Esther Dar

The story of Israel's first fifty years of statehood, TKUMA brings to the screen the tragedies and joyful milestones of Israel's first half century: the ingathering of the exiles as the fledgling state becomes a haven for Jews around the word. Dramatic, personal accounts and documentary footage of the wars fought over five decades, along with rare behind-the-scenes insights into Israel's efforts to make peace. Who is a Jew Israel wrestles with its national identity. Israel's economic revolution takes the country from the orange to the computer chip in a few years. The people, the places, the spirit of Israel in its first fifty years.

Four women--Selma Dejani, a Palestinian Moslem; Wadad Shihade, a Palestinian Christian; Olga Elkind, a Jew from a prominent Zionist family; and Sharona Aharo, a Jew from Tel Aviv--roommates at an Anglican boarding school in Jerusalem in 1939, meet 50 years later for a reunion.

This piece of reportage for Israeli television examines the background of supposed Palestinian terrorism against Israelis in the Gaza Strip. Images of Palestinian workers packed into trucks in a long queue at the Erez Checkpoint, waiting for hours to enter Israel, are followed by images of Palestinian agricultural labourers, locked in an oppressive feudal system and willing to exchange their miniscule salaries for the bonus given for planting bombs.

Three part documentary on life in a peripheral run-down town.