Short Documentary Films produced by Beit Berl College Faculty of Arts – Film Department and IFS, Internationale Filmschule, Cologne, Germany.
In Germany and in Israel the basic social, cultural fabric is in a process of change. This process touches upon issues of personal identity, of the self-definition of young Israelis and Germans in a multicultural society. How do these changes affect the definition of ‘homeland’? Are there fears from the future and how are these fears expressed? Is society today defined by the tensions that tear it apart? What is the connection of these changes to the history of the Germans and the Israelis? These were the questions with which the students of both schools started out to define their films.
The four films of the project testify to the point-of-view of the documentarist, an ‘accidental tourist’ in a foreign country.
This is a unique project of full cooperation between the two schools in which the Beit Berl students with full support of IFS students created two films in Germany and the IFS students worked together with their Beit Berl colleagues on two films in Israel.
Tamar, a 33-year-old Tel Aviv comics artist, watches passersby’s, listens to their conversations and translates her impressions into comics with an ironic expression. She peels off the mask from a society, in the eye of the storm, that claims to be liberal and in which everyone has an opinion about everything.
As a child, Issa committed a prank that made him the hero Abu Akka’ (The father of Acre) for some of Akka’s people. For the other part, he was stamped a security threat and was put in jail as a young child. He lives until today with the consequences of that day. Now, in the city which is divided between Jews and Arabs, Issa takes us on a stroll, telling his story in his hometown in which he finds himself lost and connected.
Nico Schussler, born in Germany is a trainer in the Israeli martial arts Krav Maga, which has become very popular in Germany in recent years due to the complex reality of confronting refugees, immigrants and existential fears. Schussler devotes his life to helping Germans deal with their fears in the context of a changing Germany.
On one bus line that crosses Dormagen you can see a social microcosm. From refugees who have just arrived to elderly Germans, all are destined to travel in the metal pipe that creates forced intimacy.
