Nadav Lapid’s Cinema of Shame

Published By ZapZapInfo  |  English  |  0 Comments

 

Nadav Lapid has the uncertain honor of being the most acclaimed Israeli film director. A perennial favorite at festivals around the world, his autobiographical works explore the machismo of the Israeli regime, the moral predicaments of its artists, and the “sickness” in the souls of its citizens. Lapid wants to be seen as the state’s enfant terrible, a so-called critic whose characters launch epithets at their home: “odious,” “repugnant,” “fetid,” “obscene,” “vulgar.” But Lapid’s art also betrays a tortured affinity for Zionism, complicating his christening as an Israeli punk and perhaps explaining why he has thus far been unwilling to cross the one line that would render him an enemy of his state. His most recent film is Ahed’s Knee, and it is about the knee of a 16-year-old Palestinian girl named Ahed Tamimi.

Well, it is and it isn’t. The film follows an Israeli filmmaker named Y. (Avshalom Pollak), who is invited by a longtime fan, Yahalom (Nur Fibak), to screen his latest film in a small-town community center in the Arabah valley, south of the Dead Sea. Yahalom is a local who works as a librarian for the Israeli Ministry of Culture; upon arrival, she asks Y. to sign an official declaration that commits him to avoid speaking about certain topics deemed unsavory by the Israeli government: Palestinians, no, Israelis, yes; occupation, no, the military, yes; and so on. Angered by the perceived censorship, Y. goes on an hour-long verbal rampage about Israeli hypocrisy, soul-searching amid the desert shrubbery and calling his mother.

Before all this, though, the film begins with Y. casting a new video project, which is titled The Knee of Ahed Tamimi. This is the name of a real-life Palestinian child and political prisoner who was detained for slapping an Israeli soldier and also threatened by an Israeli politician, who asked her jailers in the occupation army to shoot her in…

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