1)
You
have said in many interviews that you feel a duty to embrace the complicated
reality of Palestinian-Israeli relations. Why do you feel this way? Do you
approach your art with that narrative in mind, or is it a natural progression?
I indeed feel it's a duty as an Israeli
artist, filmmaker and citizen. We are part of a very complicated, complex,
hyper sensitive and highly exposed region – the Middle East – and we are in the
center of it all – the people, the politics, the religions, the land, the
history, the wars. We live with the Palestinians, we live next to them – they
are real, they are not some remote issue in a foreign land that we only read or
hear about. So I believe that Israeli cinema – just like other art forms – can
not run away from the 'issues', we can not claim that 'we hear and see enough
on the news, we go to the cinema (or watch TV) to be entertained'. But I think
there is a fine balance to be achieved between issue driven films (not 'political
films' – those don't exist any more in my view) and entertainment, pure,
communicative, up to date. And so I make my films with all this in mind – I
want to raise a discussion, to open eyes, hearts and minds and yet I want to
have a dialogue with my audience, I want to give them two good hours in the
dark cinema or in front of the TV so that they can walk away saying – I had a
good time, I was moved, I laughed, I cried, I FELT something and not I can also
THINK about it. I don't have to agree with what I saw but I know that this
something that I saw is something I want to talk about, argue about, agree or
disagree with. That's my goal – to have people give a second thought to
subjects, issues, people they sometimes tend to overlook.
2) What,
if any, reaction(s) do you hope to elicit from new audiences viewing Dancing
Arabs for the first time?
Awareness.
Exposure. Knowledge. Feelings. Emotions. Thoughts. Reflections. Positions. All
these in addition to just walking out saying – Hey, that was a good experience...
3) How
do you think having a journalist as the screenwriter affected or contributed to
the film’s storytelling?
Sayed
did not write this script as a journalist. He brought to the script his
personal experiences as a young Arab in Israel and the books he wrote about that
(Dancing Arabs and Second Person Singular) and it all blended into a narrative
screenplay, partly based on his reality, partly fictionalized and at any case
wrapped into a cinematic experience which is where I stepped in to give the story
lines a certain coherent cinematic interpretation that has a new life. Life
becomes a book, becomes a script – and then a film which is whole new form and
format that has a life of its own.
4) Are
you working on any new projects now? If so, can you provide any details?
I'm
working on several projects...Yasmin (based on a book by Eli Amir) – a story
set in Jerusalem right after the Six Day War (1967), Spider in the Web – a
Mossad story set in Europe and my next film: Refuge – a psychological thriller.
And a few more...Life is short...lots of stories to tell....