Three Films by Ruti Sela followed by Conversation between the Artist and Roee Rosen
Presented alongside Sela's solo exhibition at the Mamuta Art Research Center.
Marseille Jamila
2018, 27 min. (in collaboration with Roee Rosen)
A vision of the city of Marseille, shaped by a post-colonial present and fractured identities, with the port of Jaffa as the starting point for this exploration. Created by Roi Rosen and Ruti Sela for an exhibition at the Triangle Museum in Marseille, this joint project questions the notion of decentering. It takes the form of a tourist advertisement for Marseille, while absurdly being filmed in another city. Led by Rosen and Sela, and with the participation of students, this collaboration raises questions of control, dominance, and chauvinistic excitement. Amid this complexity, the film maintains a significant number of representatives from Marseille, a tangle of portraits infused with a dark tone of obscure, hazy, and speculative black humor. The creative process is presented in a deliberately simple documentary style.
With the participation of students from the Faculty of Art at HaMidrasha who took part in the Marseille Jamila workshop.
El Yuma
Cuba
2014, 39 min.
"Yuma" (or "Juma") is the term used by Cubans for tourists who can support them (originally in specific reference to American tourists). The term is particularly associated with sex tourism in Cuba and with marriages between young local women and foreign men. The film follows a young European man and his local suitors in a small Cuban town, while also examining the filmmaker's own position as a Yuma, and the act of documentary filmmaking as it parallels exploitation.
Viewing Booth
Tel Aviv
2021, 2:50 min.
In this short video, the artist documents a stray dog wandering the neglected streets of South Tel Aviv, attempting to capture a portrait of a place in an age of facial recognition.