In celebration of the 100 years since TelAviv's establishment, Tel Aviv - Jaffa depicts the remarkable, moving and humorous story of the largest and most important city in Israel, the secular and youthful alternative to Jerusalem.
Tel-Aviv Jaffa
A Film by: Anat Zeltser & Modi Bar-On
(Part 1: Israel, 2009, 89 Minutes, Color, Hebrew, English Subtitles)
(Part 2: Israel, 2009, 37 Minutes, Color, Hebrew, English Subtitles)
In celebration of the 100 years since Tel Aviv's establishment, Tel Aviv - Jaffa depicts the remarkable, moving and humorous story of the largest and most important city in Israel, the secular and youthful alternative to Jerusalem.
Supported by in-depth research and rare archival materials, the film accompanies Tel Aviv from its inception, as an unpretentious neighborhood on the outskirts of Ottoman Jaffa, to the establishment of the State of Israel in the municipal museum of the big city that sprouted from that same little neighborhood. The film also documents the fate of Jaffa, the city that gave birth to Tel Aviv and was subsequently engulfed by it. It portrays the plethora of national conflicts, the political tensions and the cultural contradictions that made Tel Aviv-Jaffa a unique, vibrant city, an international metropolis.
Anat Zeltser and Modi Bar-On, Israeli's leading team of documentary filmmakers, have created a film as lively, diverse and intense as the city it depicts – an opulent collage of rare footage of the city’s history and an impressive documentation of the architectural gems that led to Tel Aviv being named by Unesco as a World Heritage.
Modi Bar-On guides us through the story with vivacity and humor and does not leave out the embarrassing moments – such as the collapse of the trees that aligned the fake boulevard created to impress Winston Churchill, the sewage pipe that was undersized and resulted in a decade long prohibition to swimming in the sea or the ticket the police gave Mayor Dizengoff for bathing in the sea in the nude.
Part 2 shows how Tel Aviv loses its title as capital city to its rival Jerusalem, how it consumes Jaffa in its midst and how it rediscovers its past after years of decline to become a World Heritage site and global metropolis. At the same time it is dubbed “The Tel Aviv Bubble” because of its supposedly hedonistic alienation from the bitter problems of the rest of the country.
Modi Bar-On continues as our guide, the archive is still rich and rare and the quotes are surprising and enlightening.
AWARDS, FESTIVALS & SCREENINGS
• UK Jewish Film Festival
• Cinaviv - Berlin Israeli FF