92 minutes, Super-8mm, asynchronous soundtrack, 1975
This film is neither narrative nor linear, there is no evident connection between the scenes, and its beginning and end seem almost random. It is evident that some scenes are staged, while others appear to be a direct documentation of events. The film seems to advance in accordance with Garbuz’s stream of consciousness, for he combines various images from his life with his gaze at the reality in which he lives.
Interspersed throughout the film are personal scenes from Garbuz’s life featuring his family; at times just he and his wife, Margalit, at others with their son and two daughters. In most cases, these are scenes filmed in their home. There are also several scenes in which Garbuz appears alone in the frame, either as himself or in some sort of disguise. Other scenes were filmed in various locations around Israel, such as the market in Beer Sheva, the sands of Rishon LeZion, Ben-Gurion Airport, the square in front of the Municipality of Tel Aviv, and others. There are also scenes in which the camera scans through still photographs, or texts and drawings from a book, and moments in which a television screen is filmed as it broadcasts a program. Throughout most of the film, Garbuz narrates, full of pathos, a range of invented characters and stories, in which clichés of the national, personal, and the spirit of the time and place are intermixed. At times, the soundtrack features excerpts of songs in various languages, such as a song in Hindi, another in Russian, and yet another in French.
Like Garbuz’s collages, in this work, too, he expresses multiplicity and anti-hierarchy, and a sense of confusion. Members of his family, to whom he repeatedly returns during the film, are an element of certainty, and a stabilizing factor within the duality of east-west and provincial-central presented in the film.
As in others of Garbuz’s works, there is pronounced use of stereotypes in this film, too: a closeup of an ultra-Orthodox man immediately followed by a closeup of a Bedouin wearing a keffiyeh, a Bedouin tent, zoom-in on a Bedouin woman making pitta bread. Garbuz also indicates local identity through photographs of local produce, such as crates of fruit and vegetables in the market. By means of editing, connections are formed between the local and national, and between the personal and private, for instance the scene in which Garbuz is seen eating fruit and vegetables at home is immediately followed by the shot of the crates.
Written by Yael Gesser
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