If you begin watching Orit Fouks Rotem‘s Cinema Sabaya as I did, with no foreknowledge whatsoever, you may begin to wonder, at first, if it’s a documentary. With a locked down camera that allows people to cross in and out of its unmoving frame as they go about their business, the film at first resembles a fly-on-the-wall overview of this room and this group of women.
Rotem’s formal approach loosens up a bit as Cinema Sabaya progresses but it remains a more of less restrained piece of still shots and low contrast lighting. But once the women begin to speak, it becomes clear that what you’re watching is a work of very intentional fiction. That’s not to imply the actors aren’t skilled; on the contrary, each woman emits her own distinct glow. But the pointed–and at times, gently funny–dialogue makes it clear that Rotem, who also wrote the screenplay, is guiding us somewhere.
Rona (Dana Ivgy) is an Israeli filmmaker teaching a video camera workshop for laywomen, some of whom are Arab and some of whom are Jewish. The class is not intended as art therapy but difficulties and differences soon come to the fore nonetheless. The question is if that’s a natural progression of the cultural friction in the room or if Rona is intentionally drawing it out. Even as teacher, is she still directing? Cinema Sabaya is not an overt polemic about Israel and the arts like Nadav Lapid‘s Ahed’s Knee. It is a more gentle–and certainly more subtle–approach, at least attempting to put together a dialectic.
At first, the discomfort comes courtesy of microaggressions. “Is that common in your village?” asks a Jewish women of her Arab classmate. The Arab woman, before answering the question, has to clarify that she lives in a city. Things become less subtle when unwanted advice, mostly about how to handle a husband, starts to come from all sides.
Even then, however, it’s rare for the women to truly lash out at one another. Mostly, the Arab women patiently explain their way of life to the Jewish women, who offer responses ranging from curiosity to condescension. It’s no mistake that the opposite doesn’t happen. It doesn’t have to. With Israel being the hegemonic culture, the Arab women are already aware.
Still, it’s not exactly all hugs and learning. The women may not let loose on one another but, increasingly, they show their anger with Rona. Cinema Sabaya would be a duller affair if it only existed to manufacture cross-cultural discussion. It becomes a much juicier text with the question of Rona’s true intentions and culpability, especially when you follow to logical path to Rotem’s own self-implication. Cinema Sabaya is as much a film about filmmaking as it is about national and religious identities.
