Roee Rosen : douce sueur

A film retrospective of Roee Rosen (1963, Israel) is a proposition to enter into the cinematic regions of his world of alter egos and political provocation. Although primarily concerned with the representation of desire and structural violence, his work at the same time undermines identity construction through fictionalization, irony, and revision. Departing from his own biography, Rosen links current Israeli and world politics with mythical and political references to European and Jewish history in untold variations. Each new character, each new film enters into dialogue with the previous to map out a complex portrait of an artist who has chosen to walk the fine line between comedy and terror. This comprehensive program includes special presentations and conversations between the filmmaker and international guests.

Hila Peleg is a curator and filmmaker based in Berlin. She has curated solo shows, large-scale group exhibitions, and various interdisciplinary cultural events in public institutions across Europe. Peleg was co-curator of Manifesta 7 European Biennial of Contemporary Art (Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, 2008) and curator of the film program at the 10th Shanghai Art Biennale (2014). Her films were screened in many festivals worldwide. Peleg was the founder and artistic director of the Berlin Documentary Forum at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2010-2014), and curator of documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017). She is the editor of the book Documentary Across Disciplines, The MIT Press, 2016

Roee Rosen (b. 1963) is an Israeli-American artist, filmmaker and writer. He is known for his multilayered and provocative work which often challenges the divides between history and the present, documentary and fiction, politics and erotics. Among his major works are Two Women and a Man (2005) – a project dedicated to his fictive feminine persona, the Jewish-Belgian Surrealist painter and pornographer Justine Frank –, the film Out (2010), premiered at the Venice film festival where it won the Orizzonti award for best medium-length film, and The Dust Channel (2016), his last film coproduced by Documenta 14, where it was exhibited along with two historical text and image installations: The Blind Merchant (1989-1991) and Live and Die as Eva Braun (1995-1997). Several retrospectives of Rosen's cinema were held, among them at the Oberhausen film festival (2012), La Roche sur Yon festival (2013), and FICUNAM festival, Mexico City (2018). Rosen is a professor at Ha'Midrasha Art College, and at the Bezalel Art Academy, both in Israel.