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Yossi and Itamar, Still from video 1
The Fantastic World of Yossi and Itamar
Yossi and Itamar, Still from video 1
Two young men, dressed in jeans and army shirts, are knocking on doors in a small town in Israel, asking people to donate to the Israeli Army. It is the day of the Telethon – an annual national donation event for the Israel Defense Fund. But the two men are actually artists dressed as soldiers asking for any kind of donation – an eggplant, some sugar, maybe a toothbrush. The absurdity is as funny as it is horrifying, and reflects the typical duality of the Israeli relationship with the army which is composed of 18 year old boys and girls.
Welcome to the crazy world of Yossi and Itamar, the Israeli version of Borat, the intelligent version of young kids jokes, a candid camera that is fully exposed to the audience, but still very candid. Yossi and Itamar are researching Israel. They are asking questions, offering impossible scripts and touching all local open nerves until it’s hard to know if the tears you just shed were due to laughter or misery.
Oddly enough, it all started in the army. Yossi Atia and Itamar Rose (both 30) met when they were 18 in a pre-army course for social leadership, and quickly became very good friends.
Yossi: ...which we still are!
Vardit Gross: Until success and wealth destroy your friendship.
Yossi: Exactly, but luckily enough there’s no money yet!
Itamar: After the army we both moved to Jerusalem. Yossi went to study film at Sam Spiegel School, and I went to study Philosophy and Economics. From there, I moved to Law School and Middle Eastern studies. After a while I decided I should join Yossi in school, and we started our creative relationship in an improvisational theatre group.
Yossi: It was an awful time in Jerusalem, with lots of suicide bombings and with the Israeli public debate about the Gaza withdrawal in the background. We decided to go to Gush Katif (one of most active settlements in the debate) and make a video about the situation. I think the combination of political events and the very methodical process of film school made us want a quick and effective way to respond to the world.
We made nonsense and it was fun. We dressed up as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and asked people to throw eggs at us. We threw food at hunger strikers. It was almost the opposite of film school. At school, they told us what to do and how to do it. We realized it wasn't working for us and that the art model allowed more flexibility to improvise.
Itamar: We decided to leave school, but in order to avoid feeling like we were just jumping into the void, we made a three year commitment to work together.
Yossi: A two year commitment.
Itamar: Three years. Anyway, we are still working together. We started monthly screenings, working as if we had a TV show and must react to everything in real time. In the film world, things take time. You can really react to the Lebanon war only twenty five years later – not only because it takes so long to make a film, but also because you can either say something unimportant in real time, or something important years later, when things are more clear. We went for the first option.
Yossi: Once a month we screened work in cafes, bars, cinemas, and more and more people started to come. It became a little local phenomenon.
The screenings led to many good things - a leading Israeli news website approached them to create movies for their website, they produced a pilot for a TV show (for channel 10, which has since suffered from financial problems), and the artworld embraced them - from the Pompidou Center to a biennale for young artists in Italy, from the Herzlyia Museum to a screening at the Tate Modern. Yossi and Itamar had found their humorous place in the video art world.
VG: You show your work in festivals, on the internet, in galleries, on TV. These days, you are publishing a DVD of selected works. What is the ultimate experience for you?
Yossi: Real screenings in galleries or in the cinema with a captive audience of 50-100 people. At the end of the day, we make movies with a beginning and an end. Watching the films together creates an experience: you hear how others react and feel comfortable laughing at less convenient times.
Itamar: The truth is, I would rather not have people watch the work online. It’s like seeing a postcard instead of the original painting. And there is also the cumulative effect. When you see only one movie you might think it’s a street survey, but after seeing six movies one after the other, the whole creates something powerful. People come to us after screenings and always want to talk about the whole experience.
VG: You’ve made movies about the refugees from Darfur, hostage soldier Gilad Shalit, group rape. You’ve asked people to state that they died in a terror attack so you can show their testimony on TV if something really happens to them. You cut the Israeli flag. Are there any lines you won't cross?
Itamar: No. First, because there aren’t any. But also because it is interesting to check your moral boundaries, see where they are not so clear.
Yossi: I’m not sure I stand behind everything we've done, but altogether we are doing funny things. There is a huge gap between the mainstream media and cultural representation. For example, there is a trend among young people to avoid going to the army, but no one talks about it. We've debated presenting work on TV, and have been asked repeatedly not to be too political. It’s capitalist censorship: no one wants to upset the audience.
There are two kinds of movies – sometimes we come up with a specific idea and sometimes it's anthropological research. We stage a situation like Darfur refugees trying to cross the border and then sit back and see what happens.
VG: And oddly enough people tend to think you are serious?
Itamar: It happens in the most unexpected places. For example, we’ll put a Kafia and claim to be Arabs, and even though we don’t have an accent, when we show them the camera, they buy it.
Yossi: I don’t think it matters if people believe us or not as long as they cooperate.
VG: The participants in your films often seem to act in a very phony way.
Yossi: I actually think that what people are often speaking truths that they are trying to avoid. The people themselves aren’t phony, it’s society that's phony. Remember, it’s not candid camera and we are not making people do things they will regret later.
Though their movies can be embarrassing, annoying, and sometimes upsetting, most of the time Yossi and Itamar are humorous and sharp. They are interpreters of Israeli collective memory, showing us the banality of our reactions. In the movie “Missiles over Ramat Gan,” they pretend to be a TV camera crew preparing reports from places in Israel where missiles might fall. They ask the public to react as if it were moments after an attack. From hysteria to patriotism, the expected reactions are familiar. The frightening part is that as we watch, we get to know a hidden part of ourselves.
Watch the films with English subtitles.
Visit Yossi and Itamar's website.
Welcome to the crazy world of Yossi and Itamar, the Israeli version of Borat, the intelligent version of young kids jokes, a candid camera that is fully exposed to the audience, but still very candid. Yossi and Itamar are researching Israel. They are asking questions, offering impossible scripts and touching all local open nerves until it’s hard to know if the tears you just shed were due to laughter or misery.
Oddly enough, it all started in the army. Yossi Atia and Itamar Rose (both 30) met when they were 18 in a pre-army course for social leadership, and quickly became very good friends.
Yossi: ...which we still are!
Vardit Gross: Until success and wealth destroy your friendship.
Yossi: Exactly, but luckily enough there’s no money yet!
Itamar: After the army we both moved to Jerusalem. Yossi went to study film at Sam Spiegel School, and I went to study Philosophy and Economics. From there, I moved to Law School and Middle Eastern studies. After a while I decided I should join Yossi in school, and we started our creative relationship in an improvisational theatre group.
Yossi: It was an awful time in Jerusalem, with lots of suicide bombings and with the Israeli public debate about the Gaza withdrawal in the background. We decided to go to Gush Katif (one of most active settlements in the debate) and make a video about the situation. I think the combination of political events and the very methodical process of film school made us want a quick and effective way to respond to the world.
We made nonsense and it was fun. We dressed up as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and asked people to throw eggs at us. We threw food at hunger strikers. It was almost the opposite of film school. At school, they told us what to do and how to do it. We realized it wasn't working for us and that the art model allowed more flexibility to improvise.
Itamar: We decided to leave school, but in order to avoid feeling like we were just jumping into the void, we made a three year commitment to work together.
Yossi: A two year commitment.
Itamar: Three years. Anyway, we are still working together. We started monthly screenings, working as if we had a TV show and must react to everything in real time. In the film world, things take time. You can really react to the Lebanon war only twenty five years later – not only because it takes so long to make a film, but also because you can either say something unimportant in real time, or something important years later, when things are more clear. We went for the first option.
Yossi: Once a month we screened work in cafes, bars, cinemas, and more and more people started to come. It became a little local phenomenon.
The screenings led to many good things - a leading Israeli news website approached them to create movies for their website, they produced a pilot for a TV show (for channel 10, which has since suffered from financial problems), and the artworld embraced them - from the Pompidou Center to a biennale for young artists in Italy, from the Herzlyia Museum to a screening at the Tate Modern. Yossi and Itamar had found their humorous place in the video art world.
VG: You show your work in festivals, on the internet, in galleries, on TV. These days, you are publishing a DVD of selected works. What is the ultimate experience for you?
Yossi: Real screenings in galleries or in the cinema with a captive audience of 50-100 people. At the end of the day, we make movies with a beginning and an end. Watching the films together creates an experience: you hear how others react and feel comfortable laughing at less convenient times.
Itamar: The truth is, I would rather not have people watch the work online. It’s like seeing a postcard instead of the original painting. And there is also the cumulative effect. When you see only one movie you might think it’s a street survey, but after seeing six movies one after the other, the whole creates something powerful. People come to us after screenings and always want to talk about the whole experience.
VG: You’ve made movies about the refugees from Darfur, hostage soldier Gilad Shalit, group rape. You’ve asked people to state that they died in a terror attack so you can show their testimony on TV if something really happens to them. You cut the Israeli flag. Are there any lines you won't cross?
Itamar: No. First, because there aren’t any. But also because it is interesting to check your moral boundaries, see where they are not so clear.
Yossi: I’m not sure I stand behind everything we've done, but altogether we are doing funny things. There is a huge gap between the mainstream media and cultural representation. For example, there is a trend among young people to avoid going to the army, but no one talks about it. We've debated presenting work on TV, and have been asked repeatedly not to be too political. It’s capitalist censorship: no one wants to upset the audience.
There are two kinds of movies – sometimes we come up with a specific idea and sometimes it's anthropological research. We stage a situation like Darfur refugees trying to cross the border and then sit back and see what happens.
VG: And oddly enough people tend to think you are serious?
Itamar: It happens in the most unexpected places. For example, we’ll put a Kafia and claim to be Arabs, and even though we don’t have an accent, when we show them the camera, they buy it.
Yossi: I don’t think it matters if people believe us or not as long as they cooperate.
VG: The participants in your films often seem to act in a very phony way.
Yossi: I actually think that what people are often speaking truths that they are trying to avoid. The people themselves aren’t phony, it’s society that's phony. Remember, it’s not candid camera and we are not making people do things they will regret later.
Though their movies can be embarrassing, annoying, and sometimes upsetting, most of the time Yossi and Itamar are humorous and sharp. They are interpreters of Israeli collective memory, showing us the banality of our reactions. In the movie “Missiles over Ramat Gan,” they pretend to be a TV camera crew preparing reports from places in Israel where missiles might fall. They ask the public to react as if it were moments after an attack. From hysteria to patriotism, the expected reactions are familiar. The frightening part is that as we watch, we get to know a hidden part of ourselves.
Watch the films with English subtitles.
Visit Yossi and Itamar's website.
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