 2000s) analyzes two documentaries on rape made by Israeli women directors.
  912.  
  913. Gertz, Nurith. “Gender and Space in the New Israeli Cinema.” In Special Issue: Jewish Film. Edited by Lawrence Baron. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 22 (2003): 110–116.
  914.  
  915. DOI: 10.1353/sho.2003.0088Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  916.  
  917. The new Israeli cinema dismantles the equation of nationhood and masculinity. This cinema expresses the crisis in Israeli identity and the attempt to overcome it by combining and blending the spaces, nationalities, and genders created within it. The article analyzes The Last Love of Laura Adler as an example.
  918.  
  919. Find this resource:
  920.  
  921. Meiri, Sandra, and Yael Munk. “The Return of the Repressed: Sexual Stereotypes of the Old Jew and the Case of Gift from Heaven.” In Jews and Sex. Edited by Nathan Abrams, 66–76. Nottingham, UK: Five Leaves, 2008.
  922.  
  923. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  924.  
  925. This chapter explores the two old anti-Semitic stereotypes that sustained the notion of the sexual degeneracy of the male Jew in the Diaspora—the hypersexual exotic Jew and the effeminate Jew—arguing that Gift from Heaven tackles the hegemonic model of sexuality still prevalent in Israeli society through a carnivalesque and parodying portrayal of the Georgian community in Israel.
  926.  
  927. Find this resource:
  928.  
  929. Morag, Raya. “Interracial (Homo) Sexualities: Post-Traumatic Palestinian and Israeli Cinema during the al-Aqsa Intifada (Diary of a Male Whore and The Bubble).” International Journal of Communication 4 (2010): 932–954.
  930.  
  931. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  932.  
  933. A queer and comparative analysis of Eytan Fox’s The Bubble and Tawfik Abu Wael’s Diary of a Male Whore enables an analysis of Israeli and Palestinian homo(sexual) concepts revolving around interracial sexual relations—prostitution; masturbation; gay shame, pride, and humiliation; the gaze and scopic economies; as well as memory, trauma, and post-trauma.
  934.  
  935. Find this resource:
  936.  
  937. Peleg, Yaron. “Ecce Homo: The Transfiguration of Israeli Manhood in Israeli Films.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion. Edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, 30–40. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.
  938.  
  939. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  940.  
  941. This chapter examines the metamorphosis that the image of Israeli men has undergone on-screen from the 1950s to the 2000s, from the engaged, enterprising, daring, brave New Hebrews—Palmachniks and soldiers in earlier films—to the detached, confused, tenuous, and subdued men that appear on the screen in the 1990s and 2000s.
  942.  
  943. Find this resource:
  944.  
  945. Stein, Rebecca L. “Explosive Scenes from Israel’s Gay Occupation.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16 (2010): 514–536.
  946.  
  947. DOI: 10.1215/10642684-2010-002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  948.  
  949. Reading Eytan Fox’s works symptomatically, proposing that the television mini-series Florentin and The Bubble can be understood as indexes of the changing Israeli political landscape since the 1980s—both the vacillating landscape of gay rights and visibility within the nation-state and the changing landscape of the Israeli occupation and Palestinian struggle against it.
  950.  
  951. Find this resource:
  952.  
  953. Yosef, Raz. Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.
  954.  
  955. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  956.  
  957. A postcolonial queer reading of the role played by Israeli cinema in the construction of heterosexual national identity. The Zionist movement was intent on transforming the very nature of European Jewish masculinity as it had existed in the diaspora. Zionist/Israeli films enforce the homophobic image of the hyper-masculine, colonialist-explorer, and militaristic nation-builder.
  958.  
  959. Find this resource:
  960.  
  961. Judaism, Religion, and Secularism
  962. Parciack 1998 provides an initial introduction to the problematics of representing religious themes and religiosity in Israeli cinema and sketches possible causes for its marginalization. Morag 2015 offers a comprehensive overview of the recent radical change in Israeli society and culture toward fundamentalism, including the secular cinema industry, using examples from a number of recent documentaries. Peleg 2013 marks the rise of alternative redemptive narratives that are primarily religious. Chyutin 2011 and Zanger 2011 analyze mainly Volach’s My Father, My Lord as a test case for discussing old myths and breakings of the Jewish law on screen. Vinig 2011 provides a detailed introduction to the ultra-Orthodox film industry, mainly that of women.
  963.  
  964. Chyutin, Dan. “Negotiating Judaism in Contemporary Israeli Cinema: The Spiritual Style of My Father, My Lord.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion. Edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, 201–212. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.
  965.  
  966. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  967.  
  968. Points to a recent radical change in the stature of the Jewish religion and the religious, embodied in a proliferation of religious themes in Israeli films and television series. An analysis of David Volach’s My Father, My Lord (2007) attests to the presence of God despite the protagonist’s invalidation of the Jewish Law (Halakha).
  969.  
  970. Find this resource:
  971.  
  972. Morag, Raya. “The New Religious Wave in Israeli Documentary Cinema: Negotiating Jewish Fundamentalism during the Second Intifada.” In A Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film. Edited by Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa Lebow, 366–383. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.
  973.  
  974. DOI: 10.1002/9781118884584.ch17Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  975.  
  976. Analyzes the emergence during the first decade of the 2000s of a new religious wave that presents mainly ultra-Orthodox Jewish culture. By calling attention to the political dimension of fundamentalism, largely hidden in narrative films, a number of documentaries, all by women directors, present the intolerance and oppressive violence prevalent in ultra-Orthodox culture.
  977.  
  978. Find this resource:
  979.  
  980. Parciack, Roni. “מעבר לגדר: הרגש הדתי בקולנוע הישראלי”. In מבטים פיקטיביים – על קולנוע ישראלי (Mabaṭim fiḳṭiviyim : ʻal ḳolnoʻa Yiśreʼeli). Edited by Nurith Gertz, Orly Lubin, and Judd Ne’eman, 328–341. Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel, 1998.
  981.  
  982. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  983.  
  984. Pioneering article on representations of Jewish religiousness in Israeli cinema. Pointing out that only twenty out of over 420 Israeli films produced between 1960 and 1995 dealt with religious themes, the author seeks to trace the reasons for this phenomenon. In Hebrew. Translated as “Beyond the Wall: The Religious Emotion in Israeli Cinema.”
  985.  
  986. Find this resource:
  987.  
  988. Peleg, Yaron. “Marking a New Holy Community: God’s Neighbors and the Ascendancy of a New Religious Hegemony in Israel.” Jewish Film & New Media 1 (Spring 2013): 64–86.
  989.  
  990. DOI: 10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.1.1.0064Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  991.  
  992. Analyzes Meni Ya’ish’s 2012 film God’s Neighbors as a significant cultural moment in the legitimation of Jewish religiosity in Israel and indicating a change from a secular to a more fundamentalist society. This change marks the rise of alternative redemptive narratives that are primarily religious.
  993.  
  994. Find this resource:
  995.  
  996. Vinig, Marlyn. הקולנוע החרדי. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2011.
  997.  
  998. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  999.  
  1000. Informative and accessible (mostly nonacademic) description of the ultra-Orthodox film industry in Israel, focusing on films made by and screened exclusively for women. Includes depiction of modes of production, reception, projection, interviews with filmmakers, and excerpts from screenplays. In Hebrew. Translated as “Orthodox Cinema.”
  1001.  
  1002. Find this resource:
  1003.  
  1004. Zanger, Anat. “Beaufort and My Father, My Lord: Traces of the Binding Myth and the Mother’s Voice.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion. Edited by Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg, 225–238. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.
  1005.  
  1006. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1007.  
  1008. Discusses the complex co-presence of the theological and Zionist myths of the binding of Isaac (Akedah) in two recent Israeli films.
  1009.  
  1010. Find this resource:
  1011.  
  1012. Auteurs
  1013. Israeli cinema scholarship has been devoted mostly to the “nationalist paradigm.” Thus, and despite, the recent “auteurist” success of Israeli directors at home and abroad, relatively few publications are devoted to films by a single auteur, such as Ari Folman, Eytan Fox, Amos Gitai, Avi Mograbi, Yehuda (Judd) Ne’eman, David Perlov, or Uri Zohar. Analyses of films by other auteurs, including major female directors, such as Michal Bat-Adam, Ronit Elkabetz, Michal Aviad, and Netalie Braun, can be found throughout scholarship on Israeli cinema and, in particular, in the 2000s.
  1014.  
  1015. Ari Folman
  1016. Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir (2008), an “event-movie,” appears internationally on many critics’ lists of the top ten best films of the year and has been nominated for, and won, many important awards. It gained considerable scholarly attention both at home and abroad and became the prominent film through which Folman is considered a new-millennium auteur. Stewart 2010 refers to the film’s singularity. Landesman and Bendor 2011 discuss the use of animation in Waltz, a documentary film. Duvdevani 2013 and Yosef 2010 reflect on the film’s politics, whereas Morag 2013 offers a more critical view by theorizing Waltz with Bashir as a perpetrator trauma film and pointing out the key ethical issues entailed in ethical trauma, in contrast to psychological trauma.
  1017.  
  1018. Duvdevani, Shmuel. “’כל עוד אתה מצייר ולא מצלם, זה בסדר’: סוגיות של אתיקה ואחריות בסרט ואלס עם” “באשיר”. Mikan, Journal of Israeli and Jewish Literature and Culture Ben Gurion University (2013): 50–67.
  1019.  
  1020. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1021.  
  1022. The article argues that the therapeutic aims of Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir involve unresolved feelings of guilt that relate to the violent escalation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict during the Second Intifada. The article also discusses the ways in which animation helps Folman cope with his traumatic experiences and the question of accountability. In Hebrew. Translated as “‘As Long as You Draw and Not Filming, It’s Ok’: Ethics and Accountability in Waltz with Bashir.”
  1023.  
  1024. Find this resource:
  1025.  
  1026. Landesman, Ohad, and Roy Bendor. “Animated Recollection and Spectatorial Experience in Waltz with Bashir.” Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6 (2011): 353–370.
  1027.  
  1028. DOI: 10.1177/1746847711417775Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1029.  
  1030. This article explores the ways in which Waltz with Bashir exemplifies the capacity of animated documentaries not only to show what is otherwise difficult or impossible to represent in non-animated documentaries, but also to serve as a vehicle for fostering new relationships between the viewer and the documentary text.
  1031.  
  1032. Find this resource:
  1033.  
  1034. Morag, Raya. “The New Wave of Documentary Cinema: The Male Perpetrator.” In Waltzing with Bashir: Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema. By Raya Morag, 129–153. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013.
  1035.  
  1036. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1037.  
  1038. Focusing on an analysis of Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, this chapter addresses the questions of how the trauma of the complicit indirect male perpetrator manifests itself, analyzes somatic tensions and epistemic crises, and describes the uniqueness of Folman’s postmemory, part of what is termed the “persecuted perpetrator complex.”
  1039.  
  1040. Find this resource:
  1041.  
  1042. Stewart, Garrett. “Screen Memory in Waltz with Bashir.” Film Quarterly 63 (Spring 2010): 58–62.
  1043.  
  1044. DOI: 10.1525/fq.2010.63.3.58Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1045.  
  1046. This short article is typical of the writings on the film that decipher the originality of animated documentary in recreating memory. Tracing the interviews up to the last scene’s sound enables the writer to pinpoint the singularity of Waltz with Bashir as a war movie.
  1047.  
  1048. Find this resource:
  1049.  
  1050. Yosef, Raz. “War Fantasies: Memory, Trauma and Ethics in Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 9 (November 2010): 311–326.
  1051.  
  1052. DOI: 10.1080/14725886.2010.518444Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1053.  
  1054. Argues that in Waltz with Bashir, war is represented as the private memory of the soldiers who fought in the First Lebanon War and is no longer a collective memory. The film is concerned with the ethical questions that memory and the process of remembering pose.
  1055.  
  1056. Find this resource:
  1057.  
  1058. Eytan Fox
  1059. Eytan Fox is Israel’s best-known gay film and television director, enjoying considerable success in Israel and abroad. Morag 2010, Stein 2010 (cited under Gender and Sexuality), Yosef 2005, and Yosef 2008 criticize his work for being too conservative and too close to the mainstream in terms of its politics. Hagin 2008 reflects on a possible alternative reading.
  1060.  
  1061. Hagin, Boaz. “Male Weeping as Performative: The Crying Mossad Assassin in Walk on Water.” Camera Obscura 23 (2008): 103–139.
  1062.  
  1063. DOI: 10.1215/02705346-2008-004Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1064.  
  1065. The article examines the trope of the crying male in contemporary Israeli fiction films. The surge of weeping men might be read as an attempt by Israeli mainstream entertainment to deal with Israeli society’s infatuation with victimhood and its tendency to conflate identity with suffering. Walk on Water rejects this tendency.
  1066.  
  1067. Find this resource:
  1068.  
  1069. Morag, Raya. “Interracial (Homo)Sexualities: Post-Traumatic Palestinian and Israeli Cinema during the al-Aqsa Intifada (Diary of a Male Whore and The Bubble).” International Journal of Communication 4 (2010): 932–954.
  1070.  
  1071. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1072.  
  1073. A queer and comparative analysis of Eytan Fox’s The Bubble and Tawfik Abu Wael’s Diary of a Male Whore enables an analysis of Israeli and Palestinian homo(sexual) concepts revolving around interracial sexual relations— prostitution; masturbation; gay shame, pride, and humiliation; the gaze and scopic economies; as well as memory, trauma, and post-trauma.
  1074.  
  1075. Find this resource:
  1076.  
  1077. Yosef, Raz. “The National Closet: Gay Israel in Yossi and Jagger.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 11 (2005): 283–300.
  1078.  
  1079. DOI: 10.1215/10642684-11-2-283Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1080.  
  1081. Explores the politics of normalcy and the discourse of the homosexual closet and the ways in which these control gay male subjectivity in Fox’s Yossi and Jagger. It argues that the film represents the filmmaker’s attempt to join the heterosexual national collectivity at the expense of de-politicizing and de-sexualizing queer identity.
  1082.  
  1083. Find this resource:
  1084.  
  1085. Yosef, Raz. “Phantasmatic Losses: National Traumas, Masculinity, and Primal Scenes in Israeli Cinema—Walk on Water.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 49 (Spring 2008): 93–105.
  1086.  
  1087. DOI: 10.1353/frm.0.0016Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1088.  
  1089. Argues that the film Walk on Water is a second-generation Holocaust fantasy that endeavors to repair the traumas that shaped the Israeli heterosexual male’s subjectivity by displacing it to a form of primal scene fantasy. The film reconstructs the normative Israeli hetero-masculinity and reaffirms hegemonic sexual and national norms.
  1090.  
  1091. Find this resource:
  1092.  
  1093. Amos Gitai
  1094. Amos Gitai’s enormous productivity in both documentary and fiction (he has created over eighty titles in thirty-eight years) has gained him international success, especially on the film-festival circuit. As a result, his work has given rise to numerous books and articles in many languages. Toubiana and Piégay 2005 is one of the most important and updated books on Gitai’s work in English. Klein 2003 is an entire book devoted to Gitai in Hebrew, and a special issue of CinémAction edited by Dugas 2009 is one of several publications in French. Yosef 2005 and Gertz, et al. 2011 analyze specific films by Gitai.
  1095.  
  1096. Dugas, Lucie, ed. “Amos Gitaï, entre terre et exil.” CinémAction 131 (2009).
  1097.  
  1098. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1099.  
  1100. A French-language special issue on Gitai.
  1101.  
  1102. Find this resource:
  1103.  
  1104. Gertz, Nurith, Gal Hermoni, and Yael Munk. “Kedma (Amos Gitai): The Birth of Two Nations at War in 1948.” In Film in the Middle East and North Africa: Creative Dissidence. Edited by Josef Gugler, 167–176. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.
  1105.  
  1106. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1107.  
  1108. Kedma (2002) describes the journey taken by Holocaust survivors, during which they are transformed into “New Jews.” The journey is halted because the trauma of the Holocaust hides the trauma of the expulsion of the Palestinians. This tapestry of traumas entails the paradox of Jewish/Israeli existence: being a victim versus being an aggressor.
  1109.  
  1110. Find this resource:
  1111.  
  1112. Klein, Irma. עמוס גיתאי: קולנוע, פוליטיקה, אסתטיקה (ʻAmos Gitai: ḳolnoʻa, poliṭiḳah, esteṭiḳah). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2003.
  1113.  
  1114. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1115.  
  1116. Conversations with Amos Gitai about issues such as his style, methods of filmmaking, relations between architecture and cinema, as well as a brief feminist perspective about his nonfiction and fiction films. In Hebrew. Translated as “Amos Gitai: Cinema, Politics, Aesthetics.”
  1117.  
  1118. Find this resource:
  1119.  
  1120. Toubiana, Serge, and Baptiste Piégay. The Cinema of Amos Gitai. Translated by Kimberly Lewis. [France]: Film Society of Lincoln Center, 2005.
  1121.  
  1122. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1123.  
  1124. Half of this book consists of interviews with Amos Gitai, detailing his biographical and artistic trajectory alternating between fiction and documentary. The rest is an essay by Serge Toubiana, assisted by Baptiste Piégay, that provides the reader with a few paths for the analysis of a body of work that contains around fifty films. The book concludes with a detailed filmography.
  1125.  
  1126. Find this resource:
  1127.  
  1128. Yosef, Raz. “Spectacles of Pain: War, Masculinity and the Masochistic Fantasy in Amos Gitai’s Kippur.” In Special Issue: Israeli Cinema. Edited by Nurith Gertz, Anat Zanger, Nitzan Ben-Shaul, and Judd Ne’eman. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 24 (2005): 49–66.
  1129.  
  1130. DOI: 10.1353/sho.2005.0208Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1131.  
  1132. Examines the relations among war, masochism, and the male body in Israeli war films of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as in Gitai’s Kippur. It argues that Kippur constructs a masochistic fantasy whereby the fighting male body is stripped of its metaphoric national meaning, returning to its bodily corporality.
  1133.  
  1134. Find this resource:
  1135.  
  1136. Avi Mograbi
  1137. Considered one of Israel’s most important documentarists, Avi Mograbi is known for his unwavering commitment to docu-activism as well as his experimentalism and innovative contribution to cinematic language. Duvdevani 2013 and Meiri 2012 reflect on the ways in which his films provocatively and self-reflexively examine the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through questions of guilt, accountability, and sacrifice. Morag 2013 analyzes his films Z32 and Waltz with Bashir as paradigmatic examples of perpetrator-trauma films and points out the key ethical issues entailed in representing ethical trauma in contrast to psychological trauma.
  1138.  
  1139. Duvdevani, Shmuel. “The Agonies of an Eternal Victim: Zionist Guilt in Avi Mograbi’s Happy Birthday, Mr. Mograbi.” In Deeper Than Oblivion: Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema. Edited by Raz Yosef and Boaz Hagin, 93–116. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
  1140.  
  1141. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1142.  
  1143. Examines Avi Mograbi’s semi-documentary, which deals with plots evolving around Israel’s fiftieth Independence Day. The film explores themes of guilt, accountability, and victimhood. The paper illustrates two different and contradictory “voices”: that of the dominant Zionist and Jewish discourse, and that which reflects a critical stance toward it.
  1144.  
  1145. Find this resource:
  1146.  
  1147. Meiri, Sandra. “‘Let Me Die with the Philistines’: Israeli Documentaries as a Critique of the Enactment of Ancient Myths in Israeli Society.” Studies in Documentary Film 6 (2012): 307–322.
  1148.  
  1149. DOI: 10.1386/sdf.6.3.307_1Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1150.  
  1151. Examines two documentaries shot during the Second Intifada—Aloni’s Local Angel and Mograbi’s Avenge but One of My Two Eyes—as a critique of the many ways and forms in which ancient myths of sacrifice and self-sacrifice are revived and enacted in Israeli society and culture.
  1152.  
  1153. Find this resource:
  1154.  
  1155. Morag, Raya. “The New Wave of Documentary Cinema: The Male Perpetrator.” In Waltzing with Bashir: Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema. By Raya Morag, 129–153. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013.
  1156.  
  1157. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1158.  
  1159. Focusing on an analysis of Avi Mograbi’s Z32, this chapter addresses the questions of how the trauma of the perpetrator manifests itself, how the epistemological—and somatic—conditions of guilt should be understood, and whether the male perpetrator documentary wave paves the way for Israelis to assume moral responsibility for their deeds.
  1160.  
  1161. Find this resource:
  1162.  
  1163. Yehuda (Judd) Ne’eman
  1164. Yehuda (Judd) Ne’eman has been known as an Israeli director and producer since the 1960s. His documentaries and feature films repeatedly call into question Israel’s failures to live up to its promises. Ben-Shaul 2005 describes Ne’eman’s political cinema from 1977 (Paratroopers) to 1989 (Streets of Yesterday) as explicitly critical of Israeli politics. Meiri 2008 and Meiri 2011 (cited under Critical-Political Cinema of the 1980s) argue that his films are highly radical in their ethical recognition of the Palestinian Other and their ability to constitute an ethics necessary to break through the dense wall of mistrust on both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides, thus providing an opportunity for genuine dialogue.
  1165.  
  1166. Ben-Shaul, Nitzan. “Fellow Traveler: The Cinematic-Political Consciousness of Judd Ne’eman.” In Special Issue: Israeli Cinema. Edited by Nurith Gertz, Anat Zanger, Nitzan Ben-Shaul, and Judd Ne’eman. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish 24 (2005): 94–106.
  1167.  
  1168. DOI: 10.1353/sho.2005.0177Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1169.  
  1170. Based on Lukács’s concept of “potential consciousness,” the paper traces the cinematic-ideological evolution of director Judd Ne’eman from Paratroopers through The Sailor’s Revolt, Fellow Travelers, and Streets of Yesterday.
  1171.  
  1172. Find this resource:
  1173.  
  1174. Meiri, Sandra. “Memory, Trauma and Ethics in Judd Ne’eman’s Feature Films.” Israel: Studies in Zionism and the State of Israel—History, Society, Culture 14 (2008): 35–69.
  1175.  
  1176. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1177.  
  1178. Examines the relationship between subjectivity, historic events, and traumas and the ethical role that cinema and artistic creation play in this context in four of Judd Ne’eman’s feature films—The Night the King Was Born, Fellow Travelers, Streets of Yesterday, and Promenade of the Heart.
  1179.  
  1180. Find this resource:
  1181.  
  1182. David Perlov
  1183. The late David Perlov was one of Israel’s leading documentary filmmakers and was also part of the Modernist Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. Using basic film equipment and minimal resources, Perlov began work on his epic creation Diary (1973–1983), which became his best-known work. In it, Perlov documented the day-to-day of his life alongside the dramatic events taking place in Israel at the time. Wigoder 2001 discusses Perlov’s navigation between the “grand History” and the “little History” of daily surroundings in Diary. Zanger 2013 analyzes Perlov’s last film, My Stills (2003), in which he reflects on his own cinematic work through the photographs he took over a period of fifty years.
  1184.  
  1185. Wigoder, Meir. “יומן ויומיום דוד פרלוב:”. Theory and Criticism 18 (2001): 139–153.
  1186.  
  1187. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1188.  
  1189. Discusses the ways in which Diary weaves the private and the public realms of Perlov’s life into a testimony about everyday life. Concentrating on the figure of the anonymous pedestrian together with the anti-dramatic approach to filmmaking enables a constitution of the quotidian. In Hebrew. Translated as “David Perlov: Diary and everyday life”
  1190.  
  1191. Find this resource:
  1192.  
  1193. Zanger, Anat. “The Event and the Picture: David Perlov’s My Stills and Memories of the Eichmann Trial.” In Deeper than Oblivion: Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema. Edited by Raz Yosef and Boaz Hagin, 73–92. New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
  1194.  
  1195. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1196.  
  1197. In his last film, My Stills 1952–2002, David Perlov composes a unique combination of still pictures recorded on video. This chapter focuses on the unique film aesthetics of “delayed cinema” and the Benjaminian concepts of flâneur and passage as part of a process of decoding the collective unconscious.
  1198.  
  1199. Find this resource:
  1200.  
  1201. Uri Zohar
  1202. Uri Zohar was a prominent Israeli entertainer who made eleven fiction films before becoming ultra-Orthodox and leaving the industry. Zanger 2003 (cited under Modernist Cinema) analyzes his first feature film Hole in the Moon (1964), considered one of the most avant-garde and politically subversive films in Israeli cinema and founding the Modernist Cinema of the 1960s and the 1970s. The discussions by Meiri 2005 of Peeping Toms (1972) shows that this film also preempts the post-Zionism world in every term.
  1203.  
  1204. Meiri, Sandra. “Masquerade and Bad Faith in Peeping Toms.” In Special Issue: Israeli Cinema. Edited by Nurith Gertz, Anat Zanger, Nitzan Ben-Shaul, and Judd Ne’eman. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 24 (2005): 107–124.
  1205.  
  1206. DOI: 10.1353/sho.2005.0195Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1207.  
  1208. Argues that Zohar’s Peeping Toms presents an economy of voyeurism and fetishism that unveils the tragic nihilistic existence of the Israeli male in the post-Zionism world. The dissolution of the Zionistic ideology rendered him unable to reexamine his values, caught in a vicious circle of fetishism and bad faith.
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