Yellow Asphalt

Colour, 35mm
Israel, 2000, 87 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Yellow Asphalt is a film comprised of stories whose common themes focus on relations and conflicts between Israeli settlers and Bedouin tribes living in the Judean desert. The first, shortest story involves the tragic and needless death of a little Bedouin boy on an abandoned road in the desert. The second is about a German woman named Taman escaping from her unhappy marriage to a Bedouin and the third and last story deals with the love relationship between a Bedouin woman, Suida, and her married Jewish employer. The film’s leitmotiv concerns the influence of western civilization on a traditional eastern culture and their mutual interpenetration, realities that have forced the inhabitants to re-evaluate their attitudes towards tradition and deeply rooted customs. Yellow Asphalt won Grand Prize at the 2000 Haifa IFF.

About the director

Danny Verete (b. 1952, Jerusalem) has worked since 1981 as both director and screenwriter for television, for which he has made series, documentaries and commercials. He has also written and directed many feature films. Verete wrote the script for Daniel Waxman’s Hammsin (1982), a film which took the Silver Leopard at Locarno in 1983, and was also voted Best Israeli Film in the same year. In 1999-2000, Verete taught screenwriting at Jerusalem’s Academy of Art. Filmography: Wall within the City (1981), Koko Is 19 (1985), I Am Your Spy (1995, documentary), Yellow Asphalt (2000, Asphalt Zahov).