By The Throat

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documentary film by Effi & Amir, 2021, 78 min.

Starting from a security check procedure at the entrance to the Tel Aviv airport, By The Throat takes us on the exploration of a more deeply engraved border, albeit an invisible one. A border that defines the sounds we can emit and the words we can pronounce. We carry with us these sonic and anatomical limits, created by our mother-tongue, becoming ourselves a mobile check-point, wherever we are.
This border becomes apparent when our speech is used by others as an identifier. The practice of using a speech feature as a means of identification of a person’s group belonging is known as “SHIBBOLETH” in reference to a biblical story where 40,000 fighters are slaughtered, after a slight difference in the way they pronounced this word revealed their identity. Touring between territories – sonic, anatomical and political – By The Throat visits a wide range of contemporary manifestations of Shibboleth –  reaching all the way to nowadays use of language tests in asylum procedure in Europe.

Effi & Amir are Effi Weiss and Amir Borenstein.
They are living in Brussels and are working together since 1998. Effie and Amir work with (documentary) videos, installations, performances and they conduct workshops. They are respresented at various international exhibitions and festivals, like the International Film Festival of Shimla, the Freiburger Filmforum, the Liberation DocFest in Bangladesh and many more.

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