Avi Mograbi
At DOCSBarcelona Israeli director Avi Mograbi had two screenings of his latest film, ”Z 32”, a film that I have praised several times on filmkommentaren.dk
On top of that the director performed a three hour masterclass for 180 people according to this concept: a director chooses 7 clips from his films, clips that he has something special to say about. Mograbi went through a substantial part of his work, and made comments that were all an investigation into the position of the filmmaker towards his character(s). From humourous situations like the one where he has eye contact with Sharon in ”How I learned to overcome my fear and love Ariel Sharon” to his confrontation with the Israeli soldiers, who will not allow Palestinian children to pass a fence and go home from school, in ”Avenge but one of my two Eyes”, to his Brechtian choice of singing his reflections in ”Z 32”: ”Am I housing a murderer in my film”?
A masterclass, a master’s class, Mograbi is exactly as his films are: tense, sometimes comic, but always dealing with the embarrassing reality of the country he lives in. A frustrated artist, as he says himself, who wants to move something, raise a debate in Israel, but does not succeed, he is met with total silence, no reactions, whereas he now is an estimated artist in Western Europe! In the next issue of Cahiers du Cinema, the headline is characterising him as ”Le Grand sculpteur de notre temps”. ”Z32” will be released in French cinemas in this month.
