Promised Lands: director Amos Gitai's video installation at Palazzo Vecchio

The Sala d’Arme of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence hosts from February 28 to April 14, 2022 the video installation Promised lands by international artist and filmmaker Amos Gitai (Haifa, 1950). The video installation was created specifically for the Florentine setting, on the occasion of the International Conference of Mayors of Mediterranean Cities held in Palazzo Vecchio from Feb. 25-27. It combines musical excerpts, image projections and text readings: Promised lands intends to be an imaginary dialogue between the protagonists of productions created by Amos Gitai during his career, to evoke, starting from his theatrical and film work, human destinies, history and the present in the various languages spoken in the Mediterranean area.

What do The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness (1992, 2009), Yitzhak Rabin, Chronicle of an Assassination (2016, 2018, 2021), Letter to a Friend from Gaza (2019) and Interior Exiles (2020) have in common? This journey through the eras and languages spoken in the Mediterranean is a political and poetic reflection on contemporary human destinies and the possibility of living together. Sound diffusions featuring the voices of Jeanne Moreau, Pippo Del Bono, Natalie Dessay, Juliette Binoche, Yael Abecassis, Hiam Abbas, Makram Khouty will create a strong suggestion and accompany the audience in theimmersive experience, amplified by a series of photographs descending from the ceiling.

Visitors will have the opportunity to see on a loop, played on the walls of the Sala D’Arme, excerpts of the correspondence between Efratia Gitai (1994-2003), Amos’ mother, and his father Elihau from the feature film Lullaby to my father, in which the director traces the life of his father Munio, and to listen to letters from Antonio Gramsci’s prison interpreted by Pippo del Bono from the show Interior exiles, created by Gitai for the Theatre de la Ville in Paris in 2020. They will then be able to see excerpts from Tsili, a film inspired by Aharon Appelfeld’s autobiographical novel about the peregrinations of characters living the nightmare of war, and excerpts from Kippur, a feature film in which the director recounts his dramatic experience during the Yom Kippur war. Also Field diary, a film-diary shot in the occupied territories before and during the invasion of Lebanon, Ananas/Pineapple exposé reportage and The war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness, based on The Jewish War by ancient historian Flavius Josephus, starring Jeanne Moreau as Flavius Josephus, and The book of Amos, filmed on a Tel Aviv street, where Israeli and Palestinian actors and actresses play the role of the prophet Amos and give a modern voice, in Hebrew and Arabic, to his ancient denunciation of corruption and social injustice. And finally Kedma, named after the ship laden with Holocaust survivors on their way to the Promised Land at the end of World War II, and Golem the spirit of Exile, a film that investigates the contemporary meanings of the Book of Ruth in the Bible, ending with Yitzhak Rabin: Chronicle of an Assassination, about the assassination of the Israeli prime minister on Nov. 4, 1995, after a demonstration for peace and against violence in Tel Aviv.

A journey through the works of the Israeli artist and director whose vast theatrical and cinematic output enables him to recount human destinies, history and the present in the voices of the Mediterranean.

Photo by Nicola Neri.

Promised Lands: director Amos Gitai's video installation at Palazzo Vecchio

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