The Trouble with Avi

He is almost always in front of the camera, but the films are never about him at all. He films the commonplace, the everyday, even the prosaic, only to reveal with unsettling lucidity more profound and unseen truths about the paradoxes of contemporary Israeli society and its occupation of Palestine. He seems to make films about making films that in reality are never made. He trumps documentary with fiction, performance with reality, back and forth, and addles the codes of direct cinema. This is the trouble with Avi Mograbi’s cinematic and artistic practice, it is so essentially and literally subversive, it is impossible to classify. Neither can he: actor, sound recordist, second cameraman, singer/performer, director and citizen, he embodies all these roles, dutifully, responsibly, without ambiguity or affect. And most remarkably, he never displaces himself, or his body from the ailing social body he films, deconstructs, challenges or provokes.

“The Trouble with Avi” frames acclaimed Israeli director Avi Mograbi’s filmic and artistic practice combining screening his entire filmography with a series of conversations that aim to probe, deconstruct and bring a more critical insight into the singularity and complexity of his œuvre. His interlocutors include artist Guy Ben Ner, historian, iconologist and belle-lettrist Elias Sanbar and eminent film historian theorist, Ella Shohat.
The program also includes a workshop with Mograbi titled “Power and Cinema”, conducted by Marie-José Mondzain and Jean-Michel Frodon as well as an avant-première work-in-progress presentation of his new film. The screening program also features three critically acclaimed masterworks that have inspired Mograbi’s practice.

Curated by Rasha Salti.

“The Trouble with Avi” is organized in partnership with the Kadist Art Foundation and the Maison des métallos, in collaboration with Documentaire sur Grand Écran, des Films d’Ici and Cinéma du réel.
Acknowledgements to Epicentre Films, Les Prairies ordinaires, and MUBI.