Portrait
Amos Gitai is considered one of the most respected Israeli filmmakers. His work, which has been in production since the early 1970s, is both a grand narrative and a critical analysis of his homeland. War, conflict, displacement, history, memory and human existence in general are central themes in Gitai’s work.
A closer look also reveals a filmmaker whose oeuvre is far more complex and rich than this simple categorization would suggest. Gitai’s art is perhaps best understood as a constant call for dialog, a radically open-ended project that manifests itself in a fascinating variety of approaches and stories. Like most dialogues in real life, Amos Gitai’s films take winding paths and often end without reaching a moment of catharsis or resolution. And sometimes even fail, true to Beckett’s motto: “Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Gitai was born in Haifa in 1950, the son of Efratia Margalit and Munio Gitai Weinraub. His mother was an intellectual and teacher born in Palestine in 1909, whose parents belonged to the first wave of socialist secular Jewish immigrants; his father was an architect from Galicia who trained at the Bauhaus. It was only after studying architecture himself that Gitai discovered his love of cinema — not least as an instrument of subversion. He began his film career as a documentary filmmaker and, from the outset, tackled themes that were ignored by other artists of his generation.
His cinema does not shy away from addressing the violence that has shaped the past and present of his home country. He is a harsh critic of both Israeli state policy and the justification of terrorist violence against Jews as a “liberation struggle”. Nevertheless, he refuses to take part in the escalation of sectarian violence, hatred and division. Rather, he is interested in bridging differences between social classes and different and sometimes opposing belief systems through interaction. (Michael Loebenstein, Jurij Meden/abridged version)
The Austrian Film Museum is dedicating an extensive retrospective to Amos Gitai in May and June. As part of the festival, two of his shorter works will be shown in cooperation. (dhe)
Amos Gitai is considered one of the most respected Israeli filmmakers. His work, which has been in production since the early 1970s, is both a grand narrative and a critical analysis of his homeland. War, conflict, displacement, history, memory and human existence in general are central themes in Gitai’s work.
A closer look also reveals a filmmaker whose oeuvre is far more complex and rich than this simple categorization would suggest. Gitai’s art is perhaps best understood as a constant call for dialog, a radically open-ended project that manifests itself in a fascinating variety of approaches and stories. Like most dialogues in real life, Amos Gitai’s films take winding paths and often end without reaching a moment of catharsis or resolution. And sometimes even fail, true to Beckett’s motto: “Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Gitai was born in Haifa in 1950, the son of Efratia Margalit and Munio Gitai Weinraub. His mother was an intellectual and teacher born in Palestine in 1909, whose parents belonged to the first wave of socialist secular Jewish immigrants; his father was an architect from Galicia who trained at the Bauhaus. It was only after studying architecture himself that Gitai discovered his love of cinema — not least as an instrument of subversion. He began his film career as a documentary filmmaker and, from the outset, tackled themes that were ignored by other artists of his generation.
His cinema does not shy away from addressing the violence that has shaped the past and present of his home country. He is a harsh critic of both Israeli state policy and the justification of terrorist violence against Jews as a “liberation struggle”. Nevertheless, he refuses to take part in the escalation of sectarian violence, hatred and division. Rather, he is interested in bridging differences between social classes and different and sometimes opposing belief systems through interaction. (Michael Loebenstein, Jurij Meden/abridged version)
The Austrian Film Museum is dedicating an extensive retrospective to Amos Gitai in May and June. As part of the festival, two of his shorter works will be shown in cooperation. (dhe)