Filmmaker Tirtza Even is a keen observer of people, place and the unspoken, and she brings these insights to bear in her mesmerizing experimental documentary feature, Land Mine, (2019) a film about love, loss, memory and war. Having grown up in Jerusalem in the mid-60’s in a small apartment building where nine families lived together commune-style, Ms. Even returns to Jerusalem to interview past and present inhabitants of the building. The intimacies they reveal are both fraught and tender but, in all ways, expertly woven together to form a rich tapestry of collective memories.
Divided into ten “chapters,” the film covers a lot of ground centering much of its focus on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israel’s military presence in the region. This discord is at the heart of many of the stories shared by the film’s subjects and is metaphorically reflected in its captivating landscape shots. The vast, arid desert and lush, verdant fields commingle on the screen in a surreal way almost as natural world representatives of the contrasting, and sometimes irreconcilable, expanses that can exist in our interior and exterior lives. The shifting and repairing Earth as metaphor for shifting, repairing souls in a time of strife.
Along the way we also learn about Ms. Even’s father, Yosuf Even, a literature scholar who studied the work of Hebrew-language author, Y.H. Brenner. Mr. Even is remembered fondly as a teacher able to “give people tools, lay the ground for them, so they won’t walk through an unseen land, through obstacles.” In similar fashion, Ms. Even’s cinematic style leads her viewers on a journey through often difficult emotional and political terrain with great understanding and compassion; a fitting tribute to her father, and a wonderful gift to us all.