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JAFFA THE ORANGE’S CLOCKWORK JAFFA

CONTENT

Jaffa, the orange’s clockwork narrates the visual history of the famous citrus fruit originated from Palestine and known worldwide for centuries as "Jaffa oranges".

The history of the orange is the history of this land. Through photography and cinema, poetry, paintings, workers of the citruses’ industry and historians, memory and present mythologies, Palestinians and Israelis cross and combine.

The close reading of the “Jaffa” brand’s representation is a reflection on western orientalist phantasms surrounding the ‘holy land’ and the ‘State of Israel’ and a way to reveal the untold story of what was once a commune industry and symbol to Arabs and Jews in Palestine.

Jaffa’s orange is one of the symbols that helped build the Zionist discourse about Palestine: a “desert we have made bloom”.

Based on photographic and cinematographic documents, some going back as far as to the 19th century, Eyal Sivan’s film shows the orange groves at a time when Arab Jaffa was one of Palestine’s most populated and thriving cities. From the picking of the fruit to its packaging before exportation, the orange was a source of revenue for thousands of peasants and workmen, not only from Palestine, but from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon too.

Jews and Arabs worked together in the orange groves.

These images were progressively replaced by socialist realist images, Israeli style, depicting labor and songs, emancipated women in shorts, etc.: it was the spreading of the “Jewish Labor”, the socialist call to action, excluding the Arabs.

In 1948, Jaffa was ruined under the bombs and most of its population was gone. Jaffa’s orange then became the symbol of an Arab-free Israel.

An international advertising campaign imposed the name “Jaffa”, like a trademark, concealing the city of Jaffa, its more than a hundred-year-old orange groves, and the history of the Jewish Arab cooperation over this legendary fruit.

CREDITS

Eyal Sivan, IL/D/F/B 2009, 88 min, Hebr./Arab./Engl./Franz. with German ST

Director Eyal Sivan | Camera David Zarif, Rémi Lainé, Shafir Sarousi, Vincent Fooy | Script Eyal Sivan | Editing Audrey Maurion | Sound Oren Raviv, Jean- Jacques Quinet, Asher Saraga | Production Osnat Trabelsi for Trabelsi Productions, Arik Bernstein for Alma Films | Coproduction Luna Blue Film (Serge Kestemont), The Factory (Frank Eskenazi, Hortense Quitard) | In cooperation with 5 (Carlos Pinsky, Barbara Hurel), WDR (Jutta Krug), Channel 8 (Liran Atzmor), RTBF (Wilbur Leguebe), Radio–Canada (Jean Pelletier, Georges Amar), Télévision Suisse Romande (Irène Challand, Gaspard Lamunière) JAFFA

FILM-MAKER

Film-maker Eyal Sivan

Eyal Sivan, is a documentary filmmaker and theoretician based in . Born in 1964 in Haifa Israel and grow up in Jerusalem. After exercising as a professional photographer in Tel-Aviv, he leaves Israel in 1985 and settled in Paris.

Since he is sharing is time between and Israel. Known for his controversial films, Sivan directed more than 10 worldwide awarded political documentaries and produced many others. His cinematographic body of work was shown and awarded various prizes in prestigious festivals. Beside worldwide theatrical releases and TV broadcasts, Sivan's films are regularly exhibit in major art shows around the world. He publishes and lectures on the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, documentary filmmaking and ethics, political crimes and representation, political use of memory, genocide and representation, etc. He is the founder and artistic director of the Paris based documentary films production company momento! and the film distribution agency Scalpel.

He is the founder and Chief Editor of South Cinema Notebooks - a journal of cinema and political critic edited by the Sapir academic college in Israel where he lectures regularly. In the last years Sivan was Reader (associate professor) in media production at the school of Arts and Digital Industries (ADI), at the University of East London (UEL) were he was co-leading the MA program in Film, video and new media. Presently Sivan in an Honorary Fellow at Univerty of Exeter UK, he is teaching at the Master in Film at the Film Academy in and he is member of the editorial board of the Paris based publishing house La Fabrique Editions. FILMOGRAPHY

Documentary Films

2012 Common State, potential conversation [1] 124 minutes, colour, Video. 2009 Jaffa, the orange's clockwork 88 minutes, colour, Video. 2004 I Love You All / Aus Liebe Zum Volk (co-directed with Audrey Maurion) 98 minutes, b/w & color, 35mm. 2003 Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel (co-directed with Michel Khleifi) Documentary, 272’ 1999 The Specialist, portrait of a modern criminal 128’ 1995 Aqabat-Jaber, Peace with no Return? 61’ 1994 Jerusalem(s), Borderline Syndrome Docu-drama, 64’ 1993 Itgaber, he will Overcome 2 x 85’ 1990 Izkor, Slaves of Memory 97’ 1987 Aqabat-Jaber, Passing Through 81’

TV Documentaries

2007 Citizens K, the twin brothers 54’ 2005 Faces of the Fallen 52’ 1991 Israland 58’

Short films

2001 On the Top of the Descent Fiction 32’ 1997 Burundi, under Terror Photomentary, b/w, 13’ 1996 Itsembatsemba, Rwanda one Genocide later Photomentary, b/w, 13’ Other visual media works 2012 Towards a common archive, testimonies of Zionist veterans of 1948 Multi screens video show. 2012 IssueZero : Montage Interdit Berlin Documentary Forum 2 New practices across disciplines. Haus der Kulturen der Welt www.hkw.de 2010 Documentary moments 1 : Renaissance Berlin Documentary Forum 1 New practices across disciplines. Haus der Kulturen der Welt www.hkw.de 2009 Fragmented memory of spectatorship Top 10 documentary programme IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Jaffa, the orange’s clockwork is a political essay unfolding the story of the invention and the visual history of the world’s wide famous citrus fruit originated in Palestine and known around the world as "Jaffa oranges".

While the orange become the symbol of the Zionist enterprise and the state of Israel, for Palestinians it symbolises the lost of their homeland and its destruction.

Through a careful reading of the visual representation of the brand, the film reflects on western phantasms related to the ‘Orient’ the ‘holy land’ and the State of Israel and unveils the untold story of what was ones a commune symbol and industry to Arabs and Jews in Palestine.

The oranges of Jaffa, the fruits, the orchards, the brand name and the city - that gave to the fruit its name, are the backdrop of the commune Jewish-Arab life in Palestine before the establishment of Israel, the colonial covetousness, the account of obliteration, nationalization, then repudiation in order to propose a joint historical narrative. FESTIVALS

(selection) IDFA, International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam, 2009 Filmmaker, International Documentary film festival , , 2009 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Durham, NC, USA, 2010 Nicosia International Documentary Film Festival, Cyprus, 2010 Bafici, Buenos Aires International Film Festival, 2010 Bergamo Film Meeting, Bergamo, Italy, 2010 Beldocs, Belgrada, Serbia, 2010 London Palestine Film Festival, London, UK, 2010 Toronto Jewish Film Festival, Canada, 2010 Visions du Réel, Nyon, Switzerland, 2010 Planet Doc Review Festival, Warsaw, Poland, 2010 Documenta Madrid 10, Madrid, Spain, 2010 Globale FIlmfestival, Berlin, Germany, 2010 Documentartist International Film Festival, Istanbul, Turkey, 2010 Sarajevo International Film Festival Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2010 Dokufest International Documentary and short Film Festival, Prizon Republic of Kosovo, 2010 Boston Palestine Film Festival, 2010 Visoes do Sul, Mostra Internacional de Cinema de Portimao, Portimao Algarve, Portugal, 2010 Memorimage Film Festival Reus, Catalonia Spain 2010 FROM THE PRESS VERZIO International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Budapest Hungary 2010 The message of a Brussels Mediterranean Film Festival 2010 colonization, meant to bring progress to a world of desolation, becomes an object AWARDS of ridicule. (...) The film is worth seeing for the International Jury Award For Best Documentary, Filmmaker, Milan, questions it raises in the 2009 Young Jury's Special Mention, Filmmaker, Milan, 2009 viewer. (Le Monde) Award For Best Editing, Soleluna International documentary film festival on Islam and the Mediterranean, Palermo, 2010 A remarkable work of memory. (Télérama) mec film Emdener Str. 48d 10551Berlin Deutschland / Germany

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