BISFF2025 | Correspondence 通信计划063：Far from the Light of Day 在远离白昼之光的地方

BISFF Correspondence 通信计划

This program involves conducting brief email interviews with the directors of the international films featured in the festival, in lieu of the traditional Q&A session that follows the screenings. Through this program, we hope to provide a platform for filmmakers to discuss their work and share their insights with our audience in China.

为了跨越种种障碍，开辟更多交流空间，我们设置了“BISFF Correspondence 通信计划”，对部分国际单元的参展作者进行系列访谈，这些访谈将在作品放映后发布在联展各个媒体平台。

Far from the Light of Day | 在远离白昼之光的地方

Yotam Ben-David 约塔姆·本－戴维

2025 | 00:27:00 | France | Hebrew | Asian Premiere

Director: Yotam Ben-David

Interviewer & Translator: Siya Chou, Zifei Wang

导演：约塔姆·本－戴维

采访、翻译：周思雅，王紫菲

Q1: Contrast appears to be one of the most striking formal strategies in the film. While the text repeatedly evokes bombings, explosions, and violence unfolding outside, the images remain within a quiet and intimate interior: naked bodies, warm light, and the heat shared between two people. The darkness and coldness of the outside world stand in sharp contrast to the warmth of the room. This visual stillness creates a powerful tension with the emotional intensity of the voiceover and the violence taking place beyond the frame. Your audiovisual language seems to construct the interior space as a relatively enclosed environment—almost like a shelter, or a container for memory and emotion. It also conveys a fragile, momentary sense of safety sustained in the midst of overwhelming insecurity. Within your conception of the film, what does this tension between interior intimacy and exterior violence allow you to explore?

A1: The film was born out of a reality of contrasts. But also out of the desire to refuse this division into defined polarities. It was born in an attempt to make room again for a spectrum of existences and nuances. I wanted the film to be an opposition to the horrors of existing reality, but an opposition that does not necessarily responds to the violence in a reactionary way, but instead invents and proposes parallel possibilities and a rage. When the events had started, my first impulse was to try - within the scale of my own means - to oppose and stop the mass killing, to warn of the genocide that was about to take place. I couldn’t believe how in the early days this opposition was not only a minority view, but was also met with police brutality and rejection from some of the people closest to us. The objection to genocide should have been obvious, it should be, and should have been, the consensus. Even today, two and a half years after, I still can’t comprehend how the world allowed this catastrophe to happen and how it still unfolds with the whole world as accomplice.

As you said, outside was violence and home was a form of a shelter, but it was never a neutral or sterile place. It was constantly invaded by external reality through social media and news, through painful conversations with family and loved ones and through history resurfacing, evoked by the events. The violence outside was not only that of weapons, it was also the violence of discourse. The unprecedented amount of images of dead and starving people, the conversations around it in repetition daily, generated a process of dehumanization, banalization and general apathy. The dehumanizing discourse affected both the people whp participated in the genocide, as well as some of the people apposing to it – Because the urgency of the moment demanded very sharp responses. So in contrast to that, the home was not only a container for memory and emotion but the place in which they could exist and be confronted with nuance and complexity – where uncompromising and harsh truth could coexist with compassion.

The film started as a text written in November 2023, very shortly after the start of the events. The text was written almost uncontrollably, in one take, as a desperate need to lay out all the layers of reality, refusing any hierarchy, expressing the confusion and dread of seeing what is happening and what is to come. It was written as a complementary act to the political action, a response to what the political action could not fully provide. I wanted to express a refusal to reductionist discourses, to be able to talk about the occupied and the occupier, but to not stop the conversation there, where things are easy to define. To me, accepting and reenforcing only the dichotomy was to reinforce the whole system of power and to play in it the predetermined roles it assigns. I felt that the most radical and profound act I could do in order to reject this violence was to make room for both the contrast and the gradient, to have the ability to tell several truths at once and for them to be able to exist without negating one another.

So the act of the film was at times to respond to contrast with range of possibilities and phenomena, and at other times to pose clear and strict ideas to counter evasive and vague language. I started with the images of Samer, my boyfriend, sleeping. The serenity on his face set against the voiceover depicting bombing and collapsing buildings were the first two elements I put in juxtaposition. I wanted to invent a language that is both ambiguous and concert, to see how words and images can undermine successively one another. To create a liminal space between wakefulness and sleep where the language of a dream suggests blurriness in the face of high definition images. Where plurality is a proof of life and a form of resistance to endless death. The film is an imagined zone between states, between sleep and wakefulness, between figure and abstraction. A place the rejects borders, where there is room for what lives between the words, between the roles assigned to us by national ideologies. I think the role of an artist, unlike the role of the activist, has to be to seek also beyond the moral judgment into areas that are more ambiguous to define. Where the political demands clarity and sharp definitions in order to point towards injustice and fight against it, the poetic act embodies the vastness of possibilities and transcends not only physical constraints, but also the limits of imagination.

Q2: The voiceover moves between intimate personal memories, such as moments with the narrator’s grandmother, and larger collective histories, including exile, street protests, and news of distant wars. When writing the script, how did you approach the relationship between these personal narratives and the broader geopolitical conflicts surrounding them? Do you see personal memory and individual trauma as a way of accessing or understanding larger historical realities, especially in moments of extreme political violence?

A2: Growing up in a territory haunted by histories and violence, it was inevitable for me to ask questions about this echo between the very personal and the larger social processes. I grew up in a society that doesn’t hide how it affects and is affected by its brutal interventions into the environment, but these interventions are always framed and justified through a carefully constructed narrative and selective erasure. It was not obvious to be able to deconstruct the ideological narratives that society had imposed on me since childhood. Growing up I started noticing anomalies in the landscape around me, in the relationships between the individuals and groups that populated that landscape. Through listening to people’s stories of and asking questions I gradually carved my way into a real understanding of what has occured in this place and its relationship to what is still occurring.

I became active in the Palestinian struggle for liberation at the age of 20. I learned to develop my critical political thinking through meeting Palestinians in the west bank and seeing and hearing their reality, through exchanging ideas and lived experiences with my anarchist, queer and Palestinian friends and loved ones and by observing how structures of power are created and maintained. I also grew up in a multiplicity of immigration stories, in my own family, in the region where I grew up, in Samer’s family. These stories of personal loss, of erasure, and of voluntary and non-voluntary displacement had a strong influence on my understanding of how the experience of the individual relates to and contradicts the ethos of the collective.

So my political understanding grew through a lived reality that was constantly shaped by very personal experiences that revealed itself daily and challenged me not to accept simplified ideas. The movement between the micro and macro vision is a daily exercise for me, in my life and in my films. But when we talk about “the personal is political”, I see it not as the strict directive: either that we need to assume and transpose broader political ideas into the most private and personal sphere or that we need to see the most personal and private as the place that demonstrates the society and its oppression as a whole. To me, it points to the range in between, and asks us to constantly move and see how one echoes the other, how one puts the other into question. The political narratives we construct are means to an end, they are the simplification and generalization of the complex fabric of life into well-organized ideas that allows us to then take a moral stance. The personal is bigger than that, it contains how the political manifests but it also contains the random, the whimsical, the abstract.

Within the impossibility of the horrible reality as it unfolded, I had to resort to this muscle that moves between the personal and the political, with even greater urgency. It was the only way I saw to somehow express something about the current reality and to add something that was not expressed yet. Something that does not fall into the binaries of language used by those who incite constant wars of civilization. There is something sneaky about the nature of a personal experience. It is hazardous and capricious and does not always correspond to the organized ideas we have on life. It was important for me to express this randomness, the odd and unwilling to succumb to predefined molds: The photos I took of my siblings when we were kids and  pretended they were fashion models, the song in English that Samer’s sister sings to her daughter in the car. There is something about those details of life, especially the ones that bears no direct link to the political, that actually transcends and distills the real essence of life. It refuses to die through definition.

Far from the Light of Day, Yotam Ben-David, 2025

Q3: The voiceover is delivered in Hebrew, and the text repeatedly reflects on language itself. For instance, it speaks of “I chisel in ancient Hebrew the confused details of a personal agony,” and of how “while we mumble meaningless syllables, the extension of time and the persistence of death became weapons of mass destruction.” What led you to choose Hebrew as the language of the voiceover? Are you exploring the dual nature of language, both as a home and as an instrument of power, and how this tension shapes the struggle of individuals trying to find their own voice amid the forces of history?

A3：Hebrew is my mother tongue. From a young age I loved its ability to express ideas through ancient proverbs and words, as well as the gaps in its structure that also enable innovation and ambiguity. Hebrew was always the place of both imagination and potential as well as an echo of ancestral presence that survived the tides of time. When I decided to leave Israel-Palestine 11 years ago, it became the non-territory that incarnates the most difficult questions regarding where I come from and where do I belong to: what does this language mean outside of the borders in which it is the spoken language of? What responsibility do I have of this heritage when I leave and to whom am I speaking to when I speak Hebrew in exile? What does it mean to make films in Hebrew for an audience that will encounter them through translation and subtitles?

Hebrew is a unique case as a language that was not tied to a region or territory, and was mostly in use in religious contexts or at times to allow a common language between jews from different places. Later on as of the 18^th century onward, it was revived for secular use, mostly in literature, poetry and journalism. Though the Zionist movement took on the reviving and development of the language as part of its national project, many Jewish authors and poets continued to develop their own use of Hebrew outside and without relations to Zionism. Some of my favorite older Hebrew literature and poetry was written by those not living in Palestine and by people for whom Hebrew was a second or third language. It is also among them that I started articulation my new relationship with my mother tongue.

Since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza the questions became even more difficult: what does it mean to insist on my own Hebrew of subtlety and poetry at a time when most Hebrew heard over the news and on social media is the Hebrew of smug violence and destruction spat out by soldiers and politicians? And so, in the film I wanted to use this language that supposedly ties me to Israel and the horrors it commits to denounce their crimes, but also to reject the desecration of the language, to reclaim it as my own. To assume a certain responsibility or affinity to what is done in my name, but also to not surrender the language as sacrifice. The almost obsessive repetitive monologue in the film becomes a form of exorcism of the Hebrew language, in which it is dragged through its most shameful and obscure expressions only to reconstruct itself, anew and apart, in the form of poetry.

Another aspect for me was the limits of language itself. The film starts with a plea towards language, any language: to come and make sense, organize, express, leave a testimony. But soon, the excess of words and images that we were flooded with on endless devices and platforms, becomes the place where language goes to die through repetitive use. I wanted the language in the film to mirror a world overflowing with means of communication, that are not only unable to stop a genocide, but actually serve as the main tool to produce apathy. That’s why in the film I turned to a more poetic language: I wanted to choose adjacent words, that insinuate what we already know, in order to reawaken lost meaning and to express the hidden currents of emotional tides. In parallel, I wanted the language to not only be a tool to express meaning but also to gradually become a soundscape that influences the cinematic experience. An uncontrollable stream of words like an obsessive monologue in an insomniac mind, looping around itself until it losses any meaning. I know that this makes the film at times difficult to watch - the spectator at times unsuccessfully tries to catch up with the subtitles - but I knew that the cinematic experience I wanted to create had to carry the frustration and the heaviness of the experience it depicts. It had to be a film that does not talk about the overwhelming feeling of suffocation from a measured distance, but that makes you feel it.

Q4: The love story seems closely tied to the historical tension between the two nations. The relationship between the two characters carries a sense that they can neither fully separate nor unite. The more they seek shelter in each other’s warmth, the more they become entangled in what the voiceover calls “threads of guilt and desperation” and “the infinite metamorphosis of time.” In this sense, does the film suggest that war is not only something happening far away, in bombings on the horizon, but something that also enters the most intimate space between people? It appears in startled awakenings, in silent exchanges of glances, and in moments when the beloved’s body “on the mattress sinks further and further, layer upon layer.” How did you think about translating this historical conflict into such physical and intimate moments between the characters?

A4: Samer is my family and my home. We’ve shared our life together for thirteen years now. So before being a metaphor or a representation of the two cultures we belong to, this is simply a very intimate piece of my life and my attempt to make something out of the reality that was imposed on us. Since we arrived in Paris, often when people meet us for the first time and understand that he is from Palestine and I from Israel, a common reaction is “ah la paix” (“oh peace”). For us it is always an awkward moment. Firstly because we don’t see the reality in Palestine as two equal sides that just need to find a way to resolve their conflict through peace - but rather one people occupied by another. But more importantly because we know that we personally and together do not represent the collectives from which we come. If anything in many ways we are exceptions to the norms in both of our societies.

When I started writing the film I was very aware of the different projections people make about us as individuals and as a couple. I think one of the reasons for me to make this film was exactly this heaviness. The fact that our lives and our identities became the object of desire and projection for the whole world. What for us is the most intimate and personal, became the subject over which everyone had an opinion and a position, regardless of their real contact with that territory and the people in it. Through the years, and in a more pronounced way since the beginning of the genocide, we’ve seen every variation of these assumptions and roles thrown at us: the terrorist, the colonizer, the savage, the civilized, the victim and the privileged. It seems easier for most people to reject or embrace their chosen group and to analyze life through that lens. It takes more effort to think of groups as made up of individuals who sometimes adhere to the codes of their collective and sometimes rebel against it, and most often choose something in the middle in between. It is much more challenging to engage in the universal idea that only useful generalization is that no one should be subjected to violence. 

The growing fascism in the world imposes a very limited way to speak about people, about rights, about freedom. Instead of emphasizing on the kind of world we wish to create, we end up reacting to the narrowness fascism imposes. I see this narrow thinking even among people, political organizations, film festivals that are supposed to support ideas diametrically opposed to fascism. They too end up adhering to the binary of us against them. I see it in the most personal level when my films are not selected to certain festivals because I was born in Israel and regardless of how much of my life I have dedicated to fighting against the Israeli oppression, how much I’ve refused to take financing from the Israeli state, and how clearly these ideas are expressed in this film. It’s the same logic by which Germany supports Israel blindly and uncritically, instead of understanding that the real profound way of learning from their history is to prevent any other genocide. I find it very dangerous when under the pretense of a moral superiority a society ends up rooting blindly for teams as if it were a football match.

When I made the film I decided to take as a basic assumption that my audience is exposed and well aware of the images and stories coming out of Gaza. I also took the assumption that my audience opposes genocide. And so the film assumes this violence as prior knowledge and asks what additional gesture should be made in the world, what should a film express other than repeating this violence again and again. People often want a clean and clear vision of reality, to be told who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor. And while this is important to do so in order to fight injustices, I think that the role of art is to breath life back into predetermined ideas and to trouble our stagnant assumptions - not to reinforce our existing positions.

So my answer to the superficial, fetishizing or reductive gaze was love. Love as the active work of two individuals insisting on seeing each other. Not the romanticized love product sold to us in order to preserve the heteronormative order, but an anarchist love that seeks to disrupt and question, that demands a courageous emotional generosity, compassion and humility. Love as the most profound intentional act of engagement with another person through the willingness to investigate and improve. One that interrogates and provokes the individuals engaging in it, that challenges them for compassion and forgiveness just as it asks them to look at what is uncomfortable to see. Love as a form of investment that builds a profound trust. These elements are put into examination in my relationship with Samer firstly as the encounter between two souls who are different from each other. The political charge that comes into it is just one of many forces that asks us to be brave enough and not look away.

I am a strong believer in the dialectical process and its ability to not only resolve conflict but to bring forth novelty and expand the mind. To confront opposing ideas against one another and to seek the wisdom and understanding that comes out of it. But it has to be a dialogue that is based on humility and on an active and profound listening. I cannot impose equality on the sides and it has to observe the similarities as well as the differences and what they tell us about ourselves and about the encounter. I truly believe that the only way to change and evolve goes through the friction with the other and my relationship with Samer did that to me in countless ways. In the film our different positions and the different aspects of our lived experiences becomes the arena in which this friction is created. But I think in any real and profound act of love we are left with the duality – the togetherness that is created and the inherent loneliness we all carry at the same time. So instead of separating or uniting, we end up surviving the night with some parts of us fused together into a new substance and others that will be always separate. It is a rare privilege to be able to find a partner that enables you to do that, to face the fears and limiting set of beliefs and be able to change one another. I guess even if we are not the representatives of nations and collectives, there is still something to be learned from this.

Q5: In the film, “past, present, future” are embodied as three bright stars that recur throughout the text, appearing in the characters’ thoughts, dreams, and moments of anxious wakefulness. How do you understand the relationship between past, present, and future in the film? Do they form a cycle, remain fractured, or coexist simultaneously? And how does this temporal structure reflect the protagonists’ personal and national histories?

A5: In most of my films there’s this engagement with the idea of simultaneity. The coexistence of temporalities and parallel narratives one alongside the other. I guess it comes from the conditions in which I grew up in. The multiplicities and contradictions it contained and how my notion of the truth was built around the attempt not to impose selectivity on them but to see them as parts of a whole story. I am intrigued by how the present moment is haunted by the ghosts of its past, of regrets, losses, longings and painful memories. How past experiences define who we are and how we see the world. It’s the invisible force that constructs the future through the echoes of the past. Each person we meet is a time capsule that plays in repeat its attachment or rejection of the past and their desired or dreaded future.

But in the film this idea had to take on a more complex task. The times it was made in forced a very real responsibility in going into a dialogue with the past and the weight of urgency in making interpretations and drawing conclusions from it to the future. It led me to question how we relate to time - to the inheritance we carry from the past and to the projections we make towards the future when the present is characterized be destruction. It confronted me with the significance of drawing comparisons with the past and understanding how this tactic can be both useful and dangerous. At a time when much of the discourse suggested that the existence of one narrative equates to the annihilation of the other, I felt that the simultaneousness of timelines was even more important as a mechanism to refuse this cruel game of negation. To insist on piling everything together and to accept the tangle as it is, containing the attempt to put order but ever remaining a beautiful and complex mess.

The film tries, a bit like in meditation, to remain in the present moment. It moves between the bed and the streets outside, between childhood memories and farther family history in a desperate attempt to find refuge from the invasive overthinking the times impose on the mind. As the night goes on without end, and as the present moment stretches, it becomes clear that this particular present moment is burdened by both the past as well as the events still unfolding and cannot offer peace of mind. But I think that this attempt to look at the present invaded by other times still offers a form of clarity and awareness and allows a rare and momentary tenderness.

So I don’t see the events as fractured but rather as parts of an ecosystem of resonance between them. This simultaneity does not form a circle but a spiral. And I hope that there is a way out of this wheel, but in order to find it, we have to look, truly, profoundly, critically, but also with compassion, at the histories that haunt us. If we can find a way to make choices that benefit everyone, and not just the narrow group to which we feel we belong to, then maybe there’s a chance to one day reach enlightenment.

Far from the Light of Day, Yotam Ben-David, 2025

Q1：对比是影片最突出的手法之一。文字所描述的外界的炮火、轰炸与室内的沉静、赤裸形成强烈反差，外部的黑夜、寒冷与室内暖色调的光线和彼此的体温也构成鲜明对比。这种视觉上的“静”与旁白文本中汹涌的情感和外部的暴力形成了巨大张力。您的视听语言设计，是否意在营造一个“内心的避难所”或“记忆的容器”？我感受到一种在巨大不安全感中努力营造的、短暂的“安全感”，您希望借此表达什么？

A1：这部电影诞生于一个充满对照的现实之中，但它同时也源自一种愿望：拒绝把现实划分成界限分明的两极。它试图重新为各种不同的存在状态，以及其中细微的差异留出空间。我希望这部电影能够成为对现实中种种恐怖的一种抵抗，但这种抵抗并不一定要以一种反应式的方式回应暴力，而是去创造、提出与现实并行的其他可能，同时也保留愤怒。事件发生之初，我的第一个冲动，是试图在自己力所能及的范围内反对并阻止大规模杀戮，警告人们一场种族灭绝即将发生。我无法相信，在最初的那些日子里，这样的反对不仅只是少数人的立场，甚至还会遭遇警方的暴力，以及一些与我们最亲近之人的排斥。反对种族灭绝，本应是一件不言自明的事。它本应成为共识，而且从一开始就应该如此。即使到了今天，两年半过去了，我依然无法理解：世界怎么会容许这样的灾难发生，又怎么会在整个世界的共谋之下，任由它持续至今。

正如你所说，外面是暴力，而家是一种庇护。但它从来不是一个中性的、与外界隔绝的空间。外部现实不断闯入其中：通过社交媒体和新闻，通过与家人和爱人之间那些痛苦的谈话，也通过因眼前事件而重新浮现的历史。外面的暴力也不仅仅是武器造成的暴力，它同样是话语的暴力。前所未有的大量关于死者和饥饿中的人的影像，以及围绕这些影像日复一日、不断重复的讨论，逐渐制造出一种去人化、日常化以及普遍冷漠的过程。这种去人化的话语，不仅影响了那些参与种族灭绝的人，也影响了一些反对它的人——因为当下的紧迫性要求人们作出极为鲜明而尖锐的回应。所以，与之相对，家不仅仅是一个容纳记忆与情感的容器，它也是一个让这些记忆与情感得以存在，并以其中的细微差异和复杂性被真正面对的地方。在这里，毫不妥协、甚至严酷的真相，可以与同情和怜悯同时存在。

这部电影最初是一篇写于2023年11月的文字，距离事件开始并没有过去多久。那篇文字几乎是在一种无法控制的状态下一气呵成的。那是一种绝望的需要：我必须把现实的所有层次全部摊开，不给其中任何一层设定优先级，同时表达面对正在发生的一切、以及即将发生的一切时，那种混乱与恐惧。这篇文字的写作，对我来说也是一种对政治行动的补充，是对政治行动无法完整提供之物的一种回应。我想拒绝那些简化一切的话语。我希望我们能够谈论被占领者与占领者，但谈话不能停留在那里，不能停留在那个一切都很容易被定义的位置。对我而言，如果只接受并不断强化这种二元对立，本质上就是在强化整个权力体系，并继续扮演这个体系预先分配给我们的角色。我当时觉得，为了拒绝这种暴力，我所能做的最激进、也最根本的事情，就是同时为对比与渐变留下空间：让我们能够同时说出几种不同的真实，并让它们彼此共存，而不需要相互否定。

因此，在有些时刻，这部电影面对鲜明的对立，会用一系列不同的可能性和现象来回应；而在另一些时刻，当面对含混、闪躲的语言时，它又会提出非常明确而坚定的观点。电影是从我拍摄Samer——我的男友——睡觉的影像开始的。他脸上的安宁，与旁白中对于轰炸和建筑坍塌的描述，是我最初放在一起并置的两个元素。我想创造一种既暧昧、又具体的语言，去看看文字和影像如何不断地彼此瓦解、彼此动摇。我想创造一个位于清醒与睡眠之间的临界空间：在这里，梦的语言面对高清晰度的影像，反而指向一种模糊；在这里，多元本身就是生命存在的证明，也是对无尽死亡的一种抵抗。这部电影是一个被想象出来的、处于不同状态之间的地带：睡眠与清醒之间，具象与抽象之间。它拒绝边界，也为那些存在于词语之间、存在于民族主义意识形态替我们规定的身份角色之间的事物留下空间。我认为，艺术家的角色与行动者不同。艺术家也必须试着越过道德判断，进入那些更加暧昧、难以界定的区域。政治行动为了指出不公、与不公抗争，需要清晰、锋利的定义；而诗性的行动所承载的，则是可能性的辽阔。它不仅能够越过现实中的物理限制，也能够越过想象力本身的边界。

Q2：旁白文本中充满了私密的个人记忆与宏大的集体历史之间的拉扯：既有和祖母相处的亲密回忆，又有祖母的流亡到街头抗议、远方战火的新闻。请问您在构建剧本时，是如何处理个人叙事与地缘政治冲突之间的关系的？您是否认为，在如此极端的冲突背景下，个人的记忆与创伤反而能成为理解宏大历史的更真实的入口？

A2：成长在一个被历史与暴力纠缠的地方，我几乎不可能不去思考：极其私人的经验，与更宏大的社会进程之间，究竟存在怎样的回声。我成长的社会并不掩饰自己如何通过残酷的介入影响周围的环境，也不掩饰自身如何受到这些介入的反作用。但这些介入总是被包裹在一套经过精心建构的叙事之中，并通过有选择的遗忘和抹除获得解释与正当性。要真正拆解社会从童年起就灌输给我的这些意识形态叙事，并不是一件自然而然就能做到的事情。在成长过程中，我开始注意到周围景观中的一些异常，也开始留意生活在这片土地上的个人与群体之间那些不寻常的关系。通过倾听人们讲述自己的故事、不断提出问题，我才一点点为自己开辟出一条道路，真正理解这个地方曾经发生过什么，以及那些过去与今天仍在发生的事情之间有什么联系。

20岁时，我开始参与巴勒斯坦的解放运动。我是在与约旦河西岸的巴勒斯坦人见面、亲眼看到并听到他们的现实之后，逐渐建立起自己的批判性政治思考的；也是通过与我的无政府主义者朋友、酷儿朋友、巴勒斯坦朋友和爱人交换观念与生活经验，并观察权力结构究竟如何被建立和维持，逐渐形成了这种理解。与此同时，我也是在许许多多关于迁徙的故事中长大的——我自己的家庭如此，我成长的地区如此，Samer的家庭也如此。这些关于个人失去、抹除、自愿或非自愿迁移的故事，深刻影响了我理解个体经验与集体精神之间关系的方式：一个人的经验如何与集体发生联系，同时又如何与它产生矛盾。

因此，我的政治理解始终是在现实生活之中成长起来的，而这种现实又不断被非常私人的经验所塑造。它每天都在我面前显现，也不断迫使我不要接受那些过度简化的观念。在微观与宏观视角之间来回移动，对我来说是一种日常练习，无论在生活中还是电影里都是如此。但当我们说“个人的即政治的”时，我并不把它理解为一种严格的指令：不是说我们必须把宏大的政治观念直接套用、移植进最私密的领域；也不是说，我们必须把最私人、最私密的经验视为整个社会及其压迫结构的缩影。对我而言，这句话真正指向的是两者之间那一整片广阔的地带。它要求我们不断移动，去观察两者如何彼此产生回声，又如何彼此质疑。我们所建构的政治叙事，其实是一种为了达到某种目的而使用的工具。它们把生命复杂的肌理进行简化和概括，整理成相对清晰、有秩序的观念，从而让我们能够作出道德判断。但个人经验比这更加庞大。它当然包含政治如何在生活中显现，却也同时包含随机、任性、奇异、抽象的一切。

当那种几乎令人无法理解的可怕现实一步步展开时，我只能更加迫切地去使用这种在个人与政治之间来回移动的能力。这是我当时唯一能想到的方式，让我能够对眼前的现实说些什么，也说出一些还没有被表达过的东西——一些不会落入那些不断煽动“文明之战”的人所使用的二元语言之中的东西。个人经验有一种很难捉摸的性质。它充满偶然，反复无常，也并不总是符合我们对于生活已经整理好的那些观念。因此，对我来说，表达这种随机性非常重要，表达那些古怪的、不愿服从预先规定框架的东西也非常重要：比如小时候我给兄弟姐妹拍的照片，那时我们假装他们是时装模特；比如Samer的姐姐在车里，用英语给自己的女儿唱的一首歌。生命中的这些细节，尤其是那些和政治没有任何直接关联的东西，反而有某种能力，可以超越表面的现实，并提炼出生命真正的本质。它拒绝因为被定义而死去。

Q3：影片的旁白使用了希伯来语，旁白中也多次出现对语言本身的反思，如“用古希伯来文凿刻着个人苦难”“当我们喃喃念出毫无意义的音节时，时间的延展与死亡的永恒，竟成了大规模杀伤性武器”。请问选择希伯来语作为旁白语言，是出于怎样的考量？这是否在探讨“语言作为家园”与“语言作为权力工具”的双重性，以及个体在历史夹缝中找寻自己声音的挣扎？

A3：希伯来语是我的母语。从很小的时候起，我就喜欢这种语言通过古老的谚语与词汇表达思想的能力，也喜欢它自身结构中的那些空隙——正是这些空隙，让创新和暧昧成为可能。对我而言，希伯来语始终既是一个属于想象与潜能的地方，同时也承载着祖辈存在的回声——一种历经时间潮汐而存留下来的东西。11年前，当我决定离开以色列—巴勒斯坦时，希伯来语变成了一块“非领土”。它承载着那些关于我从哪里来、又究竟属于哪里的最困难的问题：当这种语言离开了它作为日常口语存在的领土边界之后，它意味着什么？当我离开那里以后，我对于这份语言遗产负有怎样的责任？而当我在流亡中说希伯来语时，我究竟是在对谁说话？如果我用希伯来语拍电影，而观众只能通过翻译和字幕与它相遇，这又意味着什么？

希伯来语是一个非常独特的例子。它曾经并不依附于某一个特定地区或领土，主要被用于宗教语境，有时也作为来自不同地方的犹太人之间共同沟通的语言。后来，从18世纪开始，它逐渐被重新用于世俗领域，尤其是在文学、诗歌和新闻写作之中。虽然之后犹太复国主义运动将希伯来语的复兴与发展纳入了自己的民族国家计划，但与此同时，仍然有许多犹太作家和诗人在犹太复国主义之外、甚至与之没有关系的情况下，继续发展属于自己的希伯来语。我最喜欢的一些早期希伯来文学和诗歌，正是由那些并不生活在巴勒斯坦的人写成的，其中很多人的希伯来语甚至只是第二或第三语言。也正是通过这些作家，我开始重新摸索、表达自己与母语之间新的关系。

自从加沙的种族灭绝开始之后，这些问题变得更加困难。当新闻和社交媒体中听到的大量希伯来语，都是士兵与政客发出的那种自鸣得意的暴力和毁灭的语言时，坚持使用属于我自己的、拥有细微层次与诗性的希伯来语，究竟意味着什么？因此，在这部电影里，我希望使用这样一种语言——一种看起来把我与以色列、以及以色列所犯下的那些暴行联系在一起的语言——来谴责这些罪行。但与此同时，我也想拒绝任由这门语言本身遭到亵渎，我想把它重新取回，变成属于我的语言。我要承担某种责任，承认自己与那些“以我的名义”实施的行为之间存在某种关联；但与此同时，我也不愿把语言作为祭品交出去。于是，影片中那段近乎强迫性的、不断重复的独白，逐渐变成了一场针对希伯来语的驱魔仪式。语言被拖拽着穿过自己最羞耻、最晦暗的表达，最终才重新建构自己——以一种全新的、与那些表达分离的方式，重新成为诗。

对我而言，另一个重要层面，是语言本身的极限。电影一开始，是向语言发出一种恳求——任何一种语言都可以：来吧，帮我们理解这一切，为它建立秩序，把它表达出来，为它留下见证。但很快，我们通过无穷无尽的设备和平台，被海量的文字与影像淹没，而正是在这种过量之中，语言因为无休止的重复使用，走向了死亡。我希望电影中的语言能够映照这样一个世界：我们拥有数量过剩的交流工具，它们不仅无法阻止一场种族灭绝，反而成为制造冷漠最主要的工具。这也是为什么我在电影中转向了一种更加诗性的语言。我想选择一些与我们熟悉的词语相邻、但并不完全相同的词，让它们去暗示那些我们其实已经知道的事情，从而重新唤醒已经丧失的意义，同时表达情感潮汐之下那些隐藏的暗流。与此同时，我也希望语言不再仅仅是表达意义的工具，而能够逐渐变成一种声景，直接影响电影体验本身。它像一个失眠者头脑中无法控制的词语洪流，像一段强迫性的独白，一圈又一圈绕回自身，直到最终失去所有意义。我知道，这会让电影在某些时刻变得很难观看——观众有时会试图追上字幕，却发现自己根本追不上。但我知道，我想创造的电影体验本身，就必须承载它所描绘的那种挫败感和沉重感。它不能是一部站在一个经过控制的距离之外，去谈论那种令人窒息、被彻底淹没的感受的电影。它必须让你真正感受到那种窒息。

Q4：在您看来，影片中的爱情是否成为这两个民族历史命运的“肉身化”——让两个身体承受、容纳、甚至延续了那种既无法分离又无法融合的张力？越是想在彼此的体温中寻找庇护，就越被“愧疚与绝望”以及“无休止蜕变的时间”所缠绕。在这层意义上，您是否想表达：战争不只是发生在远方地平线的轰炸，它也发生在枕边——发生在每一次惊醒、每一次无言的对视、每一次“你的身体在垫褥上层层下陷”的瞬间？

A4：Samer是我的家人，也是我的家。到现在，我们已经共同生活了十三年。所以，在它成为某种隐喻，或者成为我们各自所属两种文化的象征之前，这首先只是我生命中一块极其私密的部分，也是我试图对那种强加在我们身上的现实作出回应的一种方式。自从我们来到巴黎以后，人们第一次见到我们，得知他来自巴勒斯坦、而我来自以色列时，一个非常常见的反应就是：“Ah, la paix”——“啊，和平。”这对我们来说总是一个有些尴尬的时刻。首先，因为我们并不认为巴勒斯坦的现实是两个平等的阵营之间发生的冲突，好像双方只需要通过“和平”找到解决分歧的方法。我们所看到的现实，是一个民族被另一个民族占领。但更重要的是，我们非常清楚，无论作为个人还是作为一对伴侣，我们都不代表各自出身的集体。如果一定要说的话，从很多方面来看，我们其实都是各自社会规范中的例外。

开始写这部电影时，我非常清楚，人们会把各种想象投射到我们身上——无论作为个人，还是作为一对伴侣。我想，我之所以拍这部电影，其中一个原因恰恰就是这种沉重感：我们的生活、我们的身份，突然变成了整个世界投射欲望与想象的对象。那些对我们而言最私密、最个人的东西，变成了每个人都可以发表立场与意见的话题，而这与他们是否真正接触过这片土地、接触过生活在那里的人，似乎完全没有关系。这么多年来，尤其是种族灭绝开始之后，我们几乎看到了所有可能的身份想象和角色被投掷到我们身上：恐怖分子、殖民者、野蛮人、文明人、受害者、特权者。对于大多数人而言，选择一个群体，然后排斥它或拥抱它，再透过这个框架去分析世界，似乎要容易得多。更困难的，是把一个群体理解为由无数个体构成：这些个体有时遵循自己所属集体的规范，有时反抗它，而更多时候，他们只是选择存在于两者之间的某个位置。而真正更困难的是接受这样一种具有普遍性的原则：唯一真正有用的概括就是，任何人都不应该遭受暴力。

世界日益增长的法西斯主义，把我们谈论人、权利和自由的方式限制在一个极其狭窄的框架中。结果是，我们不再把注意力放在自己究竟希望创造一个怎样的世界，而是不断被迫回应法西斯主义所规定的那种狭窄。甚至在那些理论上本应支持与法西斯主义完全相反理念的人、政治组织、电影节身上，我也看到这种狭隘的思维。他们最终同样落入“我们对他们”的二元框架。我在最私人、最切身的层面也经历过这一点：某些电影节不会选择我的电影，仅仅因为我出生在以色列——无论我一生中投入了多少精力反抗以色列的压迫，无论我多么坚持拒绝接受以色列政府的资金，也无论这部电影已经多么清楚地表达了这些立场。这与德国无条件、无批判地支持以色列，其实是同一种逻辑。他们没有意识到，真正从自己的历史中学习，最深刻的方式应该是阻止任何其他种族灭绝再次发生。当一个社会以一种道德优越感为名，最终却像看足球比赛一样盲目地为某一方站队时，我觉得这是非常危险的。

在制作这部电影时，我决定把一个前提作为起点：我的观众已经看过、也非常清楚那些从加沙传出的影像和故事。我同时也假定，我的观众反对种族灭绝。因此，电影把这些暴力当作观众已经拥有的前置知识，然后进一步追问：除此之外，我们还能向这个世界做出怎样的姿态？一部电影除了把这些暴力一遍又一遍重新呈现，还应该表达什么？人们常常希望看到一个干净、清晰的现实，希望有人直接告诉自己谁是受压迫者、谁是压迫者。为了反抗不公，这种辨认当然非常重要。但我认为，艺术的作用，是重新把生命注入那些已经被预先确定的观念之中，去扰动我们已经凝固的假设，而不是再次强化我们本来就拥有的立场。

因此，我对那种肤浅的、恋物式的、把一切简化的凝视所作出的回答，就是爱。爱，是两个个体主动付出的劳动，是他们坚持真正看见彼此的行动。我说的并不是那种被包装成商品出售给我们、用来维持异性恋规范秩序的浪漫爱情，而是一种无政府主义式的爱：它试图扰乱和质疑既有秩序，它要求人拥有勇敢的情感慷慨、同情，以及谦卑。爱，是一种最深刻、最有意识的与另一个人发生关系的行动。它建立在一种愿意不断探究、不断改善的意愿之上。这种爱会盘问参与其中的人，也会挑衅他们。它要求人拥有同情和宽恕，也同时要求人直视那些令人不适、不愿看见的东西。爱还是一种投入，由此建立起深刻的信任。在我与Samer的关系中，这些东西首先是在两个彼此不同的灵魂相遇时受到检验的。进入这段关系之中的政治张力，只是许多力量中的一种——它要求我们有足够的勇气，不把视线移开。

我非常相信辩证的过程，也相信它不仅能够处理冲突，还能够产生新的事物，拓展人的思想。让彼此对立的观念正面相遇，然后从这种碰撞中寻找智慧与理解。但这样的对话必须建立在谦卑，以及主动而深入的倾听之上。我不能强行假定双方处于完全平等的位置。它必须同时看到相似之处与不同之处，并思考这些异同告诉了我们什么——关于我们自己，也关于这场相遇。我真心相信，改变与成长唯一的道路，必须经过与他者之间的摩擦。而我与Samer的关系，以无数种方式让我经历了这一点。在电影中，我们不同的位置、以及我们各自生活经验的不同侧面，成为这种摩擦发生的场域。但我想，在任何真正深刻的爱之中，我们最终都会面对这样一种双重性：一方面是两个人之间产生的共同性，另一方面，是我们每个人始终无法消除的内在孤独。所以，我们最后既不是分离，也不是完全融合。我们只是一起熬过了这个夜晚：我们身上的某些部分融合在了一起，成为一种新的物质；而另一些部分，则永远会彼此分开。能够找到一个让你做到这一切的伴侣，是一种极其罕见的幸运——一个让你能够面对自己的恐惧与限制性的信念，并让彼此真正发生改变的人。我想，即使我们并不是两个民族或两个集体的代表，从这段关系之中，或许仍然有一些东西值得被理解。

Q5：影片中，“过去、现在、未来”被具象化为三颗明亮的星，并在文本中反复出现。它们在主角的思绪、梦境和现实的焦虑中不断闪现。请问您是如何理解这三个时间状态在影片中的关系的？它们是循环的、断裂的，还是同时存在的？这种时间观又如何映照了两位主角的民族和个人命运？

A5：我的大多数电影都会涉及一种关于“同时性”的思考：不同的时间、不同的平行叙事，如何同时存在，彼此并列。我想，这可能与我成长的环境有关。那个环境本身包含着多重性与矛盾，而我对于“真实”的理解，也是建立在这样一种尝试之上：不是从中筛选出某一种叙事，把它强加为唯一真实，而是尽量把这些彼此矛盾的部分都视为完整故事的一部分。我一直很着迷于这样一件事：此刻的现实，是如何被过去的幽灵纠缠的——遗憾、失去、渴望、痛苦的记忆。过去的经验定义了我们是谁，也定义了我们如何观看这个世界。它像一种看不见的力量，通过过去留下的回声，一点点塑造未来。我们遇到的每一个人，都像一个时间胶囊，在其中不断重复播放着他与过去之间的关系——依恋它，或者拒绝它——以及他对未来的渴望或恐惧。

但到了这部电影中，这种关于时间的想法必须承担一项更复杂的任务。这部电影所诞生的时代，迫使我必须真正与过去展开对话；同时，它又带着一种紧迫的责任，要求我们从过去作出解释、得出判断，并由此思考未来。这让我开始追问，我们究竟如何与时间发生关系：当此刻本身以毁灭为特征时，我们如何面对从过去继承下来的东西，又如何面对自己投射向未来的想象？它也迫使我思考，把现在与过去进行类比究竟意味着什么，以及这种方法为什么既可能有用，同时又可能十分危险。当时大量公共话语仿佛都在暗示：只要承认一种叙事存在，就等于要消灭另一种叙事。也正是在这种时刻，我反而觉得，不同时间线的同时存在变得更加重要。它可以成为一种拒绝这种残酷“相互否定游戏”的机制。我想坚持把所有东西都堆叠在一起，接受它们本来就纠缠在一起的状态：当然，我们始终会试图为它建立某种秩序，但它最终仍然会保留为一种美丽而复杂的混乱。

这部电影有一点像冥想，它不断尝试停留在当下。它在床与外面的街道之间移动，在童年的记忆与更久远的家族历史之间移动，仿佛绝望地试图从这个时代强行塞进我们头脑里的、无休无止的过度思考中，找到一处避难所。但夜晚似乎永远没有尽头。随着此刻不断被拉长，我们逐渐意识到，这个特定的“现在”，既背负着过去，同时又承受着仍在不断发生的事件，因此它根本无法给予人内心的平静。但我想，即使如此，尝试去观看一个不断被其他时间闯入的“现在”，依然可以带来某种清晰与觉察，也能够让一种罕见而短暂的温柔成为可能。

所以，我并不把这些事件理解为彼此断裂的碎片。我更愿意把它们看作同一个生态系统中的不同部分，它们彼此之间不断产生回声。而这种同时性最终形成的并不是一个圆，而是一条螺旋。我希望我们能够找到离开这个轮回的方法。但要找到出口，我们首先必须真正地、深入地、批判性地去看那些一直纠缠着我们的历史，同时也必须带着同情去看它们。如果我们能够找到一种方式，作出真正让所有人受益的选择，而不是只让那个我们自认为属于其中的狭窄群体受益，那么也许有一天，我们真的有机会抵达某种觉悟。

About the Artist 艺术家简介

Yotam Ben-David grew up in a village near Jerusalem. His films, often inspired by the lives of people surrounding him and his own biography, seek the sublime and poetic in the banality of everyday life and in the often painful political history of his native country. His short and medium-length films as well as the films he had edited have been selected and awarded prizes at numerous international festivals including Berlinale, Cannes, Sarajevo, Visions du Réel, FIDMarseille, IndieLisboa and others. He currently lives in Paris, where he is in the process of financing his first feature film, the project was selected to the Cinéfondation atelier at the Cannes Film Festival.

约塔姆·本－戴维（Yotam Ben-David）成长于耶路撒冷近郊的一个村庄。他的电影常从自身经历与身边人的生活汲取灵感，在日常的平凡与祖国痛苦的政治历史中，寻找崇高与诗意的片刻。他执导或剪辑的短片与中篇作品曾入选并获奖于多个国际影展，包括柏林国际电影节、戛纳电影节、萨拉热窝电影节、瑞士尼翁真实电影节、马赛国际电影节（FIDMarseille）与里斯本独立电影节（IndieLisboa）等。目前，他定居巴黎，正筹备首部长片项目，该计划入选戛纳的电影基石（Cinéfondation）创投工作坊。

▌more information: https://www.bisff.co/selection/far-from-the-light-of-day