24/10/2012 - Cineuropa marks the 5th Avignon Forum with interviews with several personalities from the cultural and creative sector

With its theme 'Culture: Reasons to hope. Imagining and transmitting', from November 15 to 17, the fifth Avignon Forum aims to offer reasons for hope in a time of pessimism.

Every year, the forum organises and supports international meetings in Avignon and Essen with the Avignon-Ruhr Forum. Suggestions made during these discussions between actors in culture, creation industries, economics, and media are then relayed to national and international bodies.

Cineuropa is marking the event by publishing interviews with several personalities from the cultural and creative sector. To begin, here is Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai.

Does culture give you a reason to hope?
Amos Gitai: Obviously! When you consider ancient societies, artists were considered as healers – crucial to well-being. Today, the public tends to consider more and more art works as objects to which a price is attached. Indeed, the value you can attach is the exchange. How can we make a synthesis between those two aspirations?

I believe culture can create bridges among wars, killings, etc. It is its raison d’être - creating bridges where there are none. My films talk about hates and atrocities. I keep making films in spite of the situation and not because of these awful situations. Not only does this give me a reason to hope, but I think that creation is essential to fight everyday pessimism that is embodied, for example, by the evening news. The role of the artist is to stimulate possible borders and stimulate the future - let’s inject ideas to create a future. Indeed, ideas are not weak, they are strong - they can create social changes and foster revolutions…

Who embodies it the best?
The French government, whether it is to become a reality or not, has for example proclaimed the creation of 150,000 houses. With what kind of new concept of housing is it possible to create or foster a new dynamic within the nuclear family or with the environment? There is an infinite number of possibilities, from culture to architecture…

What would be the personal initiative/project/work that embodies your reason for hope?
I am to launch a new museum in Haifa dedicated to my father, Munio Weinraub, Israeli architect of the Bauhaus movement who built many buildings in Israel, including the memorial of Yad Vashem. The whole relation to space is explored in this building. Everything was designed in order to receive the maximum amount of daylight. The architecture of the archive building was designed as pure and simple, it was thought to create a feeling of harmony and peace which is embodied by the geometric figures chosen for the building.

How would you like to pass it on to future generations?
As my mother used to always say: “I do not believe in a second life, except when you talk about descendants and the arts…"

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