Golem, the Spirit of Exile (Golem, l'esprit de l'exil)

1991 | Fiction | Runtime 105 | 35 mm | Colour

DVD/Video

Golem, the Spirit of Exile
1 DVD NTSC Zone 1
Facets (USA)
Subtitles: English
Amos Gitai: Exile
5 DVD NTSC Zone 1
Facets (USA)
Subtitles: English
Golem, l'esprit de l'exil
1 VHS Secam
K-Films (France)
Subtitles: English
Coffret La Trilogie de l'exil : Esther / Berlin-Jerusalem / Golem, l'esprit de l'exil
3 DVD PAL Zone 2
Arte Vidéo (France)
Subtitles: French
Box Gitai 1 : Esther / Berlin-Jerusalem / Golem, l'esprit de l'exil
4 DVD PAL Zone 2
RaroVideo (Italy)
Subtitles: English, Italian

World sales / Distribution

France
K-Films
7, rue Commines
75003 Paris
France
Tel.: +33 (0)1 42 74 70 14
Fax: +33 (0)1 42 74 70 24
E-mail: kfilms@noos.fr
Web: www.k-films.fr

Based on an interpretation of the Golem in the Spanish Kabala-the Golem as an incarnation of exile and wanderers-the film explores the contemporary meanings of the Book of Ruth in the Bible.

"The Book of Ruth is based on a documentary story: a family in Bethlehem suffers from the famine there and goes to Moab, the "new country of exile". But the biblical writer takes this event and transforms it into fictional material. And this then becomes eventually even more than fiction: it becomes a sanctified myth. We, in turn, place the biblical story in the present and work with those ambiguities, but we strip away some of the sanctification, keeping the mythological echoes but placing them in the here and now. The issue of creation is the general framework of the film and, inside this framework, there is a permanent back and forth movement to the issue of exile. Through the Golem, I tried to deal with some of my own questions regarding the cinematic language. In Golem, the Spirit of Exile, the central spine of the story is the theme of being uprooted, which links the whole trilogy."
Amos Gitai, in Yann Lardeau, "Les Films d'Amos Gitai", unpublished

Cast Hanna Schygulla, Vittorio Mezzogiorno, Ophrah Shemesh, Samuel Fuller, Mireille Perrier, Sotigui Kouyaté, Fabienne Babe, Bernardo Bertolucci, Bernard Eisenschitz, Marisa Paredes, compagnie Pina Bausch Screenplay Amos Gitai, Stephan Levine Cinematography Henri Alekan Sound Antoine Bonfanti, Daniel Ollivier Editing Anna Ruiz Music Simon Stockhausen, Markus Stockhausen Production design Thierry François Costumes Marie Vernoux, Jean-Pierre Delifer Production Agav Films, Allarts (The Netherlands), Nova Films (Italy), Groupe TSF (France), Friedländer Filmproduktion (Germany), Rai2 (Italy), Channel Fou (UK), Canal+ (France) Executive producer(s) Laurent Truchot

Festivals
Berlin International Film Festival / Berlinale 1992