SIMA Awards 2019 - Unsettling
A pop-up film studio becomes a social laboratory for encounters with camera-shy (but not conflict-averse) Israeli settlers on the West Bank.
Interview with Director Iris Zaki
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
I was doing a PhD in documentary filmmaking in London, exploring my documentary interviewing technique, which I named the Abandoned Camera. The idea of the method is to document a casual conversation I have with random people from a certain community, without creating the feel of an interview, by using an unmanned, fixed camera. After the method worked really well in my two previous docs: My Kosher Shifts and Women in Sink, I wanted to go more extreme in terms of the community I try to embed myself into, and decided to move to a settlement. I was curious to see if, as an Israeli leftist filmmaker, despite the political tension, I still manage to make settlers open up to me and to the camera. The challenge was even bigger as settlers are camera-phobic, since they are very used to being represented in a negative way by the media.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
This film brings a nuanced and refreshing look on the West Bank settlements and on the Israeli society. It exposes an angle that hasn't been tackled so far: second generation settlers, that were born into this reality.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
My documentaries are about communities and about political themes, but are always personal; I am a character in my films, who goes through a journey in a community to which I am an outsider to, but a community that is connected somehow to my identity. In Unsettling it is about my political identity, and about putting myself on the other side of the Israeli political map: the extreme right wing.
Unsettling is about Israel and the conflict, but it is also universal in the sense that it shows how people who grow up in different political environments have different narratives to the same reality; about how left wing and right wing that are so polarised these days can and should create a dialogue in order to grow as a society.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
I always start my films with a concept. In Unsettling, I planned to work in a pizza place in the settlement, a small caravan that serves pizza to many residents who come with their kids in the afternoon (there are usually about 4-5 children in each family in the settlements). I wanted, as I did in my previous film Women in Sink, to film people while I'm serving them, and this way to have an unmediated communication.
The pizza plan didn't work out, because people in the settlement weren't very open to being filmed. I didn't know what to do at this point, cause I already rented a flat, a car and equipment. I felt that I just want to talk to people in the community and get to know them. I decided, then, to settle in the middle of the settlement, outside the organic grocery, with a table, two chairs and three cameras, and invite people to sit for a filmed chat. Eventually, that had become the concept of the film.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
Being about such a politically explosive subject – West Bank settlers, people don't tend to stay indifferent when they watch Unsettling, and every screenings which I attended turned into a very interesting post-screening discussion. Many people, both in Israel and in other countries, both left-wingers, and even settlers (!) told me that Unsettling opened their eyes and minds in the way it dealt with the subject; they found the complexity of the characters fascinating. When people tell me it made them think, or rethink, that's the biggest compliment for me.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
Having to defend my film a lot made me think about it in a much deeper way than I could while making it. That's the beauty of making documentaries: you get to know your film once it reaches different audience. The experience of filmmaking continues when you are on stages, sharing your thoughts and reflecting on the filmmaking experiences with your viewers... learning from them about things in your film you didn't even think about. That's, for me, is the the best part of making films.
Interview: January 2019
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Unsettling
A pop-up film studio becomes a social laboratory for encounters with camera-shy (but not conflict-averse) Israeli settlers on the West Bank.
Length: 1:10:00
Director: Iris Zaki
Producer: Iris Zaki, Osnat Saraga
Writer: Iris Zaki, Oren Yaniv
About the writer, director and producer:
DR. IRIS ZAKI i is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and researcher, who uses quirky first-person narratives to depict communities. She recently finished her PhD at Royal Holloway, London, which explored her innovative interviewing technique: The Abandoned Camera. Her previous film, Women in Sink screened at over 150 festivals and universities, received 13 awards (a Grierson and awards at Karlovy Vary, Visions du Reel, Films de Femmes and more), and featured on TV and on NY Times.
Key crew: Iris Zaki (Director/Producer/Screenwriter). Oren Yaniv (Editor/Screenwriter), Or Azulay (Cinematographer)
Looking for: buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists
Facebook: Iriz Zaki films
Twitter: @IriSZakI
Instagram: @iris_zaki
Other: IMDB
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? "London - Regent Street Cinema (6 Feb), Copenhagen Jewish Film Festival (30 Jan), March: Santa Barbara Intl. Film Festival (USA); One World Film Festival (Romania); Maine Jewish Film Festival (USA); Tartu World Film Festival (Estonia).