CURRENT MISSION

to create great movies and to understand the art and science of storytelling

ABOUT ME

A visual Anthropologist, a young film-maker, a researcher of Narratology. A Jerusalem boy, a social clown, a serious thinker.

PHILOSOPHY

It's always wise to have less doubts.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I've hosted (soon to become) friends at my former Jerusalem home. I am not hosting (soon to become) friends in BOSTON.
I have stayed with wonderful, amazingly talented individuals in Germany, Czech Republic, Spain, Serbia, Austria.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

In the US we did something truly great! I have shot a movie/art installation using solely the CS community, as we shoot at a CS site and with the help of the tremendous CS personality Mia Walsh! (let's meet and watch it together).

I am all about adventures, quite or loud, short term wonders or long term pen-pals, going to music festival together or talking about meta-diegetic music, creating movies or watching them together; CS has made all of it possible.

some of the most brilliant people i've met, were on couches.

Interests

Other people.
Finding ways to explain myself with other people's words, new adventures, new kinds of booze, stimulating music, extra ordinary books, settings with cinematic qualities, looking at the world through anthropological glasses, looking at the world through poetic contact lenses, beautiful words.

• arts
• humanities
• books
• literature
• festivals
• clothing
• movies
• music
• anthropology
• nursing
• science
• sociology

Music, Movies, and Books

always happy to join a casual conversation about intense Cinema. Can always find a friendly face where there are ambitious listeners and careful readers.

Danish Cinema. Jorgen Leth, Il buono il brutto il cattivo, The Wonderer, gegen die wand, Oldboy, Dead Ringers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Art of Crying, Melodiya dlya sharmanki, Barry Lyndon, Ivanovo detstvo, Slumming,

Thelonious Monk, Joni Mitchell, Fiona Apple, Nick Drake, Hieroglyphics, Frisk Frugt, Shostakovich, Paris, Canooooopy, Torres, Boban Markovich, Father John Miesty, David Bowie, Baths Bach, Gogol Bordello, The National, Grizzly Bear, Yann Tiersen, Son Lux, Sufjan Stevens, Laura Marling, Elbow, Niel Young, Timber Timbre, SUUNS, Tune-Yards, Bill Callahan, Andre 3000, Avi buffalo, Tin Hat Trio,

Latin American Literature. Mario Lavrero, Juan Rulfo, Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Aeschylus, Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill, Bruce Chatwin, Clifford Geertz, Francois Rabelais, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Italo Calvino,

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

There is a mountain in Mexico. In the first days of the trip I thought about it more and more. Before I left her, my mother made me swear that I would do all I could – to reach Mexico. And then, I must strive to meet the people of the mountain. Mother won't be satisfied with a cordial visit, and demanded I open my heart to them and ask that they know me. That was the time when my heart was the most shrunken it had ever been, tinier even than two and a half decades ago when mother needed only one hand and a little caution to bend me to her will. Her will was to nurse me, so that I would survive and arrive at this precise moment in which my heart is in agony and falling from the middle of my chest downward, dragging me to the wooden floor in bitter tears. I wanted her to hurt, so I swore, until it hurt her! that I would not reach the mountain. When I landed here, I realized I was dust. In my country, I was tied to the earth with blood. As such, I was constantly stepped upon and in pain, as I was thinly pulverized, so that I became the salt of the earth. In order to get to Mexico, however, I was to get on a plane, with no oxygen, in the thin air, my body dispersed, and in the land of Mexico I evaporated into space. We arrived in Mexico as a large group, large enough to convince a chef in the hotel to prepare for us a big pot of chicken soup (with Grandma herself there to supervise). But I, apart from their passports, didn't recognize any of them, and if I woke up after nine thirty in the morning I also couldn't find any of them. When I counted off the eighth day in Spanish (el octavo), all that remained was the promise not to reach the mountain. So I mustered my final strength and my two siblings (it's surprising how few tears I needed), and we went. We went to the mountain, until about halfway up, until the second house of the inhabitants, until the first healer-god, who happened to be wearing clothes that were familiar to me from home. He asked that we take off our clothes, and half naked he led us to the mud hut. Inside, with the gate closed, chaos reigned above and inside and over us. He, in jeans and a button-down shirt, started muttering in the language of the Mayan – foreign also to the locals. Every few moments, fragmented minutes or hours, he stopped. Opened the gate, and brought inside another hot "grandma stone" (grandma is my mother's mother). The origin of the stone is at the bottom of a volcano and its age is unknown, and from this I deduce – those that are old enough, their children have children. When you bring a grandma stone inside the mud hut it lets out a thin line of light. So thin, that it doesn't allow you to notice anything beyond the chaos inside each of us. But I did notice, in the third round of bringing-in, when he opened the gate, and my sister sat there crying her soul out. I would have expected to expect my soul to be next, but as the daylight went out I noticed for, the first time, her eye: she that shattered and died and shattered my heart. One eye out of two, there in the middle of the darkness, and I relinquished my soul – my soul was dust and my body full of dust. I couldn't cry out her name, because the local dialect didn't have the right "R" sound. When the gate finally opened, I sat there crying in the mud. Embraced by a strange man. A healer-god, and not the Goddess of my youth.
I was severely defeated so I decided to stay in Mexico. At the very least I will leave in two weeks, and until then the first step I have decided to take on my own is to erase my mother's telephone number from my phone's memory, and if I stay three weeks or more, the number will probably evaporate from memory...

Teach, Learn, Share

A funny combination of Film ; Anthropology ; Visual Anthropology ; Sociology ; Humanities ; Literature ; Music ; Arts

What I Can Share with Hosts

Movie making stories. Anthropology. Narratology. Shakshuka.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Spain, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Austria, Israel, United States