Amos Gitai, tonight

A text written for Libération in 1982 that wasn't included in the (not so) complete writings La maison cinéma et le monde (vol. 2). Thanks to Pierre Eugène for unearthing it and for highlighting its importance (see the quote from Gitai below).

I just finished my first film, House, and I had a friend, Daniel Cohen, who was in the Parisian branch of the Israeli Black Panthers, who called Daney and told him, "Listen, we can’t organise a proper screening, but there is a little space in Place Clichy with a half-broken monitor and video player, and are you ok to come?". And Serge Daney said yes immediately, asking what it was about. My friend explained. I remember because we couldn’t afford subtitles so I had to do a whispering of the subtitles into his ear. And for me, he was instantly the model of someone who has a good vision of cinema. A person who can absolutely mingle with celebrities but must also stay open if a young filmmaker arrives with his first video. He gave us his full attention. He watched House and the first chapter of Wadi. And after that, he wrote in Libération what was perhaps the first ever review of one of my films.  

Amos Gitai, in Serge Daney, le cinéma et le monde, a documentary by Serge Le Péron.   

 

Amos Gitai, tonight  

There’s a film  screening tonight at the Centre Pompidou (7pm) that mustn’t be missed. Its title is House and its auteur is Amos Gitai. Gitai is young and Israeli, and this house is located somewhere in Israel. As the film starts, in a deafening noise of bulldozers, the house is changing hands and being rebuilt. The house never stops changing. It was there before Israel came into being; it was once a beautiful Palestinian home. Then it became one of those "unclaimed" properties and was automatically allocated to Israelis. For a long time, it was inhabited by Algerian Jews. Today, a university professor is about to move in.   

Gitai has a simple idea: bring to the construction site all the previous owners of the house, from the Algerians (happy to have been relocated into better housing in town) to the elderly Palestinian who comes cutting a proud figure, speaking in English and vacantly staring at this house that still moves him. Gitai also captures the (cynical) points of view of the building contractor and the Arab workers, those with the bulldozer. This house is Arab, they know it, but what can they do? They are powerless, they say, and are holding their tongues. Gitai wants this house to become something both very symbolic and very concrete, he wants it to become a film character. He manages to  give us one of the most beautiful things a camera can record "live": different people looking at the same thing yet seeing different things, and being moved by this sight. In this half-collapsed house, genuine hallucinations begin to take shape.   

The idea behind the film is simple and the film is powered by the strength of this idea. Nothing more, nothing less. The camera holds on tight to this idea (but, thank goodness, is never at the service of it). In order to speak about this land and this house, Gitai has found the kind of emotional quality that we’re more accustomed to seeing in the work of Arab filmmakers (Alaouié, Khleifi).  

House was made in 1981 for Israeli television, which took offense and censored the film. The Israeli authorities had lost all composure in front of a film that demonstrated a cool serenity. Amos Gitai didn’t give up and was intent on showing his film in Europe. It was shown at festivals. In Vittel, it was the Club Med’s turn to lose its composure: it gave in to Israel’s official pressure, and the filmmaker had to show his film on video in his hotel room. It was then shown in Nantes. And it will be shown in Rotterdam. The filmmaker is in the middle of this inter-festival slalom and has become the courier for his own film. Tonight, the slalom is stopping by the Centre Pompidou.  

Published in Libération, 16-17 December 1982. Translated by Laurent Kretzschmar and Srikanth Srinivasan