Twenty-five selected docu-films will be screened during the five days of “Docotext,” the National Library Documentary Film Festival, which features four premieres and a series of one-time events (14-18.8).
The festival will open with Moti Kirschenbaum’s film “Water Cisterns” (1982) documenting a mythological encounter between two cultural giants on both sides of the political spectrum: Naomi Shemer, Amos Keinan and Amos Oz for a conversation about the love of the homeland and the face of the State of Israel.
The screening of the film will be preceded by an exposure tour that will lead to special items from the Naomi Shemer archive, and letters by Amos Oz and Amos Keinan kept in the library. The event after the screening will feature a discussion on the festival stage with the participation of the next generation: Leli Shemer, Shlomzion Keinan, Fanya Oz Salzberger and Canaan Kirschenbaum.
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Among the other events and films at the festival:
The film “The Last Episode of AB Yehoshua” will be screened in memory and honor of the important and beloved author who recently passed away. Before the screening of the film, visitors will have a rare glimpse into his personal archive kept in the library’s basements, and after the screening, the author’s researcher and close friend, Bilha Ben Eliyahu, will talk about their many encounters in Jerusalem, the city where he was born and loved.
“What’s been happening to me lately” The film that accompanies the actress and cultural woman Rebecca Michaeli, who is divided between Israel and the country she loves, to the United States where her family lives and lives. After the screening of the film, there will be a meeting with Michaeli.
“The Words That Remain,” a film that focuses on the story of six people who remember their mother tongues and childhood. At the end of the screening, there will be a performance with Moshe Musa Sheetrit from the life of the Moroccan Jewish language, Avi Cohen, director of the Ben Zvi Institute’s Piyut Ensemble, during which they will teach the audience to sing in Moroccan from the songs of a non-Moroccan Jew, Bob Dylan.
A seminar in collaboration with the Documentary Creators’ Forum will be held following the screening of the film “Following the Lost Time”, in which the place and role of archives in the documentary will be examined.
The festival will close with the screening of the episode in the “Albums” series dedicated to Eviatar Banai, in which Banai returns from years away to his masterful and exposed debut album that he recorded when he was 23 years old, an album that captured the audience and became a milestone in Israeli music. At the end of the screening, there will be a rare and exciting performance by Eviatar Banai with a quartet of strings who will perform some of the album’s best hits.
In view of the violent and painful events in the Russian-Ukrainian arena, the spotlight will also be turned on what is happening in the attacked Ukraine. Among the festival films that will shed light on the daily life, culture and identity of the citizens living in Ukraine with the sounds of the ongoing war in the background, two will be premiered in Israel:
“Novorussia” is a film that sends a special look at the daily routine of the residents of the Donbas region living under constant war between the pro-Russian separatists who took over the region, and the Ukrainian army, before Putin’s invasion. And the film “Treasures of the Black Sea” about the exhibition “Crimea and the Gold of Treasures” reinforced in the basements of the Museum of Archeology at the University of Amsterdam.
The films that will be screened in an Israeli premiere “Make My Voice”, which tells the story of activist journalist Messi Alinjar, as expressing the voices of millions of Iranian women rebelling against the hijab. Following the film, there will be a lecture entitled “Girls of Revolution Street: Women and Social Protest in Iran” moderated by Dr. Liora Handelman, Head of the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University. His hand in the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt was rediscovered, thanks to a wonderful chain of events.
In the best tradition, the festival will also screen selected films from the last Dokaviv Festival, including the winning film ‘Dr. Morris’ Camera’, “1341 frames from Micha Bar Am’s Camera”, “Mosinson – Absolutely a Secret”, “Cesaria Evora”, “Kurt Wengot: Liberated from Time “,” The Heir of Tattoos “and other movies.
This is the eighth year of the existence of the “Docotext”, which will be the last year in which the festival will be held in the building of the National Library at the Hebrew University of Givat Ram. In March 2023, the library will move to its new home, where the construction of the magnificent building in Kiryat HaLeum in Jerusalem is currently being completed.
Docotext Festival 14-18.8 For more details