Intersections
A part of the 23rd Jerusalem Film Festival, in cooperation with Hazira Performance Art

This year's experimental section focuses on Found Footage, showing a comprehensive international program of historical and contemporary works. Simultaneously, we are initiating a new project, inviting local filmmakers and artists to use Axelrod material from our Archive and create new works in the hopes of developing a more dynamic rapport between archive-users and future archive-makers.
The 1930s were the years that established Eretz-Israel cinema. Alongside feature films, propaganda films and numerous newsreels were made. The newsreels were mainly initiated and produced by Zionist institutions, with the aim of documenting the momentum of settlement of the land and to create a historical document of the events of the period. Nathan Axelrod, a Russian Jew who arrived in the country in 1926, was among the outstanding photographers working for this cause;, , he began his career a photographer for Jerusalem Segal’s Moledet Films, and in 1935, founded Carmel Films, which produced newsreels. Simultaneously, Axelrod filmed and produced feature films such as Ha'Halutz, And it Came Pass In The Days Of…, and Oded the Wanderer, among others.
Like most of the propaganda films of the period, Axelrod’s films eternalize the myth of the pioneer builder of the land, the conquest of the land, and the importance of agricultural settlement, and generate support and encouragement for the ideology and beliefs of the pioneers. Enlisted for the cause, generally well directed and under the guise of “eyewitness reports,” the filmed newsreels serve as a partial description of reality, excluding expressions of elements that did not fit the heroic image, such as Eastern Jews, local Arabs and the British administration, from the Zionist discourse.
On each of the three evenings we shall present three newsreels from the Axelrod diaries under the title Dreams In The Service Of…

Opening event
Saturday 8.7.06, Beginning at 20:00
Cultural Recycling
In cooperation with the Center for Contemporary Art - The Foundation for the Encouragement of Video Art and Experimental Film
Opening event curator: Sergio Edelsztein
Production: Tamar Porat

Opening event, and the programs that follow:
Sunday-Tuesday on the 9-11 of July, 20:00, will include Found Footage movies, curated by Vivian Ostrovsky, fragments from the Axelrod Diaries and short Israeli video, in the footprints of Axelrod.
The events will take place at the khan Theatre.
Participating Artists In the Opening: Maayan Amir, Michal Ben Tovim, Dana Gilerman, Ben Hagari, Ran Slavin, Ruti Sela, Elyasaf Kowner, Uri katzenstein Chen Sheinberg, Tali Navon, Noa Barak, Tova Yankalevich, Guy Yitzhaki, Matti Shachter, Mary Linder, Noam Kuzar, Gal Tushia, Lihie Gendler-Talmor, Shosh Israeli, Parrhesia Group, Daphna Cassel, Liora Chayut, Efrat Daniel, Effi & Amir, Ofek Wertman.