ABOUT THE FILM

LOGLINE

Director Amos Guttman’s life, marred by an untimely death from AIDS at 38, was a ceaseless battle. His mission: pioneering queer films, a response to Israel’s norms, conservatism, and the film industry.

LONG SYNOPSIS

TABOO: AMOS GUTTMAN delves into the life and artistry of a true rebel. Guttman was a fearless anti-bourgeois aesthete and visionary of Israeli cinema. Tragically, his life was cut short in 1993, at the age of 38, amid the harrowing backdrop of the AIDS crisis that swept through New York City during the late ’80s and early ’90s.

During his brief lifetime, Amos Guttman remained a red flag for the notoriously conservative Israeli film establishment. A Romanian migrant, he never truly found his place in his new home. He was gay and made the nation’s first movies on the subject. He was an artist who wanted to make films not for the masses, but for the few, even if they were sprinkled across the globe, outside of Israel—works that maybe Derek Jarman or Pedro Almodóvar could watch by chance and feel understood.

Although deeply critical of Israel’s militaristic culture, Guttman never considered himself a “political” filmmaker in the conventional sense. In both his films and his personal life, he was committed to exploring and depicting the life-experiences of society’s outcasts and outlaws. His lens was unwaveringly drawn to obscure subcultures and marginalized groups —immigrants, Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, transgenders, sex workers, effeminate “swish” gays, derelicts, impoverished orphans, and incestuous siblings. In Guttman’s cinematic universe, decadence and suffering coexisted alongside beauty and compassion. He operated outside the mainstream currents of the Gay Liberation Movement and politics, eschewing the promotion of the “right” and positive image of sexual and racial otherness.

He was adventurous, but Guttman only made four features before dying of AIDS. Sadly, there are very few new voices to remember him. Nevertheless, TABOO: AMOS GUTTMAN, utilizing an array of archival materials to tell the story, offers a unique glimpse into the artist’s final days. It features his last interview, conducted as he lay dying in his mother’s apartment—a never-before-published testament to his enduring spirit.

Writer & Director Shauly Melamed

Producer Gil Sima

Editors Shauly Melamed, Neta Dvorkis

Cinematographer May Abadi Grebler

Original Score Zoe Polanski

Participants Anat Dotan, Mariana (Miri) Guttman, Aharon Mitchell

FESTIVALS
2024: Rotterdam (World Premiere)

AVAILABLE TERRITORIES
The World

EXHIBITION FORMATS
DCP, Digital Download