Duration of stay: 29 January – 20 February 2025
In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger
Funded by University of Pennsylvania Center for Experimental Ethnography and ConTrust
Ra’anan Alexandrowicz is an Israeli filmmaker and writer now living in Philadelphia, PA. His award-winning work seeks to make the invisible visible and challenge political and formal conventions. Ra’anan’s most recent film is The Viewing Booth, an in-depth study of how a young pro-Israeli American viewer sees images of abuse of Palestinian rights, which premiered at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival. He is best known for The Law in These Parts (2011), which exposes the existence of a parallel legal system in Israel that applies only to Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, and which received the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and a Peabody Award. His earlier documentaries, The Inner Tour (2001), which follows a group of Palestinians on a bus tour through the state of Israel, and Martin (1999), which tells the controversial story of a Dachau KZ survivor, were shown at the Berlin Film Festival and in MoMA’s New Directors/New Films. Alexandrowicz’s sole fiction feature, James‘ Journey to Jerusalem (2003), a dark comedy about a devout young African man who attempts a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, premiered in Cannes’ Directors‘ Fortnight and at the Toronto Film Festival, and received several international awards.
Research project: 1 Land 2 Cinemas
In 1896 two unrelated events happened. In Vienna Theodore Herzel so published the essay Der Judenstaat. In Paris, the Lumiere Brothers released their invention the Cinematograph. Since then, the history of the Israeli Palestinian conflict has been entangled with the history of cinema. From the emergence of early Zionist cinema, through the first decades of Israeli cinema, continuing with the film units of the Palestine Liberation organization and all the way to the unchecked release of images from the current war- over the last century two separate cinematic traditions developed in Palestine/Israel. Sometimes negating and sometimes complimenting each other, Israeli and Palestinian cinemas make up a unique case in which there are two separate cinemas for one land. The 1L2C research team, will explore cinematic objects[1] and historical facts, deconstruct and evaluate narratives and myths that enable it. The team will study and scrutinize the two cinema histories, follow the parallels and reflections and ask ourselves, if cinema is a reflection of the painful reality of the conflict or one of the drivers of it?
[1] The term Cinema is used here in an expansive way. Cinematic objects include type of moving image in any form and mode of viewership. From features and documentary films, through news, old “Super 8” home movies, all the way to YouTube and TikTok videos. Short, long, viral or buried in archives and never yet seen all are part of the medium for the purpose of this research.
Publications
The Viewing Booth (2020), The Law in These Parts (2012), James‘ Journey to Jerusalem (2004), The Inner Tour (2000)
For further information also see: www.onceinabluemoonfilms.com
Events
The Record and the Narrative. The Documentary Cinema of Ra’anan Alexandrowicz
Tuesday, February 11, 2025, 8 p.m.
The Law in These Parts
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Wednesday, February 12, 2025, 4 p.m.
The Inner Tour
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Wednesday, February, 12, 2025, 6:15 p.m.
The Viewing Booth
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