LAND (working title)
By Orly Yadin
1st person documentary feature ”LAND, OR HOW I LEARNED TO SEE MY NEIGHBORS…
How is a person’s identity formed in childhood and how does that child come to terms with that identity in maturity? How does this manifest itself when the person is born in Israel to several generations of prominent and influential Zionists, leaders in their respective fields?
This film will examine the four main components that forged the national identity, one given to me and every other member of my generation at birth, children born early on after Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948.
To create a homogenous identity, the Jews in Palestine in the first part of the 20th Century focused on four main strategies:
1. Developing the concept of a “New Jew” by shedding the customs and lifestyle of those in the shtetls and enforcing Hebrew as the single national language. 2. Contiguous land acquisition. 3. Searching for historical evidence of Jewish existence in Palestine two to three thousand years ago, a strategy that served to validate ownership of the land. 4 The latter strategy served in the creation of a people’s army (Israel Defense Forces), inspiring the new fighters with a sense of purpose.
Each one of these activities was spearheaded — or at least influenced — by several of my ancestors with whom the film will engage. It will show how my connection to this ideology that was so embedded in my (and my generation’s) upbringing and which blinded us to any other narrative, underwent gradual but fundamental changes in adulthood.
LAND will contain a first-person narrative and archival footage composed of home movies, newsreels and photographs, as well as interviews with Israelis and Palestinians. It will also include animated scenes of dramatized “interviews” with my ancestors.
The “interviews” will include:
My maternal great-grandfather, Mordechai Ben Hillel HaCohen, born in Russia, was influenced by the Enlightenment movement spreading across Germany and Eastern Europe. He first visited Palestine in the late 1800s and wrote several essays about it in various European publications. He later settled there with his entire family in 1907 and became one of the most prominent writers/thinkers of his time, fighting for Hebrew to become the national language of the Jewish community. He was also a major investor in the industrial and financial institutions of the Jews in Palestine.
My paternal grandmother, Hasya Feinsod Sukenik, came to Palestine from Bialystok in 1912 and was an educator. She opened the first Hebrew language kindergarten in Jerusalem in 1913, bringing together children who spoke between them 14 different languages. We will see how the “battle of the languages,” a term that was promoted by the early Zionist leaders, was essential to the efforts to create the new society.
My maternal grandfather, Arthur Ruppin, who arrived in Palestine from Germany in 1907, headed the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization and devoted his entire waking hours to the purchase of land for Jewish cultivation and settlement. He was later called “father of Jewish settlement.”
My paternal grandfather, Eleazar Sukenik, was the first to identify the Dead
Sea scrolls (written in Hebrew 2000 years ago) and realize their historical importance to Judaism and Christianity.
My father, Yigael Yadin, plays two roles in this film – army general and archaeologist. We will see, through actual archival interviews with him, how, as Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense forces in the early days of the State, he developed the military philosophy in Israel that claimed “all Israelis are soldiers on civilian leave”; we will also see and hear him talk about the psychological usefulness of naming contemporary battles after Biblical campaigns and events to instill a sense of purpose in the soldiers. But he was first and foremost a Biblical archaeologist, excavating specific locations such as Tel Hazor to find and prove the existence of Jewish life in Palestine during the periods of the Biblical figures Joshua and King Solomon as well as examples of martyrdom such as at Masada. The film will also show how archaeological excavations were (and still are) used as political tools to diminish the importance of the upper, recent layers of habitation and to promote the ones beneath, the older ones. This film is also a metaphorical archaeological excavation — I “dig” through the earlier ancestral “layers” that forged my national identity, unearthing the later layers, i.e. as I passed into adulthood. These later layers gradually reveal my blind spots by making me see what I hadn’t seen when young. I film conversations with others of my generation who are working today in equivalent professions — archaeologists and educators — and show how their approaches diverge politically and ethically from past ideological practices. As the film progresses, increasing numbers of Palestinian stories appear and my eyes open to new ways of understanding the history of Jews and Palestinians in this land.
Writer/Director/Producer – Orly Yadin
Cinematographer/Editor – Nora Jacobson
Executive Producers – Barbara Bordwell McGrew; E. W. Stetson
Land is currently seeking financial support to complete the film. Land‘s fiscal sponsor is VTIFF, a non-profit 501c3. All contributions via VTIFF are tax-deductible. If you’d like further information, please send your query to Orly Yadin in the Contact Form below.