18 minutes, Super-8mm, asynchronous soundtrack, 1980
This film was commissioned by Tel Aviv Museum at the request of Raffi Lavi, who organized an evening of artists’ films as the opening ceremony for an exhibition he mounted at the museum. In the film, images that were originally presented on two screens, were edited and combined. One screen showed a Carmel Newsreel of events during the Six-Day War, including footage of the Egyptian army’s defeat, humiliated soldiers raising their hands, a military parade, the meeting between President Nasser and King Hussein, the arrival of Jewish soldiers at the Western Wall, donning phylacteries, and more. It also showed a Christian baptizing ceremony in the Jordan River, as well as other events. The second screen showed photographs taken by Garbuz, featuring a clay jar placed in various places, at times hoisted by his wife, Margalit, or his daughter, as well as maquettes of the Temple, and the Hebrew letter tzadi symbolizing the IDF (first letter of the Hebrew acronym).
Garbuz uses raw materials from Carmel Newsreels as readymade materials, and intersperses them as equals between images he filmed or photographed himself. The soundtrack can also be viewed as a multilayered collage, intermingling the music (Galilee Night by Nathan Alterman, composed by Mordechai Zeira, performed by Yehoram Gaon), narration by Garbuz, and narration from the newsreels. The work becomes a kind of mosaic combining everyday documentation of war events with symbolic markers, for instance the object “jar” that represents cultural values and associations (miracle of the cruse of oil, vessel containing blood or wine in Christian rites, and so forth), and the Hebrew letter tzadi that is identified with the IDF. Thus, this becomes a critical political work in which multiple identities, cultures, and fields of discourse are projected onto the screen.
Written by Yael Gesser
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