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DOCAVIV 2022

Crítica: The Camera of Dr. Morris

por 

- Itamar Alcalay y Meital Zvieli reúnen las imágenes rodadas por un médico británico que se muda a Israel en los años 60 en un conmovedor retrato de una familia en un estado neonato

Crítica: The Camera of Dr. Morris

Este artículo está disponible en inglés.

To reach “the end of the world”, in a paradise of white sand, with a sea of the purest blue and grey mountains on the horizon. Deciding that this is your land, the place where you want to live. This is the story of Reginald Morris and his wife Fay, told in the documentary The Camera of Dr. Morris by Itamar Alcalay and Meital Zvieli, which is playing in the Israeli Competition of this year’s Docaviv. She was 25, he was 40, and the two married in Birmingham shortly after the war during which Morris fought on the Japanese front for five years in the Royal Air Force, before returning to England to study medicine.

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Both restless and ready for change, they hear about Eilat and cross Europe in a camper to reach the city and pitch a tent in the desert. There, Morris films a Bedouin talking to Fay and walking away into the glare. From then on, he will never stop shooting short films with his super 8. In 1960, Eilat is a small city under construction in the far south of Israel (a country itself born only 12 years earlier), on the northern shores of the Red Sea and in the southern Negev desert, between an Egyptian village and a Jordanian port. Morris is invited to create a health service for it and becomes the head of the local hospital. Fay, meanwhile, creates a local section of the WIZO Women's International Zionist Organization, brings in money from wealthy Brits to open kindergartens and schools, and eventually becomes an honorary consul. In short, they assimilate, all the while remaining "still British," as they say, with good manners and tea at 5, but still remain somewhat outside of the dominant Israeli culture of the era, which does not particularly like the subjects of the Crown ( English soldiers prevented entry for the immigrants and sided with the Arabs).

Born first is Aviva, suffering from Down syndrome, then Uni, and the two siblings spend all their time together until Aviva dies of pulmonary complications at the age of 6. Then Andrew is born and a few years later, the death of a young British woman from Eilat leads the Morrises to adopt little Dolly, who, despite the difficulties of adopting at the time, becomes an integral part of the family. But behind images of light-heartedness and games is a military-style education, expanding in all areas of life from cooking to working in the vegetable garden.

Yet the house is also the setting for dinners with friends and parties where women dance in miniskirts, and the courtyard is animated by donkeys, geese, dogs, iguanas and even two baby crocodiles which Morris took from the Nile. The climate is the same that reigns all over the world: intellectuals, beatniks and tourists all pass by Eilat, whose population expanded, after the first pioneers, with numerous ex-prisoners. People come to shoot western or biblical films because of the breathtaking views. But Morris does not allow himself to be distracted from his mission. Many believe him to be a spy, but he goes around with a Land Rover full of medicines to distribute to the Bedouins who are waiting for him on the banks of the Nile, in Sinai, in the most remote places.

What prompted Alcalay and Zvieli to edit this material and tell the story of this group through the years, the family of a British doctor who prevented his children from speaking Hebrew? Certainly a reason here is the birth and the first developments of a state in the background, and the coexistence with native tribes (intifadas are far in the future). But above all, there is something exciting and poignant in those births and deaths, those picnics on the beach and those holidays in Europe, seen through the watchful eye of a father.

Alcalay and Zvieli have found that Morris had a sense of the image and knew how to construct aesthetically attractive micro-narratives, which the directors were then able to "sew" together into art. In the last days of his life, it is Morris, for once, who is framed by the camera as it is held by his son Andrew: “I have lived a wonderful life, with a wonderful family.”

The Camera of Dr. Morris was produced by Rose Water Films.

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(Traducción del italiano)

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