Mother India, Father Israel

Logline

Elana, an experienced Israeli social activist of Indian origin, discovers her mother’s role in the resistance movement of the Indian community — the Bene Israel — soon after they immigrated to Israel in the 1950s. Telling the story through a Bollywood style dance show, she travels to India to discover who she is, and where she belongs.

Phase of Support: Production

Avi Dabach

Avi Dabach - Director, Producer

Dabach is a documentary filmmaker and virtual reality creator. Dabach is now directing three episodes of a TV series about the history of the Jews in the Islamic world, which is being  produced for KAN – Israel public channel. He curated the Musrara Collection, a visual online archive dedicated to the Black Panthers in Israel, directed the documentary The Lost Crown (2018) about the mystery of the Aleppo Codex, produced for KAN – Israel public channel, and co-created the VR experience Place, which tells the story of the woman who managed to photograph the great synagogue of Aleppo – a few days before it was burned down.

Ram Devineni

Ram Devineni - Co-Producer

Ram Devineni is filmmaker, publisher and founder of Rattapallax based in New York City and New Delhi. He produced, edited and directed the feature documentary, The Karma Killings, which was shot in India and released on Netflix. He made the short documentary, “Ginsberg’s Karma,” about the poet Allen Ginsberg’s life in India, which received the National Endowment for the Humanities. Recently, he produced The Russian Woodpecker, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He is the creator of the interactive social-activist comic books, “Priya’s Shakti,” which received the Tribeca Film Institute New Media Fund from the Ford Foundation and supported by the World Bank, and honored by UN Women as a “gender equality champion.”

Project logline and bios courtesy of the grantees.