The Skies are Closer in Homesh

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The Skies are Closer in Homesh
Directed byMenora Hazani
Release date
  • 2004 (2004)
Running time
60 minutes
CountryIsrael
LanguageHebrew with English subtitles

The Skies are Closer in Homesh (Hebrew: בחומש קרוב לשמיים), also called Hitna'ari (Hebrew: התנערי)[1] is a 2004 documentary film that follows a newlywed Jewish couple through their first few years of married life in the Israeli settlement of Homesh in Samaria as they experience, and recover from, a terrorist attack.[2] It is based on the real-life experience of director Menora Hazani and her family who lived on the settlement.[1]

Produced by Manora Hasani-Katzover, daughter of Benny Katzover, co-founder of ultranationalist activist group Gush Emunim, it has been described as "clearly an almost didactic, right-wing film".[3]

Description[edit]

The film is the second in a trilogy by Menora Hazani, a former resident of Homesh, presenting the point of view of Israeli settlers. She filmed the first of the trilogy, It Happened After the Spring (2001) before graduating from the Ma'aleh School of Television, Film and the Arts; The Skies are Closer in Homesh (2004) and Arise From the Dust (2005), recounting the evacuation of the settlement, followed.[4] The Skies are Closer in Homesh documents the early years of Hazani's marriage and the birth of her first child at Homesh.[4] Shortly after she moved to the isolated settlement, three residents were killed in terrorist attacks, and a month later, four members of the Gavish family were murdered. The film explores the plight of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and their yearning for the Messianic redemption.[5]

The documentary sympathetically portrays the deep, Jewish attachment to the soil of the Holy Land.[6] Filmed on two Israeli settlements that have experienced terrorist attacks, it also depicts the trauma experienced by Israeli settlers targeted by terrorists.[6][7]

The film was screened at film festivals in New York and Washington, D.C.[2][8]

See also[edit]

Other documentaries about the Arab–Israeli conflict:

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Shragai, Nadav (7 August 2008). "Yearning to Return Home to Homesh". Haaretz. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  2. ^ a b Brown, Hannah (8 April 2005). "Cine File". The Jerusalem Post. ProQuest 319475406.
  3. ^ Morag, Raya (2008). "The Living Body and the Corpse—Israeli Documentary Cinema and the Intifadah". Journal of Film and Video. 60 (3/4). University of Illinois Press: 3–24. eISSN 1934-6018. ISSN 0742-4671. JSTOR 20688599. Retrieved 2023-03-21. Among the films mentioned, only one, The Skies Are Closer in Homesh, the family video by Manora Hazani-Katzover (daughter of Benny Katzover, one of the founders of Gush Emunim and a leader of the settlement movement in the occupied territories), recreates the link to the soil. Filmed in two settlements in the northern West Bank where terrorist attacks had occurred, it is clearly an almost didactic, right-wing film.
  4. ^ a b "It Happened After the Spring". Ma'aleh School of Television, Film and the Arts. 2014. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  5. ^ "בחומש קרוב לשמיים" [The Skies are Closer in Homesh] (in Hebrew). Jerusalem Cinematheque. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  6. ^ a b Morag, Raya (2013). Waltzing with Bashir: Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema. Tauris. p. 229. ISBN 9780857722935. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
  7. ^ Morag, Raya (2008). "The Living Body and the Corpse—Israeli Documentary Cinema and the Intifadah". Journal of Film and Video. 60 (3/4): 3–24. doi:10.1353/jfv.0.0016. JSTOR 20688599. S2CID 56294378.
  8. ^ "Film Capsules". Washington Post. 3 December 2004. ProQuest 409825229.

Sources[edit]

External links[edit]

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