Short films by young Israelis and Germans

 

"Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow" – an Israeli-German youth film project in Frankfurt.

 

Hardly has the director said “Action! Cameras” and a fictional tale unfolds about the soul of a Jew killed in the Second World War that is reincarnated in a German living in present-day Germany. 17-year-old Maria is standing in front in class acting out the role of the teacher who explains to her students the horrific consequences of the Holocaust. Her team, consisting of six bright young students from Israel and Germany, is filming the scene over and over again, laughing each time she fluffs a line. To bystanders, the group seems warm and intimate: It’s hard to believe they first met only four days earlier. Berna who is holding up Maria’s lines behind the camera explains: “The Israelis turned out to be just like us. We are having so much fun together.”

 

It is November 2015, and 24 youngsters from the Ayanoth Boarding School in Israel and the Max Beckmann School in Germany have met up at the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt to produce short films together. It is the third consecutive year that the creative visions of the two countries come together under the aegis of this ambitious project. The theme of 2015, “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow”, in fact concludes a trilogy. The previous themes were “To Know and Respect the Other” and “The Meaning of Home” respectively. “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow" does not just deal with the aspect of time. Rather, it reflects the focus in 2015 on remembrance and on moving forward: the shared history, the reality of the present, and the hopes for the future of Germany and Israel.

 

The aspiring film-makers will labour on their co-creations for a full six days. Later, they will present their results in the Deutsches Filmmuseum cinema hall. Both Israelis and Germans started preparing for the joint film project months ago. They did research, scripting, filming and editing. They discussed the history and current policy issues in the two countries. “In times when violent conflict drives millions of people worldwide to flee, it is particularly important to encourage projects that bring young people from different cultures and religions together and to stimulate dialogue,” comments Claudia Dillmann, Director of the German Film Institute.

 

And the students spent a lot of time together, not just in the editing room. Together, they visited the Old Jewish Cemetery in Frankfurt, the Westend Synagogue, and enjoyed a typical Sabbath meal at the Jewish Community Centre. And of course went shopping together, too.

The young Germans and Israelis had one more thing in common: The two groups turned out to be very multicultural. One of the four filming teams is a perfect example of this: The students from Frankfurt are from migrant families with roots in Turkey, South Africa and Poland. On the Israeli side, the students have roots in Ethiopia, Moldova and Ukraine. Communication was mainly in English with a smattering of Hebrew, German and the odd bit of Russian. Yet the youngsters worked together in a great spirit of unity, with an implicit understanding that they had come together to do more than “just make a short film”. 18-year-old Waganesh explains, “I think it is important to remember our common history, that is why we need to make films on topics such as the one we are producing today. We need to be able to deal with issues regarding Germany and Israel.” The students chose every detail in the film carefully, making sure no gender or other stereotypes clouded the project. This is why, for instance, they chose an Israeli to play the German character and vice versa.

 

Ultimately, these young students are creating films that could not have been done by prior generations. They are free of past constraints and clearly able to develop their own perspective. As 16-year-old Michael puts it beautifully: “We are the first generation that has not been tainted by the past. I thought it would be hard to deal with the issue of the Holocaust but eventually I realized that the Israelis were ready to talk about it as well. We felt that history got things wrong, this is a moral feeling we all bear within us.”

    

The project is a cooperative venture of “The Child and Youth Aliyah” in Germany, the Israeli Education Ministry, Deutsches Filmmuseum, The German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and the City of Frankfurt.

The films will be screened on Sunday, 8 November, at 11:00 at the Deutsches Filmmuseum cinema. Admission is free.

 

aliyah.deutsches-filminstitut.de