States of UnBelonging2006

States of UnBelonging 
(63 min.  color  sound 2006)
a film by Lynne Sachs

Portrait of Israeli woman filmmaker explores violence in the Middle East
The core of this haunting meditation on war, land, the Bible, and filmmaking is a portrait of Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother killed on a kibbutz near the West Bank. Director Lynne Sachs' journey to discover Revital life and death results in a cine-essay on violence, identity, crisis in the Middle East and motherhood. Avoiding easy political polarizations, the film is structured around an exchange of letters between Sachs and her Israeli friend Nir Zats. Together, they reveal Revital's story through her films, news reports, and interviews, culminating in heartbreaking footage of children discussing the violence they've witnessed and an unforgettable visit with Ohayon's grieving family. Without taking sides or casting blame, "States of UnBelonging" becomes a cine-essay on fear and filmmaking, tragedy and transformation, violence and the land of Israel/Palestine.

PRESS QUOTES:
“What separates each of us from the other? Director Lynne Sachs explores this complex question and others in her haunting new film States of Unbelonging—a beautiful poetic journey that searches for how one person understands another across cultural, historical and political divides.    The two people in question are Sachs herself and Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker killed by terrorists. Like Sachs, Ohayon was a mother, a filmmaker, a teacher and a Jew. Though she never met Ohayon, Sachs examines the onslaught of modern media that united both artists, mediated through the letters, messages and phone calls exchanged with Israeli friend, Nir Zats. Deeply interested in “history’s histories and ruptures,” Sachs embarks on a private journey to ponder issues of identity, violence in the Middle East, and the hope for union, culminating in an unforgettable visit with Ohayon’s grieving family.    Intensely personal yet thoroughly accessible, States of Unbelonging is a profound meditation about living in an unstable world, with the personal densely blurred with the historical. Drawing on a wide variety of forms, from TV coverage to phone messages and film, Sachs has created a challenging, invigorating film-essay that could rank with the multi-layered ruminations of Chris Marker.”  Fernando F. Croce,  Cinequest:  San Jose Film Festival

“3 Stars! Presents a mature, artistic meditation on Middle East violence.”  Video Librarian 

“Parallels the layers of history of the Middle East – demonstrating the possibilities as well as limitations of bridging the gap between Palestinians and Israelis engaging the politics of conflict.” Dr. Jeffrey Shandler, Dep’t of Jewish Studies, Rutgers University

“At a time when conflicts scar the globe, this visually arresting film attests to the complex process of ‘accompanying’ a stranger in her death. Drawing on the Bible, Allen Ginsberg's poetry, and interviews, the film is a search for a person beyond reach, a meditation on things one cannot know, a moving kaddish for uncertain, dangerous times.”   Kathy Geritz, Film Curator, Pacific Film Archive,  University of California, Berkeley Art Museum

“Surprisingly beautiful, like the embattled countryside it depicts. War, creativity, beauty — it’s a depressingly frequent concatenation, but Sachs makes it sing without glorifying death.”– George Robinson,  The Jewish Week.

“Of all the literary formats, the essay, perhaps, seems the least suited to cinematic adaptation; with its intensely personal nature and often rambling paragraphs, it appears to elude the sort of tight structural discipline demanded of a coherent piece of film.  All of which makes Lynne Sachs’ achievement all the more impressive:  Here is a cine-essay, maintaining all the benefits of the original format while adhering to the demands of the visual.  At the heart of the film is Sachs’ two-year exchange of letters and pictures with her Israeli friend Nir Zats, an exchange that begins when Revital Ohayon, an Israeli filmmaker and mother, is killed in a terrorist attack on her kibbutz near the West Bank.  Soon, Sachs herself embarks on a journey to visit Ohayon’s grieving family, and her film becomes a meta-essay of sorts, meditating on fear and filmmaking, tragedy and transformation, violence and the land of Israel.  This elegant and beautiful piece of filmmaking is greatly enriched by its soundtrack, featuring works by some of the Jewish avant-garde scene’s best and brightest, including Jewlia Eisenberg, Raz Mesinai and Basya Schecter.”  The Buzz, The Jewish Week. 

“Using a woman's death as a gateway into the politics of the West Bank, ‘States of Unbelonging’ recounts a correspondence between its New York–based director, Lynne Sachs, and a friend in Israel revolving around the 2002 murder of Israeli filmmaker Revital Ohayon and her two children in a terrorist attack. ‘States of Unbelonging’ decries Israel's West Bank wall for cutting Palestine off from itself.  Both humanist reverie and implicit cautionary tale, the film is ambivalent in more ways than one, ironically evoking the Old Testament, and evidently taking its cues from Ohayon's own work, described by her husband as less a search for answers than an attempt to ‘put a question mark in the right places." –Joshua Land, Village Voice

“Sachs can turn simple ingredients into poetic imagery. (Her)new featurette features more than one instance of this talent, such as a sequence in which hands arrange a vase of flowers in close-up – a series of not-quite-still-lives that grows lovelier by the second.  Mixing found footage and her own crisp digital imagery with great success, Sachs’ sensitivity towards Ohayon – with whom she identifies – results in the kind of layered story you won’t find in any newspaper.” – Johnny Houston, San Francisco Bay Guardian

"This film showed me that, not so long ago, the border was more open and Palestinians and Israelis actually lived close to one another. It also gives voice to one Israeli who wanted peace and coexistence with her Palestinian neighbors." Prof. Kelly Anderson, Integrated Media Arts at CUNY Hunter College

Listed as ONE OF THE 10 BEST DOCUMENTARIES OF THE YEAR at SENSES OF CINEMA by film critic Ionnes Mookas.          http://www.sensesofcinema.com

SELECTED SCREENINGS:  Premiere Margaret Mead Film Festival 2005; New York Underground Film Festival 2006;  San Francisco Cinematheque; Pacific Film Archive; Cinequest-San Jose Film Festival; Iowa International Documentary Film Festival; Northampton Film Festival; Big Muddy Film Festival; Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y, New York; San Francisco States University; California College of Art; University of California Berkeley; Georgetown University; XIII Annual Visible Evidence Documentary Conference, Sao Paolo Brazil; Athens Film Festival 2nd Prize Documentary; Jerusalem Film Fest 2006; Harvard University; Cornell University; Chicago Filmmakers; Memphis Jewish Community Center, Anthology Film Archives, New York;  Buenos Aires Film Festival 2007