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"Red Cow" - Perfection and Holiness in one film

Tal Raz | 31 Julu 2018, 09:00

"And take you to the mouth of the earth where you have no sleep, which is not on it, but"; "He who touches the dead, to every soul, and impurity ... he shall be defiled" (Numbers, Chapter 19, verse 2).

"Red Cow" is the first film of Israeli director and screenwriter Tzivia Barkai-Yaakov, a graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, and one of the best and recommended films in the Israeli drama category screened this year at the 35th International Film Festival in Jerusalem. This year the festival was marked by religious and Jewish films. Four Israeli films dealt with the depths and depths of the ultra-Orthodox society and centered around the city of Jerusalem: the unofficial films of director Eliran Malka about the rise of the Shas party, the "redemption" of the directors Joseph Madmoni and Boaz Yonathan - Yaakov, who dealt with the answer of the rock band's soloist, Danny Rosenberg and Yaniv Segalovitch about Uri Zohar and the process of producing his new film "Red Pearl," which is Tsivia Barkai-Ya'akov's first film.

"Red Cow" opens in the first cycle of Sam Spiegel's "Hothouse" program and was screened at the Berlinale, Berlin's 68th International Film Festival. The plot takes place in Silwan settlement in East Jerusalem, with the evacuation of the illegal outpost Amona in the background. The story tells the story of my 17-year-old son Binyamina, who was orphaned from an infant mother and grew up and lived with her father, Shuki (Gal Toren), an extreme right-wing messianist. The red cow in Jewish law is a reddish-brown cow that serves as a symbol of the sanctity and purity of individuals who have been impure in the impurity of the dead, capable of purifying Israel and bringing about the restoration of the Temple service. In Barkai-Yaakov's film, the cow is a metaphor and parallel to the protagonist (Abigail Kubari), which symbolizes purity and perfection from the impurity surrounding it. The impurity is expressed from the attitude of Haredi society to gay-lesbian relations to the impurity of occupation or morality. The parallel between the red "cow" and Binyamina, whose red hair is almost as inevitable as a cow's.

The film was built on a gradual and broken encounter between two girls, Benny and Yael, a National Service girl who works for Benny's father. Benny and Yael spend a lot of time together and develop an affair whose end is predictable and known. The end of my son or the end of her love for Yael appears to be like the fate of the young wagon - "and the cow shall see to his eyes Ara and her flesh, and her blood upon the portion shall burn" (Bamidbar 19). The film communicates sensitively and intelligently with the world of poetry, literature and the Bible, and provides an honest, courageous and authentic story of love between two women in light of the social and political dynamics and problems in the city of Jerusalem. A courageous and sensitive filmmaking that is accurate in my style and the ability to tell a complex personal story.

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