By Akin Ajayi
‘Cameras are everywhere, especially in places where disasters suddenly erupt, creating the illusion that no catastrophe is left unphotographed,” Ariella Azoulay observed of “Untaken Photographs,” an exhibit she curated. “But regime-made disasters — which usually do not erupt suddenly, continue for some time and lack a spectacular visual dimension — tend to evade the archival filter, or to destroy it.”
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By Akin Ajayi
‘The Monayer Family: Three Videos by Dor Guez,” on exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York until September 7, presents a series of short films that offer an intimate, subtly critical assessment of contemporary multicultural Israel. Guez’s films consider the Christian Arab population — a minority within a minority — whose social identity is subsumed by sweeping political considerations. Spanning three generations of the eponymous Monayer family of Lod, the films collectively pose complicated arguments about the construction and negotiation of personal identity, teasing out the threads by which the different family members construct their sense of self. The questions that the films prompt are neither subversive nor willfully provocative; but by emphasizing the interplay between personal and political constructions of identity, they serve as a bold attempt at reconfiguring the stereotypical assumptions that prevail today.
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By Akin Ajayi
Ahead of the publication of “Homesick” in the United States, Israeli novelist Eshkol Nevo is in a contemplative mood. Talking about his books abroad affords him the opportunity to “look at one’s county from the outside.” The natural instinct, to be wary of criticism — particularly when not grounded in any obvious reference point — is tempered by engagement with foreign audiences, and always prompts something of a re-evaluation. “When I get out, I feel more ambivalent; I remember that my picture [of Israel] is not full,” he said in an interview with the Forward. One could say that this is the driving force behind Eshkol’s fiction: the desire to engage unflinchingly with the complexities of Israel’s social landscape, contradictions and all.
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By Akin Ajayi
Rachel Shabi’s “You Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands” provides an impassioned argument against the neglect of the country’s Middle Eastern identity. In this Q&A, Shabi explains why she thinks, “the Israeli take on history is not terribly accommodating to different narratives.
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By Akin Ajayi
During a recent interview with the Forward, the Jerusalem-born director and activist Avigail Sperber described her new film, “
Halakeh,” as a “small story… through which one can understand the place of a woman in Jewish religious culture.” Starring the Israeli actors Ohad Knoller and Hani Furstenberg, “
Halakeh” documents the emotional journey of a young observant couple, as they travel to Mount Meron to participate in the
halakeh ceremony — the shearing of a male child’s hair on the Lag B’Omer following his third birthday. The film dissects the couple’s relationship, which is placed under strain by the differing interpretations the couple make of their religious faith.
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