a film by Tatyana Tenenbaum
inspired by the work and story of Hadar Ahuvia
It may only be art, but it feels like Ahuvia— and in turn Tenenbaum behind the camera— is risking a lot in trying to reconcile the history she was given with the truth she is seeking. The probability of estrangement with her mother, of misunderstandings with her artistic collaborators, and causing offense to her community and audience looms large as she attempts to revise the record.
— Candice Thompson, The Brooklyn Rail
Folk dance as return, as rewrite, as repeat, as reclaim. Folk dance as longing for belonging, for authenticity in diaspora, for groundedness in displacement. But what is obscured, and what appropriated? Ahuvia’s original and profound work breaks down elements of sound and movement to the minutiae in order to excavate these tough questions. [And] if folk dance represents identity forged through collective movement, regional and ancestral traditions, it is also, as another of the film’s subjects Palestinian-American dabka dancer Amer Abdelrasoul describes, absolutely universal, “freedom of movement is to be human.”
— Aurora Prelević, programmer for Tënk