Another Land

The morning after the elections in 1996, I spontaneously filmed the interior of my apartment. Looking out the window I saw a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews who live nearby. They were in high spirits as they were calculating the amazing increase of seats for the religious parties in Knesset. Above them, on the facade of an apartment building, hung a large banner which read: “Netanyahu, for peace with security.” The camera turned to the interior of my apartment. The act of observing the rooms and the personal effects within them gave me pleasure and a sense of security. Everything was as it had been the night before, when I went to sleep thinking that the peace process, led by Shimon Perez, would continue to the year 2000. In the face of sudden change and turmoil, I perceived my home as defined by Mary Douglas´ definition, and found in it shelter from the chaos outside. In a drawing by my 8-year-old son, there is a house-like structure, roughly outlined, afloat in a void, which seem like a tempest or sandstorm, a house which has detached from the ground and lost control. This is how he showed his feelings of insecurity after his mother and father had separated. The film is a personal investigation of the meaning of “home.” The narrative weaves its way between two extremes – security an peace of mind on the one hand, and confusion and chaos on the other. Personal and public events in Israel, a country where separating the two is nearly impossible, are intertwined, spanning a period of six years (1992-1998) during which the peace process with the Palestinians came into being and a rebuilding of my personal home began.