Directing Lesson - Holiness and Nature

I have always been fascinated by the question: What is the relationship between a director and his location? In most cases, nature is just a background, a quiet stage for the human drama. But what if we try to listen? What if we assume that the filmed space has a will of its own, a hidden voice seeking to be heard? In this post, I want to share with you the essence of a new lesson from the 'School for Prophets,' which offers a short journey into the possibility of directing that is not control, but an encounter.

Pre-Prophetic Cinema, following the thought of Rav Kook, suggests perceiving the filmed space not as a static background, but as an entity with an all-encompassing divine vitality. Nature is not truly inanimate but possesses a will, and in the case of the Holy Land - even a personality. According to Rav Kook, there is a "hidden, concealed holiness hidden in nature," and it "demands its insult" and seeks to be revealed.

This understanding completely changes the role of the director and the essence of the cinematic frame.

The Pre-Prophetic director adopts two opposite roles, similar to those attributed to God: the role of the "Supreme Educator," who provides structure, order, and predictable boundaries, and the role of the "Creator," who is unpredictable, creates chaos, and intervenes in history. The creative tension between the expected and the shock is invaluable. Only a director capable of holding these two poles – order and chaos, intention and openness to the unexpected – can become a clean conduit, through which the holiness of nature can be revealed without his ego interfering.

The Frame as a Sacred Space

If the director is the messenger, then the cinematic frame is the temple – the sacred place where the encounter occurs. The frame ceases to be just a technical framework for the picture. It becomes an "Inter-Soul Space" (מרחב בין-נשמתי), a space of constant vibration between revelation and concealment, between unity and multiplicity. The director's role, as hinted in the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), is to find for every person his "hour" and for everything its "place." He becomes an architect of souls, building within the boundaries of the frame a new structure of consciousness in motion.

From an Encounter in Nature to an Encounter of Souls

Ultimately, this exercise is a model for the deepest essence of Pre-Prophetic Cinema. The film itself becomes an encounter; the frame becomes an inter-soul space, between the soul of the creator and the soul of the viewer. And if the soul is infinite, as the Torah of the Secret teaches us, then the film is an invitation to a rare encounter between two pieces of eternity.