Description of a Memory

Israel reviewed: Israel in a cinematic dance of memories, mirrors and symbols. Master of the essay film Chris Marker’s filmic poem on Israel, Description of a Struggle (1960), was a montage of everyday images of a young country whose entire future was ahead of it. Nearly half a century later, Israeli filmmaker Dan Geva creates a cinematic dialogue with Chris Marker’s photographed memory, placing Israel’s present as a future to Marker’s prophecy. The hope for peace has given way to bitterness, the enthusiasm of a nascent nation to deeply rooted fear. Geva takes us to places that Marker warned about 50 years earlier and to those he could not even have imagined. What comes out of this revealing play of images, texts and subtexts is the despair of whole generations of Arabs and Israelis. (DOK.fest München)