Deeper than Oblivion Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema

In this collection, leading scholars in both film studies and Israeli studies show that beyond representing familiar historical accounts (or striving to offer a more complete and accurate depiction of the past), Israeli cinema has innovatively used trauma and memory to offer insights about Israeli society and to engage with cinematic experimentation and invention. Tracing a long line of films from as early as 1934, the contributors use close readings of these films to not only reconstruct the past, but to actively engage with it. Using films not usually studied, like A Film Unfinished (2010), Happy Birthday Mr. Mograbi (1999), and A Hole in the Moon (1965), Deeper than Oblivion underlines the unique aesthetic choices many of these films make in their attempt to confront the difficulties, perhaps even impossibility, of representing trauma. By looking at recent and classic examples of Israeli films that turn to memory and trauma, this book addresses the pressing issues and disputes in the field today.

Raz Yosef is associate professor in the Department of Film and Television at Tel-Aviv University. His work on gender, sexuality and ethnicity in Israeli visual culture has appeared in GLQ, Third Text, Shofar, Framework and Camera Obscura. He is author of Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema (Rutgers University Press, 2004); To Know a Man: Sexuality, Masculinity and Ethnicity in Israeli Cinema (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2010); The Politics of Loss and Trauma in Contemporary Israeli Cinema (forthcoming 2011, Routledge). Boaz Hagin teaches at the Film and Television Department of Tel Aviv University in Israel. His articles have been published in Cinema Journal and Camera Obscura, and he is assistant editor of Science in Context.