Films
Three Short Films by Dani Gal: Night and Fog, As From Afar, White City

Dani's film Hegemon will screen in Cleveland at FRONTinternational on Friday, July 13th, at 11 am.

Tue, 07/10/2018
8:00 PM Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Night and Fog
Director: Dani Gal, 2011, 22 min
A reenactment of the night Adolf Eichmann was executed by Israeli policemen who later disposed his ashes into the sea. The film is based on an interview with Michael Goldman,
a holocaust survivor and a police officer who was in charge of the operation in 1962.

As From Afar
Director: Dani Gal, 2013, 26 min
A fictionalized account of Simon Wiesenthal and Albert Speer’s meeting in the 1970's where the dialogue is based on the letters the two exchanged. Despite their profoundly contrasting personal histories, they shared common interests. They pursued their unlikely friendship despite controversy and occasionally visited each other. The story is, again, a meditation on how historical events are recalled, recorded, and distorted.

White City
Director: Dani Gal, 2018, 25 min
The film revolves around the complex character of Arthur Ruppin (1876-1943), one of the founders of the Zionist Settlement who promoted coexistence with the Palestinians before the establishment of the state of Israel. Ruppin was also an enthusiastic researcher of the science of race, which explains his motive in paying a visit to Hans F.K. Günther (1891-1968), the German race researcher and eugenicist who later became a major influence on the National Socialist racial thought.
The film shows Ruppin as he visits Weissenhof Estate, a neighborhood in Stuttgart famous for its modern architecture style, and experiences flashbacks which reflect his views.
The monologues and dialogues are based mainly on Ruppin’s diaries.  

Dani Gal (born 1975, Jerusalem) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Bezalel Academy for Art and Design in Jerusalem; the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule in Frankfurt; and the Cooper Union in New York. His films and works have been shown widely, including: 54th Venice Biennale (2011), The Istanbul Biennale (2011), New Museum New York (2012), Kunsthalle St. Gallen Switzerland (2013), The Jewish Museum New York (2014), Berlinale Forum Expanded (2014), Kunsthaus Zurich (2015), Kunsthalle Wien (2015), Documenta 14 (2017)

About the Artist:
By means of intensive research and examination of historical image, text and sound documents of past and/or current political and cultural occurrences, Dani Gal (based in Berlin, GER) interrogates how personal and collective history and memorization is produced, selected and carried through time and space.
In his video and sound installations the artist reconstructs and reconfigures already existing documentation through subtle manipulations and thus emphasizes on history and stories that have fallen prey to oblivion or on significant and narrative aspects that yet haven‘t been illuminated.
Particular interest the artist also shows in readapting mainly historic sources of language and sound into performative environments: emphasizing on the circumstances of their production, cultural relevance and expanding their possibilities of creating links of historic material to contemporary contexts.

All works courtesy Gallery Kadel-Wilborn Düsseldorf and Dani Gal