The Viewing Booth

The Record and the Narrative. The Documentary Cinema of Ra’anan Alexandrowicz

Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, born in Jerusalem in 1969, is one of the most important documentary filmmakers of our time. His award-winning cinematic investigations into questions of law, power and testimony in Israel and Palestine are shown at all the world’s major festivals. “The Law in These Parts” (2011) received the award for best international documentary film at the Sundance Festival. “The Viewing Booth” (Der Spiegel, 2021) screened in the Forum of the Berlinale and was voted best documentary of the year by Rolling Stone. Alexandrowicz is currently working on a new project as a fellow in the ConTrust excellence project at Goethe University. As part of this fellowship, the DFF is showing three of his films, each with an introduction and subsequent discussion with experts.

Why does the publication of videos of human rights violations on platforms such as YouTube not lead to their immediate prosecution and correction? “The Viewing Both” explores this question in a kind of laboratory situation in which Maya Levi, an American-Jewish student, watches videos about everyday life in the West Bank and talks about her thoughts and feelings in front of the camera. A film about the limits of the power of the documentary and the documentary in the fight against disinformation.

Film screening of “The Viewing Booth”, Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, Israel/USA 2019, 71 min.

With an introduction by Vinzenz Hediger, Professor of Film Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt and PI of ConTrust, followed by a discussion with the director