The more years go by, the more the loss of director Amos Gutman is felt in Israeli cinema. Gutman was born in Hungary in 1954 and died in 1993. His four feature-length films are well-known among local film aficionados, and are occasionally broadcast on TV. Gutman's work now is being compiled into a stylish package by chain store The Third Ear.

The five-DVD package includes not only Gutman's four films - "Nagu'a" ("Drifting"), 1983; "Bar 51," 1985; "Himmo, King of Jerusalem," 1987; and "Hesed Mufla" ("Amazing Grace"), 1992 - but also three short films. These are "Premierot Hozrot," which he directed in 1976 while studying cinema at the Beit Zvi Stage Arts School, "Makom Batuah" (A Safe Place) from 1977, and "Nagu'a" from 1981. This "Nagu'a" is stylistically similar to the full-length film of the same name, but has a different plot; it is known as "the short Nagu'a."

In addition, the package includes Ran Kotzer's 1997 documentary "Amos Gutman, Filmmaker" as well as short films Kotzer directed for this project, which provide historical background for Gutman's films.

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A farewell to other possibilities

The thematic and formative uniformity throughout Gutman's films is striking. The director's talent is evident in his early films, but it clearly matured over the years. Gutman directed "Amazing Grace" toward the end of his short life. This is not only his best and most complete film, but also one of Israel's most beautiful, most complete, sensitive and moving cinematic works.

"Amazing Grace" transmits with great intensity the feeling that Gutman was on the threshold of becoming one of our greatest directors when his promise was cut short by illness and death. The film creates a feeling of both beginning and end, new possibilities and loss of opportunity. This is cinema as a wish, and as a requiem.

One of the accepted ways of relating to Gutman's work - a sentiment expressed by Kotzer's interviewees - is crediting him with introducing the voice of the other into Israeli cinema, almost three decades ago. This move was provocative and courageous not only within Israeli filmmaking at the time, but also in terms of Israeli society and culture in general.

However, if this were his full contribution, Gutman's importance would not be so great. Unlike many in Israeli filmmaking, Gutman conveys his messages not merely through plots and themes, but also form and style. Contrary to other directors, who since his death have also tried to bring the voice of others, including gays, into Israeli cinema, Gutman did not try to penetrate the mainstream but rather sought to create a parallel, at times subversive, cinematic experience. Only in this way did this voice become an alternative, and the discussion about the essence and the place of the other become truly significant.

From this point of view, "Himmo, King of Jerusalem" could be considered Gutman's most radical work. This film brought together the War of Independence with an extremist Hollywood style. No other Israeli film puts Israeli myths of masculinity on such a collision course with the other; even if the result was not perfect - how could it be in the political, social and cultural circumstances under which it was created? - this is a film whose merits merely increase with time.

Gutman's films reveal just how much he understood about the clash between the center and the margins, not only in the Israeli experience but even in cinema. In the short film that accompanies "Drifting," film critic Nahman Ingbar, who was Gutman's teacher, recalls the influence Federico Fellini had on his student's films, especially the early ones. However, a second look at his work reveals other complex influences, including classics and avant-guard American films, especially those by director Kenneth Anger. Gutman's understanding and love of classic filmmaking sometimes finds expression in his films in an ironic and even bitter way, and at times is filled with melancholy and yearning.

Gutman could have been our Fassbinder or Almodovar; he could have been a completely unique creator whose films would have enriched Israeli cinema with both their sensitivity and their brutality.

A lesson in distress

Gutman's path to filmmaking was not an easy one; he directed his last film, "Amazing Grace," after a five-year silence forced by the failure of "Himmo." Some of Israel's best films grew out of a similar kind of distress - including David Perlov's "Yoman" (Diary) and Yitzhak Yeshurun's film "Noa at 17." These directors used it in their own way and style. This too is a lesson in Gutman's cinematic heritage.

Viewing Gutman's full oeuvre shows there still is a great deal to investigate in Gutman's creative work, and that even more can be learned from it. Gutman's presentation of men and women, gay and straight, Israeli and Palestinian, and present mothers and absent fathers is unparalleled in the history of Israeli filmmaking. Gutman depicted society, culture and sexuality in a fluid, unstable way; his films emitted detachment and emotional exile where the creative artist himself was the central protagonist. This film package brings Gutman back from his exile to where he is needed - at the center of Israeli society, culture and filmmaking