Berlin-Jerusalem

For his second feature film, Gitai was inspired by historical events that are interwoven with his family history: It is about an early Jewish settlement in Palestine before the Second World War. The focus is on the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, who fled from the Nazis, and the Russian-born intellectual Manja Schochat, one of the leading Zionists of her time. She had already come to Jerusalem in 1905 as a member of an experimental kibbutz. The decadent Berlin cafés in which the film begins are already tinged with the smell of the coming terror, but the situation of the immigrants in Jerusalem is also serious. Gitai's revisionist, experimental portrait of the origins of Zionism is one of the most complex and rewarding explorations of the subject: it refuses to be ideologically appropriated for biased purposes and, as always, argues for a deeper understanding of history. (Jurij Meden)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum