HUH?

This project was a collaboration between myself and Aaron Raff, an ACTLAB alum. We generated ideas, photoshopped, wrote the script, and edited together.

The scenes in this movie were made using Photoshop, and it was edited in FinalCut. I used personal photos, pictures of girl soldiers I found on the Livejournal group "idf_girls," and various images found using Google image search. Also, items like the bed, the jail, the sun, and the sand in the jeep scene are made of paper and drawings that I scanned.

The soundtrack to the project includes: "Shir Ha'Lehaka" from the Israeli movie Ha'Lehaka (1979) ; "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" by John Lennon; and, of course, "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls. Girl Power! Other sounds were found on Soundtrack or through a Google search for free sounds. The voice in the video is mine, altered on GarageBand.

WHAT?

We often discussed memory and identity in Sandy Stone's class, which made me think of how I used to see my future when I was a child. I thought I would join the Israeli Army, and that it would be cool and fun, and that I'd meet the best friends in the world, and fall in love, etc., etc. I was also really into the Spice Girls, flowery Doc Martens, and the Israeli children's TV megastar Michal Yanai.

Using my childhood memories, I constructed a narrative that magnified my fantasies yet stayed true to my personality. This project is a playful look at how we manipulate our memories and construct our identities. It also uses the idea of the human vs. inhuman--a major theme of the Postmodern Gothic class. Soldiers are often seen as inhuman machines, attached to technology and following orders from other entities. But I wanted to show a different side of the military world--that of adventure and social intrigue (and yacht parties). I was inspired to do this from my favorite Israeli movie, Ha'Lehaka, which tells the story of an entertainment troupe of the IDF. A song from the movie is played in the intro to my project.

Of course, my movie shows the inhuman side of the military as well as the human. The little girl's delusions about military life seem so ridiculous that they remind us of the realities of being a soldier. Ultimately, I wanted to deconstruct the audience's notion of the military without giving a definitive answer. Should we be appalled at the little girl's desires to join the military? Or should we remember that soldiers have a human side? I wanted the audience to feel both of these feelings simultaneously.

I deconstructed my memory, identity, and the dichotomy between the self and the state in this project. I hope it connects to the class's themes, but I think I'll stop worrying about that and instead go watch Spice World.