DESCRIPTION OF A MEMORY (TZA'AD REVI'I LA'MATBE'A)

Israel reviewed: Israel in a cinematic dance of memories, mirrors and symbols. Master of the essay film Chris Marker's filmic poem on Israel, Description of a Struggle (1960), was a montage of everyday images of a young country whose entire future was ahead of it. Nearly half a century later, Israeli filmmaker Dan Geva creates a cinematic dialogue with Chris Marker's photographed memory, placing Israel's present as a future to Marker's prophecy. "A land of so many dreams. So many, that none of them will ever come true." The hope for peace has given way to bitterness, the enthusiasm of a nascent nation to deeply rooted fear. Geva takes us to places that Marker warned about 50 years earlier and to those he could not even have imagined. What comes out of this revealing play of images, texts and subtexts is the despair of whole generations of Arabs and Israelis.

"Apart from the inspiration and the homage, there is first the sheer beauty of the film itself, its unflinching pace, the perfection of the soundtrack and the boldness of the image." Chris Marker

"Chris Marker, cinematic essayist and audio-visual poet (La Jetée, Sans Soleil) visited my young state, before I was born and X-rayed it with his three dimensional magical perception. He said: "Look at her until amongst all the wondrous things in this world, the most wondrous of all is her being here before us, like a sign. Half a century have passed. "I have no memory of the first time I saw your film" - with these words I open my personal homage to Chris Marker's masterpiece: Description of a struggle (1960). Now, his enigmatic images and words become ever more silent and cryptic. My cinematic voyage in Israel 2006, into the memory of a grand-master's filmic poem, is not only in his footsteps but moreover into its inner most hidden molecules, trying desperately to deconstruct the fading fragments of the challenging prophetic message he left behind, never to return." Dan Geva

"Apart from the inspiration and the homage, there is first the sheer beauty of the film itself, its unflinching pace, the perfection of the soundtrack and the boldness of the image. As for my film, with an immense generosity you (Dan Geva) extracted the few elements that could still make sense, and raised them to the level where it is possible to deal with all the essential themes of today." Chris Marker