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The film “ Counterlight ” by Artist Maya Zack is the 3rd part of her award-winning Memory Trilogy following “ Mother Economy ” and “ Black and White Rule”. “ Counterlight ” is a hypnotic journey into the depths of consciousness that follows the traces of poet Paul Celan, one of the greatest poets of the modern-postmodern era. A female archive researcher listens to extracts from original recordings by the poet and gradually changes from an archivist into an alchemist. She dissects in an almost surgical manner the archival materials“ photographs, maps, documents and poems ” that will enable her to reconstruct and resurrect the past and intervene in it till the boundaries between reality and documentation, past and present are blurred. In a surrealistic process, she penetrates the space of an old street photograph of 1937 Czernowitz and meets Celan’s mother who is baking challah bread in her kitchen, until her task transforms into female magic which leads to the creation of the “ memory-golem” In recent years, Zack researched Paul Celan’s world and creative process, through the actual as well as mythical female figures in his life. To these, she has interwoven images of death and birth and dedicated the film to the memory of her mother.

Maya Zack (B. 1976, Israel) is a visual artist and filmmaker working with video, computerized visualizations, installation and drawing. Her work ties together themes of memory, history, virtuality and metaphysics. Zack is a lecturer in Bezalel Academy of Art and Design Jerusalem where she had graduated in 2000 .B.F.A Magna Cum Laude. She studied at the Tel Aviv University 2008-12 and in Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee Student Exchange Program.