• Thu 08 – Sun 11 10 2015 •
Always the Trouble with Avi Avi Mograbi

with AVI MOGRABI
Curated by RASHA SALTI

Venues: Academyspace, Herwarthstraße 3, 50672 Cologne (8 10 2015)
Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig, Bischofsgartenstraße 1, 50667 Cologne (9–11 10 2015)
In cooperation with the ifs internationale filmschule köln

An event in the frame of PLURIVERSALE III.

All films are preceded by a short introduction by curator Rasha Salti and followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.

FILM PROGRAM

Thu 8 10 2015 / 20:00
AVI MOGRABI
Deportation
12', Israel 1989 Tavlit
5', Israel 1999 Wait, It’s the Soldiers, I’ll Hang up Now
12', Israel 2002, Hebrew with English subs Venue: Academyspace, Herwarthstraße 3, 50672 Cologne
English
3€

The conversation between Rasha Salti and Israeli director Avi Mograbi will revisit his singular trajectory as a filmmaker, the complexity of his practice and probe his recent interest in video installations and performance. Mograbi was trained as an artist, but during his childhood and adolescence, his father owned a cinema. After working on the set of a couple of productions, he ventured into making his own films. His films have received worldwide critical acclaim, at the box office, they reap the returns of radical auteur cinema. Mograbi draws inspiration from his own life, as well as from contacts through his political and civic activism. In the past ten years, he has been increasingly interested in showcasing filmic material as well as elements from the dramaturgy of his films in video installations and performance. The short films screened are the precursors to his practice as a video installation artist. They also foreground his filmic practice as they are radical in form and content.

Fri 9 10 2015 / 20:00
AVI MOGRABI
Once I Entered a Garden
99', Israel, France, Switzerland 2012, Hebrew, Arabic, French with English subs
Venue: Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig, Bischofsgartenstraße 1, 50667 Cologne
3 €

The film begins with a dream. It’s 1920; Avi and his grandfather Ibrahim are standing outside their family home in Damascus. Ibrahim tells Avi that the family has decided to move to Tel Aviv, and Avi replies he would like to stay “and look after the house.” Staged as the pre- production for a film, under the guise of looking for the locations for these “lost” geographies, Once I Entered a Garden explores the possibility of that reverie. As the film unravels, a lapsed geography of communal co-existence emerges with humor and tenderness. The screening is followed by between Avi Mograbi and CHRISTOPH TERHECHTE, head of the Berlinale’s Forum.

Sat 10 10 2015 / 16:00
AVI MOGRABI
How I Learned to Overcome My Fear and Love Arik Sharon
61', Israel 1997, Hebrew with English subs
Venue: Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig, Bischofsgartenstraße 1, 50667 Cologne
3 €

Ariel Sharon’s 1996 electoral campaign presented an occasion for Avi Mograbi to make a film about the Israeli leader. As the shooting progressed and Mograbi’s camera captured a polite and sometimes amusing “hawk,” the contrast between the leader’s demeanor and the desincarnation of his deeds sharpens. Mograbi was thus inspired to reverse his approach: instead of seeking the dramatic moment where Sharon’s “truth” is revealed, he dramatizes his own persona, casting himself as a filmmaker who undergoes the transformation from a left-wing artist to a supporter of Sharon.

Sat 10 10 2015 / 17:30
AVI MOGRABI
August
72', Israel, France 2002, Hebrew with English subs
Venue: Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig, Bischofsgartenstraße 1, 50667 Cologne
3 €

A film within a film, August alleges to lens on an unguarded portrait of Israeli society in extremis, when the scorching summer month seems to portend the violence that permeates it. We discover a society wracked with bitterness and suspicion, animated by anger, where citizens are continuously hounded by the fear of potential enemies hiding everywhere, near and far. In the meantime, the filmmaker’s wife is held hostage by the producer of another film about the massacre of Palestinians in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

Sat 10 10 2015 / 19:00
AVI MOGRABI
Avenge But One of My Two Eyes
100', France, Israel 2005, Hebrew, English
Venue: Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig, Bischofsgartenstraße 1, 50667 Cologne
3 €

“O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee only this once, that I may be avenged of the Philistines. O God, avenge but one of my two eyes.” Samson, the hero of a Hebrew founding myth, is the Palestinian suicide bomber of our time. Filmed during the Second Intifada, the film follows the staging of the founding Zionist myths of victimhood while the Israeli army implements a brutal counter-insurgency operation and holds the West Bank under siege. The jarring contrast peels away the ideological fictions.

Sun 11 10 2015 / 18:30
AVI MOGRABI
Z32
82', France, Israel 2008, Hebrew with English subs
Venue: Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig, Bischofsgartenstraße 1, 50667 Cologne
3 €

Presented as a musical documentary tragedy, Z32 films the confessions of a young elite soldier from the Israeli army who has participated in the revenge killing of two Palestinian policemen. In his disclosures to his girlfriend, the soldier seeks redemption. Punctuated with musical sequences reminiscent of a classic Greek tragic chorus, Z32 raises questions about the schism between the disturbing experience of the murder and its transposition to cinema, the unbridgeable void between the brutality of reality and ist conversion as a work of art.

Sun 11 10 2015 / 21:00
AVI MOGRABI
Happy Birthday, Mr. Mograbi
77', Israel, France 1999, Hebrew with English subs
Venue: Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig, Bischofsgartenstraße 1, 50667 Cologne
3 €

On Israel’s 50th anniversary, Mograbi is commissioned by an Israeli TV producer to make a film. Since the occasion also marks the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe), a Palestinian producer commissions him to shoot traces of the ruins of Palestinian homes and other signs of lives lost. Suddenly, the filmmaker realizes that his 42nd birthday coincides with Israel’s anniversary. The triptych ends with Israel’s Independence Day celebrations, while Palestinians protesters are shot dead by Israeli soldiers.