Six Floors to Hell

52 minutes.
In collaboration with Claudia Levin (Cala) - CLAUDIUS FILMS LTD

Co-funded:
Cinema Project - Yehoshua Rabinowitch Foundation for the Arts– Israel
WACC- The World Association for Christian Communication Mission

Director: Jonathan Ben Efrat
Camera: Gonen Glazer
Edit: Tal Waissman

Synopsis:
At Geha Junction, one of the busiest in the Tel Aviv area, hundreds of Palestinians live underground. Young and old, they slip into Israel to find work and bring a small wage home. Their hiding place is in the underground parking garage of an abandoned, unfinished shopping mall, hidden from view despite its location. They pass most nights of the week here, six floors below ground.
Jalal puts up with this hell because he is saving money for his wedding. Nisrin, his fianc?, is waiting for him to finish the roof of their new house at Salem in the West Bank. From the darkness emerge still darker forms and ghostly voices. Under subhuman conditions, the men try to preserve their humanity. "In the dark", says Jalal, "the only thing left is to think. To think about love".

Festivals:
Docaviv international film festival, Israel, April 2008
CMCA, The 13th Edition of the International Prize for Mediterranean Documentary and Reportage, Italy, June 2008

Awards:
Editing award at Docaviv film festival 2008
The judges comments: “This film shines a light in the darkest corners of contemporary Israel. The editor took on the difficult task of weaving together a story from observational footage. Even for those of us who thought we had seen similar subject matter covered before, this film brought a fresh emotional power.”

Broadcasting Prize, awarded by RAI-3 in the CMCA Film Festival

The judges comments: With grace and intimacy, the director successfully tells the story of Jalal and other young workers who survive in the depths of an abandoned shopping mall in the heart of Tel Aviv. Six Floors to Hell excels in portraying the internal exile of human beings in their own land. The portrayal is at once universal, painful and sensitive.

The topic of exile runs like a secondary thread through all the films that were presented to us.

Palestinian thinker Edward Said put the matter quite simply: "Exile is always forced by one group of people on their fellows. Exile tears millions of human beings away from the nutritive embrace of tradition, geography, and family."

I believe it is our task to treat this wound, today more than ever.

Francesca Catarci
Documentary Director
RAI 3—Italy

Article from Challenge #109: Unconquered: Illegal Palestinian Workers in Israel by Stephen Langfur

The Mission

May 2006, 42', English, Arabic, and Hebrew

Direction and screenplay: Shirli Wilk
Cinematography: Yigal Malloul
Editing: Shirli Wilk, Sharon Horodi & Yaron Lapid

Israel, April 2004. A group of union activists visit Israel at the invitation of the Workers Advice Center (WAC). They intend to examine the situation of laborers in the building sector, Arabs from the Occupied Territories, Arab citizens of Israel, and migrant workers. The methods used are a field-trip, lectures with experts and senior figures, and - most importantly - meetings with people, particularly laborers. Through the delegation's eyes Israel is revealed - a branch of the West in the Middle East, a place where everything is extreme and excessive - occupation, globalization, exploitation, racism, shattered labor relations…a microcosm of how capitalism relates to the world.

The hours, days, meetings, lectures all pile up like pieces of a puzzle, with a question mark on each piece. They join together to ultimately disclose the whole picture of this place. Meanwhile, we meet developed towns, next to overflowing villages with no jobs, and of course the Occupied Territories - whose residents are not allowed to work.

Against the backdrop of the replete State of Israel, celebrating its Independence Day, we become familiar with societies devoid independence - and the Occupation of the West Bank, is not the only one. Within Israel's borders there is another occupation, hidden away from view. Towards the end of that crowded week, the delegation's members find new insights and thoughts about the future. The film - which opens on Israel's Independence Day, which symbolizes estrangement - ends on the First of May, celebrating internationalism, solidarity, and taking responsibility.

Premiere - Tel Aviv cinematheque, May 2006

Breaking Walls

A film on the link between art and social change
2004, documentary, 47 minutes, Arabic, Hebrew, English (Hebrew translation)

Director and screenplay: Yonatan Ben Efrat
Cinematography: Sarit Maor
Editing: Dalit Lilienthal
Original soundtreck: Ron Klein

Breaking Walls is an optimistic film tracking three people whose roads entwine near a wall in the village of Kar'a, in Israel.
One is the international artist Mike Alewitz, who dedicates his art to the status of laborers; the second is Danny Ben-Simhon, who abandoned a promising artistic career to work with WAC-MA'AN (Workers Advice Center); and the third is Musav Salameh, a building worker, who is kept apart from his parents in the West Bank by Israel's separation wall. Salameh came to the wall-painting as an observer on the sideline, but quickly took brush in hand.
Although the film starts with Salameh's doubts about painting the wall, it ends in a moving scene in the Beit Berl art college. Salameh, together with Ben Simhon, other building laborers and art students set up an impressive exhibition, at the centre of which are paintings done on walls that they built themselves in the college's gallery.

Television FSTV - USA, 2006 Channel 8 - Israel, 2006

Film festivals The European Social Forum - Barcelona, June 2005 Labor Film Festival - San Francisco, July 2005 The Granada Festival - September 2005 (awarded the Integral Realization prize) Labor Film Festival - Seoul, December 2005 Labor Film Festival - Ankara, April 2006

A Job to Win

2003, documentary, 55 minutes, Arabic and Hebrew

Production: Nir Nader
Direction & cinematography: Shiri Wilk
Screenplay: Ben-Efrat, Wilk & Nader
Editing: Yonatan Ben-Efrat
Original score: Yoel Ben-Simhon

How foreign building-workers are designated for slavery, and locals condemned to unemployment A Job to Win is a documentary describing the chaos created in Israel's building sector. It was a process that began in the 1990s when the Israeli economy boomed. Tens of thousands of migrant workers were imported and vast profits made on their backs, creating grave social and economic implications. At that time 35,000 building workers, who were Israeli citizens, were tossed aside, and Israeli society lost interest in them. Their frustration was among the triggers leading to the eruption of the October 2000 intifada.

A unique project by the Workers Advice Center (WAC – MA'AN) is trying to change this grim reality. In the past few years, despite unemployment and the economic situation, hundreds of building workers are fighting to return to the scaffolding. The film follows the changes and turnabouts that the building sector underwent, starting with the establishment of a local workforce, via the transition to reliance on Palestinian labor, and later to imported migrant workers. We reveal the various factors that brought chaos to the building sector, among them the general-manager of the Employment Service, the ministers of Labor and Social Affairs, the President of the Contractors Association, and the contractors themselves. Finally we meet workers who are Arab citizens of Israel, who discuss the situation they live in, analyze it and describe the difficulties they must confront.

Festivals and international screenings Premiere - Tel Aviv Cinematheque, June 2003 Panorama Festival, the Association of Cinematographers, Salonika, September 2003 European Social Forum (ESF) - London, October 2004

Not in my Garden

September 2000, documentary, 49 minutes, Arabic, Hebrew (Hebrew subtitles)

Direction and cinematography: Shirli Wilk
Screenplay: Yonatan Ben-Efrat, Shiri Wilk & Nir Nader
Interviews: Hitham Na'amana
Editing: Gili Meisler
Music: Mustafa Al-Kurd

Not in my Garden tells the story of Ramia - an unrecognized village in the Galilee - all of whose lands were expropriated in 1991, so that the Carmiel municipality could build on and instead it a "neighborhood for new immigrants." The film surveys the villagers' battles against the municipality, headed by Adi Eldar, who does everything possible to get rid of them. The film outlines the hard lives of the residents of Ramia, which the state has never recognized as a place of residence. Until now, Ramia's citizens do not have access to a power supply, water, a sewage system, telephones or paved roads.

The film also reveals the weakness of the Arab leadership in presenting the village's problems. The film is an illuminating lesson that strips bare the racist attitudes of the state - and its Jewish citizens - to Israel's Arab citizens.

"…the film plugs into actual events, trying to address what most Israelis don't want to see a tall, and thus points indirectly at one of the reasons for the latest uprising of Arab residents of Israel. The film was made by Video48, a group focusing on the problems of Arabs in Israel and discrimination against a political backdrop.
This engaging video group, like similar groups in other countries, strives to bring under the spotlights what the establishment doesn't want to see, and does everything to prevent its citizens from seeing. So this is not only a cinematic act but also and most importantly a political one " (Nachman Ingber, Achbar Ha'ir - Town Mouse, January 2001).

Festivals Toronto (HotDocs), Munich, Freiberg - Switzerland, Salonika, Cologne, the Haag, San Francisco (Labor film Festival)

TV Channel 8 Israel, FSTV, USA al Ahalam, Iran

Selected screenings Tel Aviv cinematheque, Jerusalem,-are cultural Centre, Givat Haviva, Tel-Hai college, Musrara Film School., New York University, and also in Japan, Germany, the United States, Italy, and Spain.