Ilan Yagoda

At the heart of the Central Train Station in Tel Aviv stands a grand piano. It watches over the traffic moving to and from the docks, seemingly hearing and seeing everything from its own point of view. For some, the piano is a regular stop on their commute. Others, occasional travelers, encounter it in this unexpected space, inviting them, subject to their will. There, in the most bustling place is a piano that makes people take off their earphones and take part in something magical that requires no words. The piano is unplugged, the people unplug. How many of those who sit and play manage to transcend the external noise, reflecting in a different and challenging way the reality we live in, allowing us to look into ourselves?

Ilan Yagoda’s short which he made as his graduation project from the Beit Zvi School for the Performing Arts’s film department, is a documentary that follows the story of far-left activist Rami Livneh, who had been a member of numerous Israeli reactionary organisations such as Compass (‘matzpen’), Struggle (ma’avak), and the Revolutionary Socialist Movement. Livenh was handed a prison sentence for liaising with a foreign agent, a Palestinian student affiliated with Fatah. Yaguda spent a full weekend shadowing Livneh and his family, six years after his release from prison and the very next day following the fatal domestic terror attack at a ‘Peace Now’ Jerusalem demonstration where a grenade thrown into the crowd claimed the life of Emil Grünzweig. The [originally Hebrew-rhyming] title of the film is also the name of a children’s story Livenh wrote for his kids whilst behind bars, about a boy who always does as he’s told as opposed to what he really wants to do.