Avi Mograbi: The Political Workshop

In the movies of the Israeli filmmaker Avi Mograbi, the apartment is both a home and a workshop, and as such, it is connected both to the streets and their daily violence, and to the family, since the filmmaker’s wife and child often appear within the field of view, going about their business. This chapter shows how a private apartment can function as a “confession box” and an office of political intervention; it becomes, through the presence of the camera and the dialogues between the filmmaker and the audience, a place where a collective examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be encouraged. This chapter analyses among others the film August: A Moment before the Explosion and shows how Avi Mograbi sets up in his own home a theater workshop, which leads to a “delusion of interpretation” (the making of a hypothetical film about Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish extremist) that puts into question the whirlwind of action in the streets, where the Palestinian Intifada rages.