Homeland and Exile
Cinema of Amos Gitai

November 20 - December 1, 2013

Pera Film in collaboration with the Institut français and the Consulate General of Israel present the program Homeland and Exile: Cinema of Amos Gitai. The program, which showcases seven films by Gitai, also presents the unique opportunity of a Masterclass with the famous director.

Born in 1950, and best known to the public for his film Kippur, shown at Cannes in 2000, the Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai bases his work to a large extent on personal experience, including the Yom Kippur war and other historic events in Israel. Gitai began making short experimental works with a super-8mm camera while studying architecture. Gitai brought his camera along while serving as a soldier during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and from his experiences filming on and off the battlefield arose a commitment to making films and videos about the deep complexities of contemporary Israel, anti-Semitism, and the fluid nature of borders. Early in his film career, Gitai made controversial documentaries for Israeli television, including 1980's "House," about the politically driven changes a single residence in Jerusalem undergoes over the years, and 1982's "Field Diary," about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Gitai has also expanded the frontiers of nonfiction filmmaking with a series of documentaries that are as mutable as the shifting realities the artist records.

Today, Gitai’s art – not just his films – has attained a profound maturity as he continues to explore themes that have accompanied his rich career as a director in other disciplines such as photography. His images oscillate between personal and collective memory. Taken in the moment, and with all its emotions, they are like an improvised autobiography, becoming, with hindsight, testimony to a shared reality. The coherence and evolution of his work are now evident through the diversity of the media he uses, constituting a complex mosaic whose guiding thread is essentially biographical. Major retrospectives of his work have been shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Lincoln Center in New York and the British Film Institute in London.

in collaboration

November 20

19:00 Alila

November 21

19:00 News From Home - News From House

November 22

19:00 One Day You'll Understand

November 23

14:00 Roses à Crédit

16:00 One Day You'll Understand

18:00 Esther

November 27

19:00 Alila

November 28

19:00 Esther

November 29

19:00 News From Home - News From House

November 30

14:00 Kippur

19:00 Disengagement

December 1

14:00 Disengagement

16:00 Kippur

18:00 Roses à Crédit

Esther

Esther

 Kippur

Kippur

Alila

Alila

News From Home - News From House

News From Home - News From House

Disengagement

Disengagement

One Day You'll Understand

One Day You'll Understand

Roses à Crédit

Roses à Crédit

Program Trailer

Homeland and Exile
Cinema of Amos Gitai

Amos Gitai’s art – not just his films – has attained a profound maturity as he continues to explore themes that have accompanied his rich career as a director in other disciplines such as photography. His images oscillate between personal and collective memory.

Amos Gitai in Conversation

Amos Gitai in Conversation

Il Cavallo di Leonardo

Il Cavallo di Leonardo

In 1493, exactly 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci was finishing the preparations for casting the equestrian monument (4 times life size), which Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan commissioned in memory of his father some 12 years earlier. 

Dancing on Architecture

Dancing on Architecture

I think it was Frank Zappa – though others claim it was Laurie Anderson – who said in an interview that ‘writing on music is much like dancing on architecture’. 

From the Age of Reason to the “Tortoise Trainer”

From the Age of Reason to the “Tortoise Trainer”

A Salon exhibition held in the Grand Palais in Paris on May 1, 1906 showcased an Ottoman painting. This was Osman Hamdi Bey’s famous “Tortoise Trainer”.