The film Masks was shot over 12 years during which Esther and Amitai documented two siblings at Purim festivities, dressed up as different characters and embodying various roles. In Purim, as in the carnival, sacred and sanctified things are legitimately parodied. For 12 minutes a partial portrait of the children’s growing up is presented, in states of abandon. Their adolescence and identity play is designated by the immediate surroundings of their life, the Israeli town of Ramla – according to the national and religious timetable and the growing children’s life cycle during the film.
Amitai Arnon, Esther Bires | Masks | 2014 | 12′
The film was commissioned for the exhibition: The Ethnographic Department of the Museum of the Contemporary, Mamuta, 2014