Film Festival : Cannes 99

Kadosh

Amos Gitai

A lthough Kadosh (Sacred) is down in the festival book as the first Israeli film in a quarter-century to compete at Cannes, Amos Gitai is a familiar face on the international festival circuit. The Paris-based director's Esther, an Israeli-French co-production lensed partially by the eminent French cinematographer Henri Alekan, was invited to participate in the Critics' Week at Cannes in 1986. Three years later, his collaboration with Alekan and Israeli cinematographer Nuritz Aviv - Berlin Jerusalem (France, 1989), about German writer Else Lasker-Schüler's emigration to Israel - was invited to Venice.

The hat-trick of adding Berlin to the string of Gitai/Alekan festival triumphs came eight years ago, when Golem/The Spirit Of Exil (France, 1991) - a cross-European co-production about exiles and emigrants - premiered at the 1992 International Forum of Young Cinema as part of a four-film tribute to the director. Starring Hanna Schygulla and such screen and stage luminaries as Samuel Fuller, Bernardo Bertolucci, Marceline Loridan, Philippe Garrel, Sotigui Kouyate (Peter Brooks ensemble) and Antonio Carallo (Pina Bausch Dance Company), the film also completed a fine trilogy on exile and emigration.

"All my films focus on exile," confirmed Amos Gitai in a recent interview, "be it inner exile or the exile of a people displaced in space or time - like this community which brings us back to reflections of the past. "

Jerusalem's lot For Kadosh, Gitai chose to shoot in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox Jewish quarter, where tourists are often attacked on the streets because of affronts to the accepted dress code. "It is through fiction," he added, "that I am able to show the contradictions inherent in these communities' imperviousness to our times."

Born in 1950 in Haifa, Amos Gitai is the son of Munio Gitai, a member of the pre-war Bauhaus movement in Germany. He studied architecture in Haifa and at the University of California Berkeley and was wounded in action in the Yom Kippur War. His interest in film-making stems back to Super-8 experimental films and his subject matter can be just as provocative - a documentary made for Israeli TV, Bait/The House (1977), which portrayed three families (Jewish, Arab, and Jewish-Arab) all living together in the Wadi Rushmia river valley, was not aired on the grounds that it was too pro-Palestinian.

Kadosh might be just as controversial when it appears on Israeli screens. Co-scripted with Eliette Abecassis - because Gitai wanted a woman's perspective - it is the story of two sisters, Rivka (Yaël Abecassis) and Malka (Meital Barda), who live in a community where the rabbi has the last say over everyone's lives. Because Rivka has been infertile for 10 years, the rabbi decrees that she should be abandoned by the husband who loves her nonetheless, in favour of another wife. As for the unmarried Malka, the insistence is on her to marry the rabbi's faithful religious assistant. Both women face a difficult choice - whether to accept the decision or rebel.

Fiction or not, Amos Gitai's films are always based on fact and thorough research of the subject matter. In his widely praised documentary on The Wadi 1981-1991, he spent a decade exploring the possibilities and impossibilities of full integration between countless social fractions in Israel, within the microcosm of a Haifa slum.

In the feature film Devarim (1995), presented at Venice, he adapted a well-known Hebrew novel to the screen in such a way as to compare the contradictions within modern-day Tel Aviv life.

Much the same holds true for Kadosh, a portrait of the city of Jerusalem as well as of a community. Ron Holloway

Film Credits
Producer	Michel Propper, Amos Gitai
Director	Amos Gitai
Screenplay	Michel Propper, Amos Gitai
Editing	Monica Coleman, Kobi Netanel
Photo	Renato Berta
Music	Philippe Eidel
Decor	Miguel Markin
Costume	Laura Dinulasco
Cast	Yael Abecassis, Yoram Hattab, Meital Barda, Uri Ran Klauzner, Yussef Abu Warda, Sami Hori, Lea Koenig, Alvka Michaeli
Running time	110 min
Sales	UGC International