Tripping across the YouTube galaxy
Israeli experimental hardcore group Giant Cellphone presents a wicked and weird hallucinatory mix of vintage Israeli TV overlayed with screeching guitar, plenty of subversive political messaging and a general sense of malaise.
And here’s another fabulous one:
VIdeo from Midburn (Israeli Burning Man) 2017.
Israeli based Buttering Trio (KerenDun, Beno Hendler, Rejoicer) in a chilled psychedelic tune.
Loco Hot and A-Wa new video mixes yemenite music with electronic beats and the impeccable Gilad Kahana. Priceless.
Israeli poet and artist Ave has been a regular feature onthe DPV since it’s very beginning. Ave’s video (see here) are unique in that what makes them psychedelic is not a garish flow of colors on the screen, but rather something more simple and unmediated. The felt presence of immediate experience.
Whether it is two plastic bags hovering around each other in the wind like two lovers caught up in a dance, or a zen moment on top of an amusement park merry go round, Ave’s videos capture something elusive and beautiful about the reality of the present moment. As a viewer, you tend to get caught in the experience of what is happened in those very moments in which the video was shot.
Ave has a very Zen-like approach to film making, a way of filming reality and yet being present in it. Whether he is the one shooting the video or the one to appear in it, the camera is not invisible. It is part of the scene, like a participator but in a way that doesn’t hem or hamper the magic which happens on the screen but ends up making it even brighter and more awesome.
Ave’s present video, Pelepe, is, to my mind, his best work so far. It starts as a regular ride on the Israel train service, but then Ave and his partner in this video, the dancer K, begin their highly peculiar act which is difficult to describe: is this a dance? a performance? a meditation?
As they continue they arouse the interest of not only their immediate wagon neighbors. The entire train car gets involved, all sharing the magic of the moment, the wonder of watching people open up like this, sharing their intimacy with strangers on the train. In this way, Ave and K give those around them the present of intimacy, as the whole train wagon gets immersed in the special and beautiful happening.
Things continue to evolve from there, ending with a reminder of the kind of fears this intimacy and expressiveness can also stimulate in some, and the existence of violence which is always there lurking alongside the beauty and the joy in this imperfectly perfect world of ours.
A spectacular video.
ASIF is the annual sum-up screening of Israeli animation, initiated and organized by Asifa Israel since 2000. It is now a competitive event, organized by the Animix, the caricature, comics and animation festival, which takes place every August in the Tel Aviv Cinematheque.
Directed and animated by Ori Toor
Music by Tali Ben Itzhak
Israeli singer Shefita’s version to a Nostalgic Israeli children’s song “Etze Li Ha’Suka” (The Market Song), “filmed in Tel-Aviv Israel, and made with lots of love to all the animals and living creatures on this planet!”
