Still from Fresh Blood, a Consideration of Belonging
Still from Fresh Blood, a Consideration of Belonging
 

On Demand

Fresh Blood, a Consideration of Belonging

by b.h. Yael
A hybrid and personal video-essay that explores the dichotomies of Arab-Jewish identities, from Iraq to Palestine.
1996  ·  55m  ·  Canada
Arabic, English
About the Film

FRESH BLOOD, A CONSIDERATION OF BELONGING is a hybrid documentary or video essay which includes questions around Arab Jewishness, negotiating Palestine, gender, belly-dancing and memory. This video essay, formed by personal narrative and including a return to Israel/Palestine, engages issues of: Jewish racialized identity, Arab/Jewish dichotomies and the way these come together in Iraqi Jewish culture, and the personal implications of the politics of Palestine and the Jewish holocaust.

Structured into 12 chapters, FRESH BLOOD features interviews with Ella Shohat, Eli Amir and Nabila Espanioly, among others, provide historical and political contexts for the many questions that arise about various ‘belongings’.

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About the Director

b.h. Yael

b.h. Yael is a Toronto based filmmaker, video and installation artist. She is Professor of Integrated Media at OCAD University and past Assistant Dean and past Chair of Integrated Media in the Faculty of Art.

Yael is the recent recipient of a Chalmers Fellowship Award and a Toronto Arts Council grant to media artists. Her most recent work, Trading the Future recently won the ‘Audience Award’ at the Ecofilms 2009 festival in Rhodes, Greece, and has also received the ‘Best Humanitarian Observation – Media Matters’ award at the Rivers Edge International Film Festival in Kentucky, USA. Trading the Future is a video essay that questions the inevitability of apocalypse and its repercussions on environmental urgencies.

Yael’s work has exhibited nationally and internationally and has shown in various settings, from festivals to galleries to various educational venues. Her work has been purchased by several universities. Yael’s past film and video work has dealt with issues of identity, authority and family structures, while at the same time addressing the fragmentary nature of memory and belonging. More recent work focuses on activist initiatives, political fear, apocalypse and gender. The work most often involves non-linear and hybrid forms, including dramatized and fictional elements combined with first person narration, autobiographical and documentary perspectives.

 
Other films by b.h. Yael

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