Place, Memory and Myth in Contemporary Israeli Cinema

Table of Contents (PDF)

This very important book takes its readers on a fascinating journey from geography to history and from history to place. In doing so, it provides a profound analysis of space in Jewish and Israeli culture, and the films that shaped them. The gaze at history, memory and film through the prism of geography and space powerfully illuminates what has not been fully diagnosed in either culture or cinema, what has yet to be pronounced or analysed. The spatial analysis set out in the book foregrounds historical time, historical narrative and the cardinal myths of Israeli culture - such as the Garden of Eden, the desert, exile and wandering, and Jerusalem. The multifaceted picture of the cinematic present thus provides a portrait of the Israeli place: the current situation and its roots in Israel’s recent past and in the remote pioneering era.

-Nurith Gertz, The Open University of Israel

A strikingly original analysis of Israeli cinema, Zanger’s study illuminates the complex interaction between physical space and collective identity. Offering close readings of representative films from Israel’s past and present, the book is informed in equal parts by history and theory. It lucidly delineates the transformation of landscapes into symbolic settings of trauma and memory.

-Anton Kaes, University of California, Berkeley