The Biographies of Amos Gitai. From February 5 to May 19, 2014
I think that, you know, when I do documentaries, it’s a bit like archaeology, so it’s not so much like architecture, like you excavate one layer after another- and I think my documentaries are more like work in an arcahaeological site. I think in that fiction it's more like architecture because you take a non-existent idea and you construct it.The Modernist architects had a really hard time because they were trying to present an idea which was not popular at the time [...]
You know, I think that the quest of modernity is to find relevance in new contexts, so these younger architects in the 30s who emigrated from Europe because of the height of European antisemitism and fascism, in a way brought more than ideas, and they extended Modernity into the Middle East. I think that they were interested in the questions of design, but also in the social and political options of this young society- kibouts- meaning 'collective ideas and how can an architect find his place in these new social conditions. So I think that for these young Bauhaus architects like my father, Munio Weinraub, it was a great challenge to come to Palestine - to Israel- and try to see how they can transpose the experiences they had with Kandisnky, with Mies Van Der Rohe, with Walter Gropius, and configure an architecture which on one hand will be modern, minimalist, not autocratic, and relating to a social political context. So I think it's a very fascinating period.
Yes, because in Israel you still have a very big 'patrimoine' of modern architecture thanks to this young generation who made very minimalist kind of architecture, not too eclectic, so they were leaving Europe but they also installed a new tradition of architecture in Israel.
I think this very non-eclectic architecture created a kind of isreali architecture and character. So I think architecture has also had an influence on the human being, you know. When you see in Europe - modern, democratic societies, but all the governments are in palaces, of monarchies, with all the gold and the kitsch and the decorative - little by little the ministers, it doesn't matter if they come from the left or the right, they adopt this architecture, they become a kind of smaller monarch. I think the fact that Le Corbusier suggested to destroy some of this architecture and to replace it by modern structure... he was right because not only people create the form, but the form shapes the attitude of people.
When I make a film it's also a question of how to situate people in space. So, it's not just a narrative or the storytelling or the meaning of the film- like Jean-François Chevrier said, it's also the meaning, the formal meaning, and it's always the relation between the narrative and the form. And this exhibit, I think, at the Reina Sofía is leaning on the biographies of also my parents, and in a way one can say that my mother contributed a lot to the narrative, to the verbal presence of several films, and my father, being an architect, he contributed to the form. So, in a way they are kind of drawing on these family biographies - the films- but also the exhibit which is shown here at the Reina Sofía.
No, I think, you know, my mother is a daughter of two people who left Russia in 1905 and emigrated to Palestine. At that time, there were only 50,000 Jews living there, so these new immigrants had a big impact on the shape of the future Israeli society, because they were not religious, they were secular, they were socialist, so they were into collective experiences. And I think that part of the project that I've been taking is to leave a trace, to leave a voice to these original currents, because today we are quite far from this utopian idea of people like my mother, but you know, sometimes when the situation in the present is a bit blocked, you have to look at the past in order to move for the future. So if you just insist on the present, you become kind of captive of it and you're kind of in 'impasse'. So I think that through the letters of my mother, you can see a vision of a much more open Middle East.
I don't know if it's a question of men or genre or gender of men or women- I think it's more the question that when you have immigration from Oriental countries, the family structure is different and these kind of mass public buildings were built for a sense of a Western idea of new class society. And so they're not very flexible- so it means that they fragment the social structure. And so in this very early film Arquitectura, which is shown now at the Reina Sofía, I put the question of the non-elasticity of this mass public housing, which we see everywhere: we see it in the Middle East, we see it in Europe... and they become a problematic way of packaging people. And so again, the question of the 'rapport' between the form and the narrative and the meaning, you know- what is the way that cinema or photography or art can express these issues? Should art only be pure art, only formalist, or should it have a content? I think that the sense in general of the Reina Sofía is to say to the artist: 'all forms of human expressions are legitimate' meaning that when Manolo put in front of the Guernica of Picasso a newsreel by Buñuel, and then the next room is the sound, it means that sound, newsreel and painting are different forms of human expression, and we have to see the ensemble of human expression to an event. At the same time, artists cannot escape from being involved in the context, the context is around them, they have to maybe help us to have a reflection about what they think. You know, the Guernica in 1937 is a statement: it's a painting, it's a statement, it's a cry... And also, the work of Buñuel and the work of other people who were active in shaping this vision. So artists don't have a real power in the reality, but they have a kind of symbolic power, and I think sometimes we need to hear their reflection and to have their critical voice.
