Event
Director Amos Gitai in conversation with Nili Gold
Born in Haifa, Amos Gitai is the second son of architect Munio Weinraub and former Sionist activist Efratia Margalit. In 1979, Gitai directed his first feature-length documentary House. His third documentary, Field Diary, shot in 1983 was rejected by the Israeli Television who originally commissioned it. Gitai then moved to France and based himself in Europe. 1n 1986, he directed his first feature fictional film Esther, based on the Biblical story of the book of Esther. In 1993, following prime minister Ytzhak Rabin starting the peace process with Palestine, Gitai and his family moved back to live in his native town of Haifa. Gitai's work was presented in several major retrospectives in Pompidou Center Paris, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, Lincoln Center New York, and the British Film Institute London. To date Amos Gitai has created over 90 works of art throughout 38 years. Between 1999 and 2017 ten of his films were entered in the Cannes Film Festival as well as The Venice International Film Festival.
Nili Gold is Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) at the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book, Haifa, City of Steps (Brandeis, 2017), an homage to her hometown, is a hybrid work of urban studies, architecture, literature and memory. Gold, an expert on Yehuda Amichai, the world renowned Hebrew poet, dedicated two books to him: Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England, 2008) and Lo kabrosh (Not Like a Cypress) (Schocken, 1994). Indeed, the focus of Gold’s teaching is Hebrew and Israeli culture, but she often includes American, European and Middle-Eastern literature and cinema to gain a comparative perspective. Gold has also published dozens of articles in American, Asian, European and Israeli academic journals as well as in the Literary Supplement of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz.
Check here for Amos Gitai's A Tramway to Jerusalem at MEFF 2019 on Wednesday 27 March @ 5pm.
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This event has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Penn Cinema & Media Studies, Jewish Studies, and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations.