Educational Media Reviews Online

Filmmaker Amos Gitai succeeds in capturing many moods of Jerusalem by exploring the history of a house in the city's German Colony and the changes in ownership it has undergone. He speculates that the house is an analogy for the entire Palestinian-Israeli problem, interviewing both current and former residents as well as numerous others, pointedly asking them to express their feelings about Arab-Jewish relations and the future of Jerusalem. If the analogy bears any resemblance to reality, one can take heart and be optimistic. Interviewees appear universally to endorse some form of peaceful co-existence over renewed war and ethnic cleansing, although how it should be accomplished no one suggests.

We are introduced to the house by a former resident, Mahmoud Dejani, a Palestinian Arab holding Canadian citizenship who lives affluently with his family in East Jerusalem. He longs for the house his family abandoned during the Israeli War of Independence, considering it still to be his. He voices the ineffable sadness of Arab Palestinians who appear lost-without a land called "Palestine," no longer Jordanian, and not fully Israeli. Later, we visit with the present owners-Israelis who emigrated from Europe more than 20 years earlier. The two owners bought the house, then in very poor condition, from "protected immigrants" (people settled in abandoned properties by the new Israeli government and given the right to sell them). These people also love the house and consider it theirs, lavishing a considerable amount of money to reclaim it from near-ruin and to beautify it. The issues are defined; everyone expresses their views; Mr. Gitai makes no judgments.

Scenes of extensive recontruction going on in older buildings in Jerusalem and slow pans of the Old City and East Jerusalem are interspersed with a host of interviews-of an archeologist, Arab workers on the dig, a religious girl waiting to take her pre-nuptial ritual bath, non-Israeli Romanian workers shopping in a nearby market, construction workers who explain the difficulties of working on older buildings, and passersby along the street. The cacophony of the construction and blaring horns of cars turning the corner of Dor Vedorshav Street, where the house is located, stand in contrast to the quiet interiors and soft conversations held within the house.

The pace is sometimes very slow-many of the cityscapes and drilling scenes go on too long for comfort-but the story builds as opinions and historic details are revealed. The camerawork is excellent. Mr. Gitai explores the significance of the name of the street, which translates roughly to "each generation interprets." One passerby tells us it is the name of a book describing the history of great rabbis; others claim it is a reference from the Bible or the Talmud. Ultimately we can accept that they may all be correct in a philosophical sense and the house as it stood through many generations surely has been "interpreted" differently.

Recommended for undergraduate and graduate courses studying contemporary Jerusalem, Israel, and/or Palestinian-Israeli relations.