States of UnBelonging - An Israeli Woman Explores Violence in the Middle East

Streaming video - 2005

Portrait of Israeli woman filmmaker explores violence in the Middle East. The core of this haunting meditation on war, land, the Bible, and filmmaking is a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed on a kibbutz near the West Bank. Director Lynne Sachs' journey to discover Revital life and death results in a cine-essay on violence, identity, crisis in the Middle East and motherhood. Avoiding easy political polarizations, the film is structured around an exchange of letters between Sachs and her Israeli friend Nir Zats. Together, they reveal Revital's story through her films, news reports, and interviews, culminating in heartbreaking footage of children discussing the violence they've witnessed and an u...nforgettable visit with Ohayon's grieving family. Without taking sides or casting blame, "States of UnBelonging" becomes a cine-essay on fear and filmmaking, tragedy and transformation, violence and the land of Israel/Palestine.. “What separates each of us from the other? Director Lynne Sachs explores this complex question and others in her haunting new film States of Unbelonging—a beautiful poetic journey that searches for how one person understands another across cultural, historical and political divides. The two people in question are Sachs herself and Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker killed by terrorists. Like Sachs, Ohayon was a mother, a filmmaker, a teacher and a Jew. Though she never met Ohayon, Sachs examines the onslaught of modern media that united both artists, mediated through the letters, messages and phone calls exchanged with Israeli friend, Nir Zats.” Fernando F. Croce, Cinequest: San Jose Film Festival. “At a time when conflicts scar the globe, this visually arresting film attests to the complex process of ‘accompanying’ a stranger in her death. Drawing on the Bible, Allen Ginsberg's poetry, and interviews, the film is a search for a person beyond reach, a meditation on things one cannot know, a moving kaddish for uncertain, dangerous times.” Kathy Geritz, Film Curator, Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley Art Museum. more