Close Up on Nurit Kedar
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is proud to present a Close Up look at three films by veteran Israeli documentary director and producer Nurit Kedar: Borders (1999), Lebanon Dream (2001), and Wasted (2007).
Kedar is a filmmaker who does not shy away from controversial topics, but rather is drawn to and illuminates them with a quiet thoughtful gaze and a unique style embodied by precision and elegance. From Asesino (2002, SFJFF 2003), a documentary about Jews who "disappeared" under Argentina's former military Junta, to One Shot (2004), a documentary in which she gained unprecedented access to snipers in the Israeli army and privileged their view of "one shot" targeted killing, Kedar offers unblinking observations of war with a highly trained but also restrained eye—restrained in a way that is clearly the sign of a seasoned director who wants to draw viewers in and allow them their own conclusions.
Her film Hanuszka (SFJFF@YBCA 2007) is a documentary that creatively mixes contemporary interviews of Hanna Mandelberger—a Jewish Polish girl who was aided during WWII by a young Father Karel Wojtyla (later Pope John Paul II)—with dramatic recreations using a young actress. Not many documentary directors are successful when using historical recreations, but Kedar pulls it off with skilled performances from her actors that bring to life Mandelberger's stories today.
It is remarkable to see together the three films we are showing this year— Borders, Lebanon Dream and Wasted — because they each provide a different angle on the absurdity of war and the strange transformations that human beings of all nationalities and religions undergo under the pressure of war. Borders is a series of vignettes portraying people deeply affected by living along Israel's complex and shifting borders—boundaries that are sometimes porous and sometimes impenetrable. Lebanon Dream focuses on one of the subjects first seen in Borders, Samir Farhat, a war profiteer who is a cross between Brecht's Mother Courage and a character in a Greek tragedy. Rather than depicting him simply as either a heinous profiteer or a survivor and provider for his family, Kedar taps into the archetypal; suddenly we ask, Did he contribute to creating the war, or did the war create him?
But it is Wasted, Kedar's superb newest film, that really showcases her talent for letting her subjects speak for themselves. The film is a candid look at Israeli soldiers stationed in the Southern Lebanese fortress of Beaufort just before Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. Wasted shows how these young men go to war and come back utterly, but sometimes imperceptibly, changed. The camera searches their faces; often their gestures speak as loud as their words.
Kedar says, "Who ever did not sit with them in the ambush or at the observation post, cannot understand, and that is the tragedy—this tremendous disconnect that you feel as a parent to a child serving in these places. They will not talk to you about each of the experiences they had. You will not get into these places. They are alone with their memories. When they opened the door for me, I understood how much I did not know."
Interspersed between the soldiers' testimonies are a few very short dance sequences created by renowned choreographer Ohad Naharin and performed by Batsheva Dance Company. These sequences function as emotional punctuation and allow us to breathe and absorb the memories of the soldiers. The result is strangely beautiful and spine-tingling.
Nurit Kedar has produced many documentaries for television; her credits include senior producer at the CNN bureau in Jerusalem and senior producer on Israeli Channel 2 (for which she produced and directed 12 films and 5 documentary series).
Nurit Kedar will be attending the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and will participate in a Q&A after the screening of her films in San Francisco and Berkeley.
There will be a panel on Israeli Documentary Filmmaking after the screening of Wasted on Saturday, July 28 at 1:50pm in Berkeley (the panel is included in the regular ticket price).
Nurit Kedar's thoughts about her Filmmaking
"A good documentary is where you get to see a conflict. Israel is a place of human conflicts, which creates impossible situations. In this plastic artificial world we live in, I chose other angles to show the human conflicts.
Lebanon Dream or Borders, One Shot or Wasted, it's about the toll of war on the souls of young men who should be in the prime of their lives, overflowing with testosterone, energy and enthusiasm. Instead they are all war-weary and world-weary. It's their collective frustration and agony with the contradictions that go with military service, with being trapped in a no-win situation—with the perverse boomerang of national "pride."
It is about all wars, about the waste of life (and limb) in all human tragedies that kill the souls of soldiers, populations and governments. That litter the landscape of history.
We gave them the authority to kill
We gave them the authority to decide,
They are only 18 years old
And look what we have done to them.
Nurit Kedar
Director