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Beyond Jerusalem’s Separation Barrier
This scene captures a true local paradox: the air raid siren (not a drill) is sounded with an accompanying classical music soundtrack. The melody, it seems, almost preserves the chaos in the routine, as if it were a ritual with its own inherent structure and predetermined codes. Yifat, the girl standing there watching this absurdist scenario play out, knows that a whole people are out there – living beyond the mountains and hills, and the separation barrier. Meanwhile, there is the sight of students running for shelter during the air raid siren and putting on their gas masks – an illustration of the danger posed to them by this people.
Beyond the Mountains and Hills, a film by director Eran Kolirin, is a modern-day Israeli fairy tale, a-la This is our Life. This is best illustrated by Kolirin’s choice to feature a passage from David Avidan’s poem, Power of Attorney, at the start of the film:
What best justifies
the loneliness, the great despair,
the bizarre shouldering of the burden of
profound loneliness and great despair
is the simple, cutting fact
that, essentially, we have nowhere to go.
Kolirin’s choice to draw us into the fictional world of the film with Avidan’s poignant words is anything but arbitrary. He has created a middle-class Israeli family living in the Greater Jerusalem area that he portrays simply and straightforwardly, and without any excessive, over-the-top trimmings. However, peel a couple of surface layers off this so-called garden variety family and you discover a deep emotional wound and profound existential angst hanging over their home.
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All rights are reserved to the Jerusalem Cinematheque – Israeli Film Archive (RA) and the rights holders of the works. Any use of works on the website for non-individual and non-personal purposes is strictly prohibited without prior, written permission.
For more information about the rights holders, please visit the relevant collection page, or contact the Jerusalem Cinematheque – Israeli Film Archive (RA) offices.
We have the utmost respect for all rights holders’ copyright and put great efforts to track down any and all intellectual property owners for the purpose of seeking and obtaining permission to use their materials featured on the website.
Any and all materials are used in accordance with clause 27a of the 2007 Copyright Act. If you believe that your rights as intellectual property and copyright owners of any material featured on this website have been compromised, then you may contact the Israeli Film Archive via email with a cease-and-desist notice, requesting that the material in alleged copyright infringement no longer be used. When contacting the archive, please state the merit to your copyright ownership claim, as well as your full name, email address, and telephone number, with a link to the relevant webpage.
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