Berlin-Jerusalem

Story

Synopsis

Two interconnected stories in the 1930s, one set in Berlin, the other in Palestine: Mania Vilbouchevich Shohat (1880-1961), called Tania, a Russian Jew and revolutionary, goes from Minsk to Palestine to live on a collective. She promotes feminism and laments a shift in the men from self-defense to aggression. Her friend, Else Lasker-Schuler (1869 - 1945), expressionist poet and German Jew, is in Berlin, writing, caring for her son, watching Hitler's movement take power. She goes to Jerusalem and imagines a park for Arab and Jew. Her poems, voiced from within, capture her experience. The film meditates on the violence at the root of Israel's birth: of the Nazis and of the Zionists.

Director

Amos Gitai

Writers

Gudie Lawaetz, Amos Gitai

Language

Hebrew (modern)

Country

France, United Kingdom, Israel, Italy, Netherlands

Release date

3 February 1989

Ensemble

Cast

• 

  Lisa Kreuzer

  Else

• 

  Rivka Neuman

  Tania

• Markus Stockhausen

  Ludwig

• Benjamin Levi

  Paul

• 

  Vernon Dobtcheff

  Editor

• Bernard Eisenschitz

  Man in Berlin cafe

• 

  Raoul Guylad

  Dr. Weintraub

• 

  Juliano Mer-Khamis

  Menahme (as Juliano Mer)