As a film critic for French publication Cahiers Du Cinema, Laurent Roth frequently watched and reviewed the films of Israeli director, Amos Gitaï. As a festival programmer, he oversaw a retrospective of Gitaï’s work at International Documentary Festival Marseilles. Over the years, he came to know Gitaï personally and even to visit him in Israel. Now, he has made a film about the director.
Amos Gitaï, la violence et l’histoire, which premiered in the June edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam, isn’t the conventional biographical documentary celebrating a well-known filmmaker. It is structured as a conversation between Roth and Gitaï. Roth shows his subject clips from his own films and draws out comments and observations.
“For me, Amos is my way of dealing with Israel and cinema. My family is from Jewish origins and I have a special connection to Israel,” Roth observes. “Since I am still a filmmaker combining fiction and documentary in my work, he is a kind of model, an example. His way of dealing with reality is very special.”
Gitaï is a very busy man, an author, architect and commentator as well as a filmmaker. Roth managed to get him to agree to be available for filming over two afternoons.
“Amos didn’t want any film made about him before. It was thanks to this special relationship that this film was possible,” Roth explains how the project came about. “You know, many filmmakers don’t like to be filmed. It’s a kind of violation of their secrets.”
Rather than present an encyclopaedic view of Gitaï’s career, Roth chose to concentrate on specific moments. That way, he felt he had a better chance of getting his subject to open up.
“My task as a filmmaker was to stop this very self-controlled attitude and to make him (Gitaï) alive for the viewer. That’s why I decided to focus on very minute details in the clips,” Roth suggests.
He wanted audiences to understand and appreciate Gitaï’s way of dealing with reality.
“It was a kind of life exercise,” Roth says. “With this staging, you can’t cheat on reality because we are both reacting and the clips of the films are shown in the studio. You cannot edit the moment, you cannot create the moment afterwards.”
Roth pays particular attention to Gitaï’s obsession with Israeli politician, Yitzhak Rabin. Gitaï has made several films dealing with Rabin’s life, his role in Israeli history, his violent death in 1999 at the hands of a right-wing extremist, and his towering political legacy.
Talking about his filmmaking approach, Roth suggests he is strongly influenced by psychoanalysis and likes it when cinema reveals “unconscious forces” in subjects. “For instance, I am very proud of one special sequence in Amos Gitaï, la violence et l’histoire – the moment when I show the designs he (Gitaï) made just after being shot in the Yom Kippur war when his helicopter crashed. He was one of the survivors and, after he recovered from his wounds, he made those drawings.”
Gitaï has never spoken about those drawings before but Roth managed to get him talking about them. “He doesn’t speak much but what he says is enough to understand he is drawing exactly what he has seen but in a very symbolic manner. This sequence is very typical of my work…it is between re-enactment and psychoanalysis.”
Ask what most surprised Roth during the making of the film and he mentions the mirthful moments. “I know his producer very well also and he told me he was very impressed by the film because Amos laughed three times. Usually, he is a very serious man. He doesn’t laugh very often. He became more and more relaxed during the shooting.”
Gitaï also sometimes showed real feeling on camera. Roth edited a separate short film taken from the rushes. “I made him [do] a special exercise with three maps of the city and area of Haifa. I asked him to draw the places where he was born, and the places where his father, a well-known architect, built, and the places where he filmed,” Roth remembers. “In this exercise, he was like a child. He was very pleased to do it. I discovered a man who, when you speak to him about things that convert him and touch him in a very close aspect of his life, can be very emotional.”
Roth hopes that his film will make viewers share his admiration for Gitaï. “He is not only an artist but he has this commitment as a thinker and a citizen that makes him a very important person in the cinema today.”
