>But listen, you should have taken her advice. Read the Bible, daily. I
>try to. It is an amazing piece of cruel, pityless, imperialistic,
>racist, sexist, homophopic hate mongering.
***** Esther
Israel/France/Great Britain 1986 Director: Amos Gitai Cast: Simona Benyamini, Mohammed Bakri, Juliano Merr, Zare Vartanian
Amos Gitai's first fiction film -- and the first in a Diaspora Trilogy that also includes _Berlin-Jerusalem_ and _Golem--The Spirit of Exile_ -- was this retelling of the Biblical story of Purim. Esther, a beautiful Jewish girl married to the king of Persia, attempts to save her people from a massacre plotted by Haman, one of her husband's aides. The film stays faithful to its Old Testament source while slipping anachronistic modern elements into the frame. "Gitai was interested in the story of Esther both as the only diaspora story in the Bible and as a myth of survival, of fighting back. Typically he also presents a repressed part of that familiar tale, the bloody revenge killings by Jews of their enemies. The tragic cycle of violence, seemingly intractable, resonates with contemporary events, a connection made visible by setting the story in the ruins of Wadi Salib -- prior to 1948, an Arab neighbourhood of Haifa, then Moroccan Jewish, later purposefully destroyed....Beautifully shot by Henri Alékan, and enacted in stylized tableaux, the film has a cool approach until the final scene, when the Arab and Jewish actors talk of their own personal struggles with displacement" (Pacific Film Archive).
Colour, 35mm, in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles. 97 mins.
<http://www.cinematheque.bc.ca/gitai.html#10> *****
***** ESTHER
Directed by Amos Gitai Israel/Great Britain 1986, 35mm, color, 97 min. With Simona Benyamini, Mohammed Bakri, Julianno Merr Hebrew with English subtitles
In order to explore issues surrounding present-day conflicts in the Middle East, Gitai conceived an immense tableau vivant that narrates the biblical tale of Esther: the story of a people who fought back against persecution using every means at their disposal and, above all, their intelligence. The film was shot in an abandoned Haifa slum from which Algerians had been evicted. Intrusions of contemporary reality -- the honking of a car horn, the passing of a jet plane -- frequently puncture the film, bringing the ancient and contemporary issues into dialogue. Gitai claims that "in many ways, this is a film about memory-memories which are reflected through image and songs, through tales and music; memories stored in the songs of the Yemenite Jews who crossed the Arabian desert and reached Jerusalem about three generations ago; memories kept alive in Palestinian exile songs."
<http://www.harvardfilmarchive.org/calendars/00novdec/amos.htm> *****
Osman Kibar, "Amos Gitai: The Power Is in the Restrictions," <http://www.filmwatch.net/gitai.htm>. -- Yoshie
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