Projecting the Nation
216 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
0 Illustrations
Paperback
Release Date:15 May 2020
ISBN:9781978813380
Hardcover
Release Date:15 May 2020
ISBN:9781978813397
Projecting the Nation
History and Ideology on the Israeli Screen
By Eran Kaplan
Rutgers University Press
Projecting the Nation: History and Ideology on the Israeli Screen is a wide-ranging history of over seven decades of Israeli cinema. The only book in English to offer this type of historical scope was Ella Shohat’s Israeli Cinema: East West and the Politics of Representation from 1989. Since 1989, however, Israeli cinema and Israeli society have undergone some crucial transformations and, moreover, Shohat’s book offered a single framework through which to judge Israeli cinema: a critique of orientalism. Projecting the Nation contends that Israeli cinema offers much richer historical and ideological perspectives that expose the complexity of the Israeli project. By analyzing Israeli films which address such issues as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi divide, the kibbutz and urban life, the rise of religion in Israeli public life and more, the book explores the way cinema has represented and also shaped our understanding of the history of modern Israel as it evolved from a collectivist society to a society where individualism and adherence to local identities is the dominant ideology.
In Projecting the Nation, Eran Kaplan ingeniously analyzes the interrelation of aesthetic, economic, and social forces that have influenced Israeli filmmaking since the state’s inception. Kaplan’s interpretations of genres and individual films are smart, sophisticated, and engaging.
In Projecting the Nation, Eran Kaplan ingeniously analyzes the interrelation of aesthetic, economic, and social forces that have influenced Israeli filmmaking since the state’s inception. Kaplan’s interpretations of genres and individual films are smart, sophisticated, and engaging.
Eran Kaplan is the Goldman Professor in Israel Studies at San Francisco State University. He is the author of Beyond Post Zionism, The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy, and with Derek Penslar of The Origins of Israel, 1882-1948: A Documentary History.
Contents
Introduction
1 Pioneers, Fighters and Immigrants
2 Looking Inward
3 Present Absentees
4 The Post-Zionist Condition
5 The Post-Political Turn in Israeli Cinema
6 Eros on the Israeli Screen
7 In the Image of the Divine
Epilogue Big Screens, Small Screens
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Pioneers, Fighters and Immigrants
2 Looking Inward
3 Present Absentees
4 The Post-Zionist Condition
5 The Post-Political Turn in Israeli Cinema
6 Eros on the Israeli Screen
7 In the Image of the Divine
Epilogue Big Screens, Small Screens
Acknowledgments
