Eyal Sivan
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Documentary

Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork

2009 — 88 min — Colour and B&W, HD — Eyal Sivan
Poster Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork

The history of Palestine and Israel is built around representations, images and clichés. But among all these shared, accepted symbols, only one is common to both: the orange. To tell the story of the Jaffa orange is to tell the story of this land, through a narrative richer and more unsettling than one might think.

Eyal Sivan’s film is not simply a way of remembering. It is, above all, an act of surfacing the past through the melancholy of the present. The oranges of Jaffa have much to tell us. And what they tell us is both beautiful and sad. Beautiful, because through an archival search that reaches back to the birth of cinema, several mythologies — Arab and Jewish — cross paths and, in ways too often forgotten, briefly coincide. Sad, because the Zionist colonial venture was founded on the erasure of the orange, of its scent, of the fruit of a land, reducing it to nothing more than an export product.

In Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork, poetry, painting, cinema, citrus workers and historians, memory and the present, all meet. For without the orange, there is no possible future.

Photo gallery

Photo Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork 1 Photo Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork 2 Photo Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork 3 Photo Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork 4 Photo Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork 5 Photo Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork 6 Photo Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork 7 Photo Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork 8 Photo Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork 9 Photo Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork 10
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Credits

A film by: Eyal Sivan
Featuring, in order of appearance: Sami Abou Shahadeh, Ismaïl Abou Shahadeh, Haïm Gouri, Rona Sela, Elias Sanbar, Amnon Raz Krakotzkin, Gideon Makoff, Aviezer Chelouche, Tomer Chelouche, David Tartakover, Gideon Ofrat, Kamal Boullata, Moustapha Kabha, Mouhamed Hassouna, Shlomo Rizman, Arnon Yitzhaki, Mahmoud Yazbak, Doudik Shalit, Yosef Nahmias, Tal Amit, Roni Nakar, Zvi Kenan
Assistant director: Erez Miller
Cinematography: David Zarif
Additional camera: Vincent Fooy, Rémi Lainé, Shafir Sarusi
Sound: Oren Raviv, Jean-Jacques Quinet, Asher Saraga
Editing: Audrey Maurion
Sound editing and mixing: Jean-Jacques Quinet
After Effects animation: Erez Miller
Graphic design: Armelle Laborie
Adaptation: Catherine Neuve-Église
A coproduction of: Trabelsi Productions, Alma Film, the factory, Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), RTBF (Belgian television), with the participation of Radio-Canada, Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR), France Télévisions

Awards and selections

Awards
• World premiere in official competition, IDFA, Amsterdam, 2009
• International Jury Award for Best Documentary, Filmmaker, Milan, 2009
• Young Jury’s Special Mention, Filmmaker, Milan, 2009
• Award for Best Editing, SoleLuna International Documentary Film Festival on Islam and the Mediterranean, Palermo, 2010

Festival selections
• IDFA, International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam, 2009
• Filmmaker, International Documentary Film Festival, Milan, Italy, 2009
• Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Durham, NC, USA, 2010
• Nicosia International Documentary Film Festival, Cyprus, 2010
• BAFICI, Buenos Aires International Film Festival, 2010
• Bergamo Film Meeting, Bergamo, Italy, 2010
• Beldocs, Belgrade, Serbia, 2010
• London Palestine Film Festival, London, UK, 2010
• Toronto Jewish Film Festival, Canada, 2010
• Visions du Réel, Nyon, Switzerland, 2010
• Planet Doc Review Festival, Warsaw, Poland, 2010
• Documenta Madrid 10, Madrid, Spain, 2010
• Globale Filmfestival, Berlin, Germany, 2010
• Documentarist International Film Festival, Istanbul, Turkey, 2010
• Sarajevo International Film Festival, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2010
• DokuFest International Documentary and Short Film Festival, Prizren, Republic of Kosovo, 2010
• Boston Palestine Film Festival, 2010
• Visões do Sul, Mostra Internacional de Cinema de Portimão, Portimão, Algarve, Portugal, 2010
• Memorimage Film Festival, Reus, Catalonia, Spain, 2010
• Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Budapest, Hungary, 2010

Press (excerpts)

“The message of a colonization that would bring progress to a world of desolation is turned to ridicule. (...) The film deserves to be seen for the questions it raises in the viewer.” — Le Monde
“A remarkable work of memory.” — Télérama
“One of the film’s strengths lies in the range of people interviewed. (...) All of them offer vivid testimony about life in Jaffa, before oranges became the symbol of Israel’s renewal.” — TéléObs
“With Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork, Eyal Sivan reveals, through a metaphor, a century of Israeli-Palestinian history.” — Politis