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Friday January 25, 2008

Israeli filmmaker finds art in war, history

by michael fox
correspondent

As filmmakers go, Udi Aloni is not a prime example of a storyteller. With a background in painting, mixed media, poetry and prose, and a passion for nonlinear thinking, Aloni is first and foremost an artist.

His most recent film, “Forgiveness,” co-mingles philosophy, politics, art and history in a meditative, mysterious brew. The amorphous plot revolves around an American-Israeli soldier who makes a grievous mistake in battle and ends up in a psychiatric hospital.

The institution is located, crucially, on the former site of the Palestinian village Deir Yassin, where a Jewish militia killed dozens of residents in 1948. The themes of guilt, victimization and reconciliation are underscored by the presence of a blind Holocaust survivor and a ghostly young girl.

“Zionism has a beautiful messianic energy that I love,” Aloni explained in a visit to the Bay Area. “The part I reject in Zionism is the colonialist attitude.”

“Forgiveness” screens Wednesday, Jan. 30 at Yerba Buena Center For the Arts as part of the S.F. Jewish Film Festival’s ongoing monthly series. The film had its first Bay Area showing in the 2006 Mill Valley Film Festival.

Aloni, who lived full time in New York for 11 years and now splits his time between that city

and Israel, is scheduled to attend.

He is known more as a fine artist than a filmmaker in Manhattan, where he has had gallery shows. In Israel, he is recognized as an artist-philosopher, but one whose concerns are grounded in politics.

Now in his mid-40s, Aloni has carved out an identity that goes well beyond being the son of Shulamit Aloni, the longtime left-of-center Knesset member and human rights activist. At the same time, he is an outspoken advocate for peace.

“Forgiveness,” like much of his work, is an attempt to imagine a utopian future out of the painful Jewish past and curdled Israeli present. Memory and archaeology play key roles in the film, which can be seen as a protracted healing ritual.

“I thought to call the movie ‘Dig,’” Aloni confides with a smile. Clearly he enjoys playing with language as well as images.

“English is horizontal,” he says. “Hebrew is vertical — you can dig deep for meanings.”

Hebrew words — perhaps thanks to the erudite talmudic commentaries — can be interpreted in more than one way, and Aloni loves mining the multiple connotations.

Indeed, he returned to filmmaking after a few years away because, he says, “I was missing the text.”

Even more than the typical Israeli director, it’s impossible not to discuss with Aloni the state of Israeli-Palestinian relations. A two-state solution appeared viable when we spoke 18 months ago, and his vision seemed optimistic but not ridiculous.

“We can create a new kind of Israeli and Palestine that will keep the dream that the first founding fathers [of Israel] had,” he asserts.

It will be interesting to hear Aloni’s perspective today, when reasons for optimism are scarcer. It seems unlikely, though, that he has wavered in his dedication to a goal more far-reaching than a political solution.

“I want not just [for there] to be Israel and Palestine,” he declares. “I want an inner place of understanding so that the other is not so other.”

“Forgiveness” screens 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 30 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., S.F., with the director present. Tickets cost $6 to $8; call (415) 978-2787 or visit www.sfjff.org.

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