Is it a knife because…

Made by Sirah Foighel Brutmann and Eitan Efrat, who have refined a collaborative practice over several years, here they expand the collaboration to involve their two young children in the act of filmmaking, placing Rita and Nilus in front of and behind the camera. Filmed over 2 years, Brutmann and Efrat deploy intimate and sensory camerawork, handheld and often in close-up, to capture fleeting instances of home life. An unfettered and refreshing perspective is given when the children take command of the camera. Their curiosity and questioning provoke conversations about changing light and the principles of focus, foregrounding the filmmaking process. Moments of tenderness and play are punctuated with reminders of violence, whether it be cracks in the door, the sharpening of a knife, or the camera’s gaze trained on the apartment window filming the police station across the street, a constant reminder of state institutions and the brutality they can wield.

~ Alice Miller

Sirah and Eitan (both °1983, Tel Aviv) live and work in Brussels, collaborating in the audiovisual field. Their practice focuses on the potentialities of image economies – moving or still – the relations between spectatorship and history; and the temporality of narratives and memory. They teach an MA in video at ERG, Brussels, and are part of the artist-run collective, Messidor. Their works have screened at film festivals including IDFA; Rotterdam Film Festival; Courtisane; and New Horizons. They have exhibited in solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel and Argos, and in group exhibitions in STUK; EMAF and The Petah-Tikva Museum for Contemporary Arts. They have been presented as featured artists at the 59th Flaherty Film Seminar, and Doc’s kingdom and have participated in artists talks and presentations in institutions such as FLACC, Genk, LUCA BFA class, Brussels, L’erg BFA class, Brussels, DocNomads and SIC.

Printed Matter (2011), Journal (2013), NDS (2015), Orientation (2015), Miroir Séb Fragile ! (2017), The Magic Mountain (2020), Meeting a Flower Halfway (2021)