22.01.–28.02.2021
Lectures/Events

Online film program: Three films by Avi Mograbi

Our online program continues with a focus on a few artists who are combining art and politics in their work.

Three films by Avi Mograbi
Programmed by Séamus Kealy.

The first film in this program is Z32

The second film is Between Fences

The third film is How I Learned to overcome my fear and love Arik Sharon

We do not however recommend that Avi Mograbi’s films be viewed by children. All other films by Avi Mograbi can be watched for free at his website www.avimograbi.org.

Israeli filmmaker and video artist Avi Mograbi was born in 1956 in Tel Aviv, where he lives and works to this day. Having studied art and philosophy, he gained his first production experiences working as an assistant director on commercials and feature films, while his own filmmaking career began in 1989. Since 1999, he has taught documentary and experimental film at Tel Aviv University and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.

Mograbi, one of Israel’s most distinguished filmmakers, is known for his unwavering commitment to social, cultural and political justice in the Middle East, as well as his experimentalism and innovative contribution to cinematic language. Avi Mograbi’s documentary films have been programmed by festivals worldwide, including: Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Rome, New York, FID Marseille, Vision du Reel and San Francisco, among others.

Over the next two weeks, a number of Avi Mograbi’s films will be showcased on our online program. These are free viewings for our audiences and public alike, with the expressed consent of the film-maker. Avi Mograbi’s films are often hard-hitting and do not spare critique of the Israeli government’s policies towards Palestinians and Migrants. There are often difficult topics broached very directly but also via Brechtian or other innovative strategies, which place his films in a unique category of political film-making. Often appearing in his own films as a quasi-narrator and explorer of difficult themes, Mograbi himself is an intense character and an engaged film-maker, often confronting political controversy and absurdity and state-sanctioned oppression, and even physically confronting those entwined within political apparatuses directly with his camera. Despite the difficult themes, we see a committed political individual who balances his ongoing project between determination, passion, empathy, creative spirit, and humour.