Ursulimum

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Trailer:

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Ursulimum is the earliest known reference to Jerusalem, recorded in ancient Egyptian texts around 1330 BCE. Across its long history, the city has been destroyed, besieged, captured and rebuilt countless times, each wave of conquest layering new streets upon the old. Beneath today’s surface lies a buried maze of archeology, vast portions of which remain hidden. The Temple Mount — Har Habayit in Hebrew, Haram Ash-Sharif in Arabic — has been revered as one of the most sacred sites in the world for millennia, a navel of creation centered on the Foundation Stone, from which four religions — Judaism, Christianity, Roman paganism, and Islam — drew their axis of sacrifice and worship. Tradition holds that the First and Second Temples were built around this core; the Third, known never to have been constructed, hovers as a myth, perhaps concealed underground.

Echoing science fiction cinema, Ursulimum begins from history yet slips into allegory. A seven-year-old boy, blindfolded under a helmet, sets out to explore the magnetic fields of the city often called the holiest on earth. Is he child, machine, or seraph wandering a breached temple? His journey becomes a psychological passage, perhaps a fantasy, perhaps a metaphysical exploration. Just as he raises the cloth from his eyes to see, the film loops back to its beginning — suggesting an expedition with no origin and no end, a recursive vision suspended in time.

Director/director of photography/editor/post production/sound designer Ran Slavin
Supported by The New Fund for Cinema and Television
Sound Mastering Miguel Carvalhais
Cast: Yonathan Gilad
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Shown previously here:
Times square New York City
Beta Gallery, Jerusalem
The Bangkok Underground Film Festival
The Jerusalem Film Festival
Centre Des Arts Enghiem Le Bains / FRANCE
Private Nationalism, Dresden
m21 Gallery, Zsolnay Cultural Quarter Pecs, Hungary
Ursulimum installations at Mediations Biennale, Poznan Polin
FILE/ Ruth Cardoso Cultural Center, Sao Paulo, Brazil
“New Codes” The Athens Video Art festival
Prix de Creation, Videoformes, France
Regional Museum of Baroque, Noto, Italy
Cosmopolitan Stranger/Hotel de inmigrantes, Manifesta 9, Hasselt, Belgium
Museum on the Seam (Mots) Jerusalem
Givon Gallery Tel Aviv, Israel

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References and research: