AMIT GOREN
Born 1957 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Lives and works in Tel Aviv
 
© Amit Goren
Amit Goren, “Your Nigger Talking” (video stills), 1999. © Amit Goren
 
Amit Goren is a writer, producer, and director. His work in documentary, fiction, and video focuses on socio-political content presented from a personal, critical point of view. His latest video works are “One, Two, Three,” a three-screen installation commissioned by the Israeli Center for Digital Art in 2004; “MAP,” a six-screen installation exhibited at the Italian Pavilion as part of the Venice Biennale (Italy, 2003) and also shown at the Making Differences exhibition (Stockholm, Sweden, 2004) together with “Three,” a three-screen video installation. Goren's latest film production is “Golan,” a story of Israeli settlers in the Golan Heights, conquered from Syria in the Six Day War (2003), produced for ARTE France and supported by the Sundance Documentary Fund. “Makom Project” (2002), an experimental series of twenty short films about places that are meaningful to their makers, was created and produced by Goren for a simultaneous premiere at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and on Israeli cable television. A selection of his other films include “The Cage,” a short fiction film about Israeli-Palestinian relations at the outset of the Intifadah, awarded the Prix Futura Berlin (1991); “66 Was A Good Year For Tourism,” about the filmmaker's family's experiences as immigrants in Egypt, Israel, and the US, awarded the Israeli Academy Award (1992); “6 Open, 21 Closed,” filmed inside a maximum security prison, awarded the Silver Wolf at International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (1994); “Good Or Bad, Black And White,“ which examines the life of Russian and Ethiopian immigrants in Israel at a transit camp; “Another Land” (1998), which examines the meaning of “home” during the 1990s peace process; and “Your Nigger Talking” (1999), a video installation about the life of illegal African foreign workers showed at Manifesta 3 (Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2000). As a producer, his credits include: “Ever Shot Anyone?” (1996) that provides a unique point of view of Israeli civilian soldiers on reserve duty along the Syrian border; “119 Bullets + Three” (1996), which deals with the prospects of a future civil war between secular and religious Jews in Israel at the time of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination; “Moscow on the Mediterranean” (1999) about the cultural ghetto of Russian immigrants in Israel; and “Tel Facher” (2002) about a mythological battle on the Golan Heights during the Six Day War. In 2004, Goren is involved in producing “The Hunger Project,” which includes sixteen short films about hunger, and “Eshbal” that examines the plight of alienated Ethiopian teenagers in Israel. For more info, please visit: www.amitgorenfilms.com.
 
Contribution: Participates in Station 3: The Movie Theater East of Eden, Aarhus, with “Your Nigger Talking,” Israel 1999. DVD (color), 29 min. Courtesy of the artist. The video is screened on Wednesday, October 20, 2004, from 7:30 – 9:15 pm.