Deeper Than Oblivion ― Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema

In this collection, leading scholars in both film studies and Israeli studies show that beyond representing familiar historical accounts or striving to offer a more complete and accurate depiction of the past, Israeli cinema has innovatively used trauma and memory to offer insights about Israeli society and to engage with cinematic experimentation and invention.

Tracing a long line of films from the 1940s up to the 2000s, the contributors use close readings of these films not only to reconstruct the past, but also to actively engage with it. Addressing both high-profile and lesser known fiction and non-fiction Israeli films, Deeper than Oblivion underlines the unique aesthetic choices many of these films make in their attempt to confront the difficulties, perhaps even impossibility, of representing trauma. By looking at recent and classic examples of Israeli films that turn to memory and trauma, this book addresses the pressing issues and disputes in the field today.

Raz Yosef is Senior Lecturer and the chair of the cinema studies B.A. Program at the Department of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema (2004), To Know a Man: Masculinity, Sexuality and Ethnicity in Israeli Cinema (2010, in Hebrew), The Politics of Loss and Trauma in Contemporary Israeli Cinema (2011), and co-editor of Just Images: Ethics and the Cinematic (2011).

Boaz Hagin is Lecturer at the Department of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University. He is author of Death in Classical Hollywood Cinema (2010), co-editor of Just Images: Ethics and the Cinematic (2011), and co-author with Thomas Elsaesser of Memory, Trauma, and Fantasy in American Cinema (2012, in Hebrew).