b.h. Yael

Fresh Blood: A Consideration of Belonging is a hybrid documentary which includes questions around Arab Jewishness, negotiating Palestine, gender, belly dancing and memory. This video essay, formed by personal narrative and including a return to Israel/Palestine, engages issues of: Jewish racialized identity, Arab/Jewish dichotomies and the way these come together in Iraqi Jewish culture, and the personal implications of the politics of Palestine and the Jewish holocaust.

Letter to My Tribe started with a question: Why don’t more Jews and Israelis speak out about Palestine? Over many years my mother, who represents a more messianic perspective, and I have had numerous arguments, some recorded, some not. These form the backbone of this video essay in which Israelis and Jews, journalists, activists and a rabbi are interviewed, and in which documentation of actions on the ground, in the West Bank, are woven with more personal family histories and journeys to Iraq and to Poland.