An eye on the Middle East

He's in town this time to attend the Bangkok International Film Festival where his 2005 film "Free Zone", set in Jerusalem and Jordan's Free Zone, is being screened.

The 56-year-old is probably best known among cinephiles for his series of films about Israeli cities made in the late 1990s, all of which have Hebrew titles.

"Kadosh" relates the difficulties faced by Rivka, who is unable to conceive a child, in an Orthodox Jewish community.

"I had one rabbi send me a very nice note, listing all the mistakes in my film. He finished it by saying, 'I wouldn't go see your movie, anyway!'," Gitai chuckles.

Then came "Kedma" about the birth of Israel, "Eden" and finally "Kippur", about the Yom Kippur War.

The hero of "Kippur" is named Weinraub - "my auto-biographical movie", Amos laughs: apparently "Gitai" is a Hebrew approximation of Weinraub, the original family name.

While "Kippur" is the least political of Gitai's war movies, "Kedma", a critical retelling of Israel's war of independence, is sympathetic to the Palestinians and tough on the British, portraying them as alternately cruel and absurd. What comes across, though, is the utter chaos of the situation, as refugees from Nazi camps step off smugglers' boats and, while still on the beach, immediately become embroiled in another conflict.

In "Kippur" too, war is mostly just chaos. It is a holiday, so the film opens with a long sex scene between Weinraub and his wife. Then the phone rings: the war ensues, he never finds his unit so he joins another one instead, is in a helicopter crash and almost dies. Then he picks up where he left off, making love to his wife.

"Free Zone" was in competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival and won Israeli entertainer Hanna Laslo the best actress trophy.

"I think it should have gone to all three of them," Gitai says, "Natalie Portman and Hiam Abbas as well."

Gitai divides his time between Israel and France. "I moved there in the early '80s after I made 'Field Diary', a documentary about the first war in Lebanon," he explains.

"The Israeli authorities made it clear that 'enough was enough' and I would not be welcome to make movies there for a while."

The French Cinematheque invited him for what turned out to be a seven-year stint as an artist-in-residence.

"I was glad to get away from that obsession everyone has at home with the conflict, as if it were the only event in the world."

He came to Thailand for "Bangkok, Bahrain", part of a series of the globalisation of labour. The documentary focused on sex workers in Bangkok and Thai labourers in Bahrain.

"The migrant workers were put into camps at the edge of town and weren't allowed to drink. If they were caught, they were punished with a whip," Gitai says of the Bahrain segment.

In his most recent film, "Disengagement", currently in post-production, Juliette Binoche plays the daughter of a Catholic mother and a Jewish father who travels to Avignon to hear the reading of his will. In order to fulfil its conditions, however, she must continue on to Gaza, just as Israeli troops are withdrawing from the territory.

His next project will be shot entirely in France and will star veteran French actress Jeanne Moreau.

"Jeanne is making me dinner at her apartment. I'm looking forward to it," he smiles.

Moreau will play a lawyer in "Later You Will Understand", a strange, tragic episode in the family history of Jerome Clement, the president of the Franco-German culture channel, Arte.

"Jerome and Arte have backed most of my films," Gitai says.

"I said to Jerome, 'This is more of a French movie, maybe it would be better to have a French director'," but Clement, whose mother revealed that she was Jewish during the late '80s (at the time of the Klaus Barbie trial), disagreed.

Although Clement's mother gave him a Catholic upbringing, she had to hide during the war in order to avoid deportation as a Jew. Her husband - Clement's father - denounced her to the Vichy authorities and her in-laws took over the apartment of her parents, who'd been shipped off to extermination camps. The most amazing part of the story is that Clement is the product of his parents' post-war reunion.

"And then his father ran off with his mother's sister."

Back in the '80s, when he made "Bangkok, Bahrain", travelling to Bahrain on an Israeli passport was impossible, "so I had a friend help out. When people tell me something is impossible, I get interested," Gitai says.

After his journey to Jordan's free zone, Gitai started campaigning to shoot "Free Zone" in its proper setting. The Royal Jordanian Film Commission granted his wish.

Gitai's ex-driver, who had discovered a business opportunity in the free zone, took him there.

"I was amazed and heartened. Nobody even seemed to notice that the Star of David on the ambulances they were trading, or the "Vote for Sharon" stickers on the buses."

Even more heartening to Gitai was that his driver, a right-wing Israeli nationalist, now has a Palestinian partner in his business.

Special to The Nation