In this digital, multi-channel, post-modernist, virtual age there is often a need for that which is real, concrete and meaningful. A specific “place,” (”makom” in Hebrew) chosen from a personal and creative point of view, can become a revealing and enlightening fragment of reality. A “place” can tell a story, have its own atmosphere, a “feel” that is the direct function of a human presence, motion, time, and a given space. Some places can be inviting, mysterious and attractive, demanding a lingering gaze, others might seem trivial and banal, lacking in meaning and relevancy. A creative cinematic and artistic approach can imbue a place with new meaning while recreating it as an experience of discovery. That which is foreign and mysterious, as well as the seemingly mundane, take on a new presence and aesthetics.
In “The Makom Project,” twenty Israeli artists, filmmakers and authors were commissioned by producer Amit Goren to create a 5-minute digital video shorts about a place of their choosing, one that has a personal meaning and relevancy to them. The cinematic styles of the different films vary in genre from fiction to experimental and from video art to documentary. The result is an inventive, creative and varied collection of stories about places that in their accumulation tell a story about the human condition in Israel and Palestine in the year 2001.

1. The Blind Girl/Tamar Getter; 2. Prince of the Tranist Camp/Yitzhak Gormezano Goren; 3. Bloomfield/Zohar Behrendt; 4. Moscovia/Aner Preminger; 5. Spurt/Maria Pomiansky; 6. My Room/Joshua Saimon; 7. Don’t Open the Door/Ariella Azoulay; 8. Schindler 13 Passengers/Miki Kratsman; 9. Murder on Pinkas Street/Inbar Tavor; 10. Carousel/Meir Wigoder; 11. The Plucker/Keren Ben-Rafael; 12. Fin, Fin/Uri Tzaig; 13. Yellow/Amit Goren; 14. The State of Neve Sha’anan/Haim Deuelle Luski; 15. Recorder Disorder/Chen Sheinberg; 16. Ramallah Short Cuts, Summer 2001/Suha Arraf; 17. Desert Oasis/Pavel Wohlberg; 18. Inventory/Doron Solomons; 19. Allenby Passage/Nurith Aviv; 20. Naan/Macabit Avramson, Avner Faingulernt.