director: Ran Tal
producer: Ran Tal, Sarig Peker
runtime: 89min
language: HEBREW
Year of Production: 2022
Countries of Production: Israel \ England \ USA
International Sales Agent: Ran Tal This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Section: Berlinale Special films
As Israel’s most celebrated war photographer Micha Bar-Am mines his extraordinary archive of over half a million negatives, questions and self-doubt surface, in a profound exploration of photography, memory, and the personal cost of a life devoted to recording a conflict.
Berlinale Special films
Composed entirely of images taken by the acclaimed photo-journalist Micha Bar-Am over the course of more than fifty years, 1341 FRAMES OF LOVE AND WAR reveals the enormous price that comes along with documenting atrocities and wars. "The most horrifying images are sometimes aesthetic," says Bar-Am, who gave filmmaker Ran Tal exclusive access to his vast archive.
Born in Berlin in 1930, Bar-Am found his vocation as a new immigrant in Israel in the early 1950s. His photographs depict images of the struggles of a new nation and its ongoing wars and conflicts, as well as personal images of his family in the most private of moments. The events and wars he doggedly pursued turned into iconic images through his Leica camera. He became a member of the celebrated Magnum collective, co-founded the International Center of Photography in New York with Cornell Capa, and his photographs graced countless covers of the world's major magazines - The New York Times, Time Magazine, Stern, Paris Match and more...
Today, at the age of 91, Bar-Am looks at his photographs anew, wondering aloud why he photographed, what photography means, and what happened to the Israeli project. 1341 FRAMES provides an intimate portrait of an artist and a meditation on memory, violence and identity. It is a complex love letter to the power, beauty and horror of photographic imagery.
FESTIVAL SCREENING