Lecturer in Film Studies
The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television
Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University

Education

(2003-2013)
New York University, New York, USA
Cinema Studies
Ph.D.
Date Awarded: January 2013

(2001-2003)
New York University, New York, USA
Cinema Studies
M.A.
Date Awarded: January 2003

(1995-1999)
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Film and Television
B.A.
Date Awarded: May 1999

(1995-1999)
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Law
LL.B.
Date Awarded: May 1999

Title of Doctoral Dissertation
“Reality Bytes: Reclaiming the Real in Digital Documentary”

Name of Supervisor
Prof. Richard Allen (New York University)

Academic Experience

(2011-Present)
Tel Aviv University, Israel
The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television
Lecturer in Film Studies (Senior Faculty)
Standing Chair for B.A and M.A in Film Studies (2021-2022)
M.A Student Advisor (2019-Present)

(2011-2019)
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, Israel
Department of Visual and Material Culture
Film Studies, Lecturer (Faculty Member)

(2014-2019)
Holon Institute of Technology, Holon, Israel
Department of Visual Communications Design
Film Studies, Lecturer

(2009-2011)
Minshar School of the Arts, Tel Aviv
Department of Film
Film Studies, Lecturer

(2009-2011)
Beit Berl College, Kfar Saba
Department of Film
Film Studies, Lecturer

(2008)
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, Israel
Department of Visual and Material Culture
Film Studies, Lecturer (Faculty Member)

(2007-2010)
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, Israel
Department of Visual and Material Culture
Film Studies, Lecturer (Faculty Member)

(2006)
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, Israel
Department of Visual and Material Culture
Film Studies, Lecturer (Faculty Member)

(2005)
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, Israel
Department of Visual and Material Culture
Film Studies, Lecturer (Faculty Member)

(2004-2006)
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, Israel
Department of Visual and Material Culture
Film Studies, Lecturer (Faculty Member)

Courses Taught

The Essay Film (TAU – MA Graduate Seminar)

Theoretical Perspectives in Documentary Cinema (TAU – MFA Graduate Seminar)

Introduction to Cinema in the Digital Age (TAU – undergraduate mandatory course)

Lies 24 Times a Second: Truth and Fabrication in Mockumentary Cinema (TAU – undergraduate elective class for students in the excellence track) 

Departmental Colloquium (TAU – MA mandatory course)

The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick (TAU – undergraduate elective class)

Animated Worlds: Understanding Animation in Film Studies (TAU – undergraduate online course) 

Reenactment in Documentary Cinema (TAU – undergraduate seminar) 

Documentary Cinema and New Technologies (TAU – undergraduate seminar)

Introduction to Film History (Bezalel, HIT, FIT – undergraduate mandatory course)

Introduction to Film Theory (NYU – undergraduate class) 

Introduction to Israeli Cinema (NYU, Hunter, Beit Berl – undergraduate class)

Language of Film (HIT, Vitzo, Centenary College – undergraduate class)

Truth and Fiction in Documentary Cinema (Bezalel – undergraduate pro-seminar) 

Documentary Strategies in the 21st Century (HIT – undergraduate pro-seminar) 

Understanding Animation (Bezalel – undergraduate mandatory course)

Research Methods in Screen Arts (Bezalel – undergraduate class)

Israeli Documentaries (Minshar – undergraduate class)

M.A. Research Students

2022-Present   Rotem Sudman, Tel Aviv University (proposal under preparation)

2022-Present   Dorel Altaras, Tel Aviv University (proposal under preparation)

2021-Present   Tal Avidan, Tel Aviv University (proposal approved: “Uncanny Movements: Readymade Animation in Czechoslovakia”; thesis under preparation)

2021-Present   Michael Plutno, Tel Aviv University (proposal under preparation)

2021-Present   Mirabelle Gazit, Tel Aviv University (proposal approved: “Cinematic Autoimmunity: Preservation or Destruction”; thesis under preparation)

Ph.D. Research Students

2022-2023   Ido Rosen, University of Cambridge (Dissertation Topic: “Independent Content Creators Online: A Paradigm Shift in Film Aesthetic and Production, the Case of Israel”), outside reader. 

2023-Present   Shira Mazuz, Tel Aviv University (Dissertation Topic: Materializing Vulnerability: The Aesthetics of Editing in Contemporary Experimental Film and Literature”), outside reader.

Grants

Israel Science Federation Research Grant (2022-2025): “Moments of Innocence: Reevaluating Documentary Visits to Israel”

Active Participation in Conferences

“Risible Evidence: Rethinking the Mockumentary” Workshop (Participant), Visible Evidence XXIX, University of Udine, Italy (September 2023).

“The Early Documentary Work of Stanley Kubrick” – a paper presented at the 13th Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies: Blindspots and the Moving Image, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (June 2023).

“A Forgotten Documentary Impulse: The Early Nonfiction Work of Stanley Kubrick” – a paper to be presented at the Society of Cinema and Media Conference, Denver, Colorado (April 2023).

“Postcards from the Edge: Maysles, Sontag and the Documentation of Euphoria and Dystopia Between Two Wars in Israel” – a paper presented at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies Virtual Conference (March 2022).

“Eastern European Documentary and the Environment” Panel (Respondent), Visible Evidence XXVII, Goethe University, Frankfurt (December 2021).

“Camcorder Aesthetics and the Psychology of Medium Variations”  – invited keynote at ZDOK Conference: Visual Aesthetics in Documentary (March 2021).

“The Dark Side of the Moon Effect: On the Problem of Illustration in the Animated Documentary” – a paper presented at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies Virtual Conference. (March 2021).

“One More Time, with Feeling: Documentary Storytelling and the Performing Subject” – a paper presented at Visible Evidence XXVI, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, United States (July 2019).

“Exploring the Etiology of a Jewish Homeland: When Claude Lanzmann Visited Israel” – a paper presented at Society of Cinema and Media Conference, Seattle, United States (March 2019).

“Revisiting the Work of Claude Lanzmann: Testimonial Acts of Remembrance and Denial” – a panel chaired at Society of Cinema and Media Conference, Seattle, United States (March 2019).

“Casting Doubt: Audience, Pre-Enactment and Insidious Reflexivity” – a paper presented at Visible Evidence XXV, Bloomington, Indiana: USA (August 2018).

“Reality, Fantasy and the Multilayered Truth of Disputed Spaces: When Pasolini and Sontag Visited Israel” – a paper presented at the 12th Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies: Post-Truth and the Moving Image, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (June 2018).

“Moments of Innocence and Fracture: Transnational Sensibilities in Early Documentary Visits to Israel” – a paper presented at Visible Evidence XXIV. Buenos Aires: Argentina (August 2017).

“Real is as Real Feels: Towards a Phenomenological Understanding of the Animated Documentary” – a paper presented at the Society of Animation Studies Conference 29. Padova: Italy (July 2017).

“Postcards from the Edge: Reality and Fantasy in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Scouting for Locations in Palestine” – a paper presented at Visible Evidence XXIII, Montana: United States (August 2016).

“Sunday in the Park: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm and the Filmic Mechanism of a Self-Defeating Documentary” – a paper presented at TiMeDoc Conference: Time and Memory in Non-Fiction Cinema, Pamplona, Spain (June 2016).

“Recording the Pain of Others: Political Dissonance and Experimental Sound in Susan Sontag’s Promised Lands” – a paper presented at Visible Evidence XXII, Toronto: Canada (August 2015).

“Moments of Innocence: When Chris Marker Visited Israel” – a paper presented at Visible Evidence XXI, New Delhi: India (December 2014).

“Documentary Reenactment and the Restaging of Historical Imagination in The Act of Killing” – a paper presented (with Dr. Laliv Melamed) at the 10th Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies: Cinematic Traces of Things to Come. Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (June 2014).

“Faraway, So Close: Leviathan and the Digital Future of Observational Ethnography” – a paper presented at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Seattle, Washington (March 2014).

“Sheepherders, Fishing Vessels, and the Future of Experiential Documentary” – a paper presented at Visible Evidence XX, Stockholm, Sweden (August 2013).

“Interactions in Virtual Space: Experiencing Places in Web Documentaries” – a paper presented at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Boston, Massachusetts (March 2012).

“Clockwork Models and Millennial Dystopia in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut” – a paper presented at the 9th Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies: Suspenseful Times and the Moving Image. Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (June 2012).

“The Doc-Fiction Hybrid” – a panel chaired at Visible Evidence XVIII, New York University, New York (August 2011).

“Animated Recollection and Spectatorial Experience in Waltz with Bashir” – a paper presented at the Animated Realities conference, Edinburgh, Scotland (June 2011).

“What Holy Moment? Rethinking Indexicality in the Animated Documentary” – a paper presented at Visible Evidence XVII, Istanbul, Turkey (August 2010).

“In The Realm of the Unreal Documentary: When Should We Suspend Our Disbelief in Nonfiction Film?” – a paper presented at the 8th Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies: Suspenseful Times and the Moving Image, TAU, Tel Aviv, Israel (June 2010).

“Paint as Much as You Like, as Long as You Don’t Shoot: Waltz with Bashir, Trauma, and the Value of the Animated Recollection” – a paper presented at Visible Evidence XVI, Los Angeles, USA (August 2009).

“The Old and the New: From the History of Technological Assimilations in Documentaries Towards a Discursive Definition of Digital Video” – a paper presented at Visible Evidence XV, Lincoln, England (August 2008).

“The Impact of Digital Video Technologies on the Essay-Film Tradition in Documentary” – a paper presented at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (March 2008).

“Digital Video and the New Aesthetics of Hybridity in Documentary” – a paper presented at the Realism and the Audiovisual Media Conference, Leeds, United Kingdom (December 2007).

“Digital Video and the Documentary” – a panel chaired at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Chicago, Illinois (March 2007).

“New Technologies and the Hybrid Documentary” – a paper presented at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Chicago, Illinois (March 2007).

“Digital Vérité: Intimacy and Immediacy in the New Documentary” – a paper presented at the Visible Evidence XIII, São Paolo/Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (August 2006).

“DV Aesthetics in the Digital Documentary” – a paper presented at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, Atlanta, Georgia (Spring 2006).

“Subjectivity and the Essay Film” – a panel chaired at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference, London, England (Spring 2005).

“The Rhetorical Tropes of Subjectivity in the Essay Film” – a paper presented at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference, London, England (Spring 2005).

“The Ape Beneath the Velvet: Irrational Violence, Experience and Narrative in A Clockwork Orange” – a paper presented at the NYU Cinema Studies Graduate Student Conference, New York City. (Spring 2003).

Organization of Conferences

Member of Steering Committee, Visible Evidence XXVIII, Udine, Italy (September 2023)

Co-organizer, 13th Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies: Post-Truth and the Moving Image, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (June 2023).

Member of Steering Committee, Visible Evidence XXVII, Frankfurt, Germany (December 2021)

Co-organizer, A Tribute to Annette Michelson, The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University (May 16-17, 2019).

Co-organizer (with Dr. Shai Biderman and Dr. Shmulik Duvdevani), Docusophia: Documentary/Philosophy International Conference, The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University (May 22-24, 2018).

Co-organizer (with Dr. Shai Biderman), Film Philosophy: Prospects, Directions and New Perspectives, The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University (January 5-7, 2016).

Member of Steering Committee, Visible Evidence XVIII, Stockholm University (August 2013).

Member of Steering Committee, Visible Evidence XX, New York University (August 2011).

Organization of Lecture Series

“Departmental Colloquium: Guest Lectures Series on Film and Television Studies”, The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television (2021-2023).

“The Unknown Known: Uncertainty and the Moving Image”, The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television International Lecture Series, Virtual (2020-2021).

“Home Alone: Online Lecture Series on Cinema and Television in Times of Quarantine”, The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television, Virtual (2020-2021)

Professional Memberships

2007 – Present Society of Cinema and Media Studies (USA)

2013 – Present Israeli Film Critics Association (Israel)

2014-Present FIPRESCI (The Intl. Federation of Film Critics) (USA)

Academic Publications

Books

Moments of Innocence from Abroad: Revisiting Documentary Visits to Israel (under advance-contract with SUNY Press; expected time for manuscript completion: 2024)

Articles Published

“Exploring the Etiology of a Jewish Homeland: When Claude Lanzmann Visited Israel”, Jewish Film and New Media 9.1, Spring 2021, pp. 3-27. 

“Here, There and Everywhere: Leviathan and the Digital Future of Observational Ethnography.” Visual Anthropology Review 31:1, Spring 2015, pp. 12-19.

 “Animated Recollection and Spectatorial Experience in Waltz with Bashir.” (co-authored with Roy Bendor). Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6:3, 2011, pp. 353-370. 

“In and Out of This World: Digital Video and the Aesthetics of Realism in the New Hybrid Documentary.” Studies in Documentary Film 2.1, 2008, pp. 33-45.

 “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film.” (co-authored with Uri Hasson, et al.) Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind 2:1, Summer 2008, pp. 1-26.

Review Articles

Book Review of Agnieszka Piotrowska’s Psychoanalysis and Ethics in Documentary Film. Film-Philosophy 202-3 (2016): 380-383.

Chapters Published in Anthologies

“’Lucky to Be Alive’: Clockwork Models and the Logic of the Inanimate in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Eyes Wide Shut: Behind Stanley Kubrick’s Masterpiece. Eds. Nathan Abrams and Georgina Orgill. Liverpool University Press, 2023, pp. 113-128.

“Holy Motors: Metameditation on Digital Cinema’s Present and Future”. Metacinema: The Form and Content of Filmic Reference and Reflexivity. Ed. David LaRocca. Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. 173-187.

“The Tactile Unconscious”. Flash Flaherty: Tales from a Film Seminar. Eds. Patricia Zimmermann and Scott MacDonald. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021, pp. 352-355.  

“Moments of Innocence and Fracture: Fantasy and Reality in Two Documentary Visits to Israel”. Casting a Giant Shadow: The Transnational Shaping of Israeli Cinema. Eds. Rachel S. Harris and Dan Chyutin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021, pp. 191-209.

“Sounds of Disillusionment and Discord: When Pasolini and Sontag Visited Israel”. Vocal Projections: Sound and Documentary. Eds. Annabelle Honess Roe and Maria Pramaggiore. Bloomsbury Press, 2018, pp. 253-268.

“Lying to Be Real: The Aesthetics of Ambiguity in Docufictions.” Contemporary Documentary. Eds. Selmin Kara and Daniel Marcus. New York: Routledge, 2015, pp. 9-25. 

Edited Books

Truth or Dare: Selected Essays on Documentary Cinema (co-edited with Laliv Melamed). Depth of Field, The Tisch Series in Film and Television, Am Oved Publishers, 2021 [in Hebrew]

Other Publications

“Tragic History in Peak Tourist Season: On Sergei Loznitsa’s Austerlitz”, AJS Perspectives: The Magazine of the Association for Jewish Studies (Summer 2023): 78-80.

“Paint as Much as You Like as Long as You Don’t Shoot: Waltz with Bashir and the Animated Reproduction of the Memory of War,” David Polonsky Catalogue, Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2022): 129-133.

“One Hand Filming and the Other Playing: The Gleaners and I and Digital Utopia”, Takriv 19 (December 2019).

Special Issue on “20 Years of Local Documentaries”, Guest Editor, Takriv 16 (May 2018) [in Hebrew].

“I Will Never Zoom-In: An Interview with Nikolaus Geyrhalter”, Takriv 16 (May 2018) [in Hebrew].

“Pasta Still Does Not Grow on Trees: On the Presumed Crisis of Documentary Cinema in the Digital Age”, Takriv 15 (December 2017) [in Hebrew].

“On Ambiguity and Determinacy: the New Documentary Truth of The Thin Blue Line”, Takriv 14 (January 2017) [in Hebrew].

“The Last Waltz and Shine a Light.” Martin Scorsese: He is Cinema. Eds. Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert. A Museum of the Moving Image Publication, 2016: 63-70.

“The Transparent People: Crossing Borders and Redemption in the Documentary Cinema of Ido Haar”, Takriv 12 (July 2016) [in Hebrew].

Special Issue on “The Essay Film”, Guest Editor, Takriv 9 (2015) [in Hebrew].

“Room 237 and the Danger of Over-Interpretation” Bezalel Journal 2 (June 2015) [in Hebrew].

“Momentary Guests: When Lanzmann, Marker and Sontag Visited Israel.” Takriv 6 (2013) [in Hebrew].

“To Paint and Animate Reality: A Conversation with Tzahi Ferber.” Bezalel Protocols 24 (Spring 2012). [in Hebrew]

“‘Paint as Much as You Like, as Long as You Don’t Shoot’: Waltz with Bashir and the Animated Reproduction of War Memories”, Takriv 1 (2011) [in Hebrew].

“In The Mix: Reality Meets Fiction in Contemporary Iranian Cinema.” Cineaste 31:3 (June 2006): 45-47.

doctalk.co.il (founder and main writer): blog focusing on documentary cinema in Israel and worldwide (appearing in Haaretz as well) (2014-2020).

Calcalist daily newspaper, various film criticism (2009-2014).

Reverse Shot, Museum of the Moving Image, various film criticism (2003-2017).

Reviews as an Academic Referee For:

• Visual Anthropology Review
• Studies in Documentary Film
• Indiana University Press
• Canadian Journal of Film Studies
• Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies
• Jewish Film and New Media: An International Journal
• Shofar
• Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies
• Bezalel Protocols