BLACK JEWS – BETA ISRAEL
Free admission Saturday, November 16 & Sunday, November 17 ARSENAL
The history of the Beta Israel or Falasha, an ethnic-religious group whose members originally came from Ethiopia and who have mostly emigrated to Israel since the late 1970s or were forced to emigrate, is largely unknown in this country. In contrast to other stories of the Jewish diaspora on the African continent, that of the Falasha is well represented in film. The special program BLACK JEWS – BETA ISRAEL uses the example of Ethiopian Jews to explore the complex history of Judaism in Africa and its connections to present-day Israel. The program includes feature and documentary films on the topic, as well as a panel discussion. Admission to all events in the focus section is free.
Concept und Curation Black Jews – Beta Israel: Uta Rügner, Florian Wachinger.
The program has been made possible by funds from the “Action Fund against Anti-Semitism” of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.
SA 16 NOV
17:00 ARSENAL
Free admission
OASIS
Bazi Gete
Israel 2024 | Original Version with English subtitles | 18 min
On her 34th birthday, Ethiopian Ronit spends the night with a stranger, a younger, injured truck driver who, like her, carries the burden of loneliness.
FIG TREE
Aalam-Warqe Davidian
Ethiopia/ Israel/ Germany 2018 | Original Version with English subtitles | 93 min
Addis Ababa 1989, in the middle of the civil war. Men are rarely seen on the streets, unless they are members of the military, priests or cripples.
Mina lives with her grandmother and her brother, who has an amputated hand, in a remote neighborhood on the outskirts of Addis Ababa. The 14-year-old experiences the best and worst sides of life at the same time: in Eli, who is Christian, she finds her first great love. But then her Jewish family decides to emigrate to Israel…
Following the screenings
SA 16 NOV
ca. 18:45 ARSENAL
Free admission
PANEL: BLACK JEWS – FILMMAKING IN A COMPLEX MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY
with Aalam-Warqe Davidian (director), Bazi Gete (director), Naomi Levari (producer)
Moderation: Igal Avidan
The panel discussion asks about the potential of Ethiopian-Jewish cinema to overcome divides and to critically negotiate the complexity and diversity of Israeli society, both internally and externally, while countering anti-Semitic clichés.
In addition to the two directors Aalam-Warqe Davidian and Bazi Gete, the Israeli producer Naomi Levari will be a guest. Moderation: Igal Avidan.
AALAM-WARQE DAVIDIAN (born 1980) is an Ethiopian-Israeli film director. She is a graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem and has worked as a researcher for the documentary filmmaker Ada Ushpiz. Her short films KORKI and CLEANING TIME have been shown at festivals around the world. Aalam-Warque’s short film FACING THE WALL (2016) won the main prize at the Jerusalem International Film Festival. Her feature film debut FIG TREE was nominated for the 2018 Ophir Award for Best Picture and won the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival’s Eurimages Audentia Award for Best Female Director.
BAZI GETE is an Israeli writer and director. Gete comes from an Ethiopian family that emigrated to Israel via refugee camps in Sudan when he was just eight years old. After his school education, he studied film and television technology at Sapir College in southern Israel. He made two short films, including Medium Rare, which was shown at the 2009 Jerusalem Film Festival. His feature film RED LEAVES won the Anat Pirchi Award for best debut film at the Jerusalem International Film Festival in 2014 and the International Federation of Film Critics Award in the same year. He is currently working on his second feature film, in which he relocates Shakespeare’s love drama “Romeo and Juliet” to southern Tel Aviv, where an Ethiopian widow and an Eritrean laborer are unable to find each other.
NAOMI LEVARI (b. 1978) is co-founder of the Tel Aviv production company Black Sheep Film Productions Ltd., whose films (including Chained, Stripped, Fig Tree, One Week and a Day) have been shown at countless festivals (including Berlinale, Cannes, Venice IFF). Levari’s artistic aim in the films she produces is to draw attention to unseen and unheard voices in society.
IGAL AVIDAN (MODERATION): The German-Israeli journalist has been working for various Israeli media outlets and as a freelance author for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Welt since 1990. He lectures on the Middle East at the Federal Agency for Civic Education and for the German-Israeli Society. In 2021, his piece “Ethiopian Judaism and the Holy Land” was broadcast on Deutschlandfunk.
SO 17 NOV
17:30 ARSENAL
Free admission
WHAT HAS CHANGED
Salomon Chekol
Israel 2021 | Original Version with English subtitles | 15 min
Private Shai, an Ethiopian Jew, is on Passover leave. The army gave him canned food so that his family could afford the traditional meals. When he accidentally discovers that his father has hidden a large sum of money at home, a scandal erupts.
SALOMON CHEKOL was born in Ethiopia in 1993 and moved to Israel in 1998, where he grew up in Ashdod. He attended a boarding school in Jerusalem. Salomon is a graduate of the “Seeing Afar” project, which is under the patronage of Channel 12 and identifies talented high school students and helps them integrate into film studies. Solomon continues to be associated with the project as a mentor.
WITH NO LAND
Aalam-Warqe Davidian
Israel 2021 | Original Version with English subtitles | 83 min
In the presence of the director
This documentary uses eyewitness accounts and unique archive material to reveal the previously unknown background to “Operation Solomon”, which brought 15,000 Jews from Ethiopia to Israel over 30 years ago. It tells the story of the perilous actions of Jewish-Ethiopian activists in Ethiopia, Israel and North America in the run-up to and during Operation 2021, which was intended to evacuate the remaining Beta Israel.und verfolgt die Operation 2021, mit der die verbliebenen Beta Israel evakuiert werden sollten.
AALAM-WARQE DAVIDIAN (b. 1980) is an Ethiopian-Israeli film director. She is a graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem and worked as a researcher for the documentary filmmaker Ada Ushpiz. Her short films KORKI and CLEANING TIME have been shown at festivals around the world. Aalam-Warqe’s short film FACING THE WALL (2016) won the main prize at the Jerusalem International Film Festival. Her feature film debut FIG TREE was nominated for an Ophir Award for Best Picture in 2018 and won the Eurimages Audentia Award for Best Female Director at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.
