Tractor

Video artist Oded Hirsch revisits the imagery and labor contexts of the kibbutz in its early years. His films center on an absurd challenge, resolved with an equally absurd solution, based on the recruitment of a large group of people. With their help, he examines the relevance of formative Zionist values and principles, such as tilling the land, cooperation, and sacrificing the self for the greater cause. In Tractor, Hirsch describes rebirth. The tractor, which has toiled its entire life in the fields of the Jordan Valley, has fallen into disuse and been buried in the ground. For three days, the veteran kibbutz members dig with their bare hands until they extract the wreckage from its grave, and it resumes moving through the fields. The cinematic language alludes to 1930s Soviet cinema and Zionist films made under its influence, which glorified the labor and determination of the young pioneers.