House (Bait)

“House” is the story of a house in West Jerusalem: abandoned by its owner, a Palestinian doctor during the 1948 war; requisitioned by the Israeli government as “vacant”; rented to Jewish-Algerian immigrants in 1956; purchased by a university professor who undertakes its transformation into a patrician villa… The building site is like a theater in which the former inhabitants, the neighbors, the workers, the builder, and the new owner all appear. Israeli television censured the film.

“Gitai wants this house to be both a symbol and something very concrete; he wants it to become a character in a film. He achieves one of the most beautiful things a camera can register “live,” as it were; people who look at the same thing but see different things – and who are moved by that vision. In this crumbling shell of a house, real hallucinations begin to take shape. The film’s central idea is simple and the film has simply the force of that idea, no more, no less.”

Serge Daney, Libération, March 1, 1982

 

Cinematography Emanuel Aldema Sound Oded Hornik Editing Rina Ben Melech

Production Channel 1 TV

 

FESTIVALS

• Berlin International Film Festival/Berlinale 1982

• Rotterdam International Film Festival 1982