This SIIS faculty syllabus explores the depiction of space and place in Israeli feature films, with an eye to how to incorporate cinema into teaching Israel studies. We will look at the way Israeli films make deliberate use of set and setting – landscape, cityscape, public space, interior space, domestic space – to pose questions and explore personal, family, social and political issues.
As a dynamic merging of language and moving image, film selects, imagines and constructs spaces in ways that comment upon, challenge or reinforce what occurs on the level of narrative. By paying attention to the depiction of space cinematic spaces, we can trace such themes as the evolution of the trope of “the land” (as foundational Zionist engagement, as transformative medium, as contested space), the psychological turn in Israeli culture, gender issues, perceptions of minorities, the construction and fragmentation of identities, and the complexities of “home” and “homeland.”
Essential Reading/Viewing
Available on Netflix:
- Fill the Void (2012) – Dir. Rama Burshtein
- Dancing Arabs (2014) – Dir. Eran Riklis Baba Joon (2015) – Dir. Yuval Delshad
- Sand Storm (2016) – Dir. Elite Zexer
Available on YouTube:
- Wedding in Galilee (1987) – Dir. Michel Khleifi
- Gett – The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (2014) – Dir. Ronit Elkabetz
Nurith Gertz, Space and Gender in the New Israeli and Palestinian Cinema, in Prooftexts, Vol. 22, No. 1-2 (2002), pp. 157-185
Recommended Viewing
Sallah Shabbati (1964) – Dir. Ephraim Kishon
Broken Wings (2002) – Dir. Nir Bergman
Someone to Run With (2006) – Dir. Oded Davidoff
Recommended Reading
Barbara Mann, Space and Place in Jewish Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012).
Loshitzky, Yosefa, Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2002).
Shohat, Ella, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1989).