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Art Undercover

Art Undercover is a chronicle about Zadok’s quest to find a lost modernist painting. The film is on the seam between performance, documentary, and fiction. The video is rooted in the story of Shlomo Cohen Abravanel (who will later become one of the heads of the “Mossad” – the Israeli secret service), who went on an undercover mission in Egypt assuming the identity of a French painter named Charduval. Abravanel’s cover story was so successful that he later had a solo exhibition in Cairo and two of his paintings were sold to the Egyptian National Museum. Tamir Zadok tries to track one of Charduval’s oil paintings in Cairo but, just as the Mossad agent pretended to be an artist until he became one, Tamir Zadok’s works leads him to pretend to be a fake secret agent, an artist-spy. The video’s claimed narrative, the mission to find the lost painting, serves as a platform for a dual discussion on impersonation of an artist and of an Arab.

  • Tamir zadok
    Director
    Gaza Canal, The Matza Maker, Jewish Wedding in Morroco
  • Tamir Zadok
    Writer
  • Tamir Zadok
    Producer
  • Tamir Zadok, Yuval Abraham
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    26 minutes 50 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 19, 2017
  • Production Budget:
    30,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Israel
  • Country of Filming:
    Egypt, Israel, Jordan
  • Language:
    Arabic, Hebrew
  • Shooting Format:
    digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Tamir zadok

Tamir Zadok is an artist and a film maker. He was born in Holon in 1979, he lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Zadok graduated from the Photography Department at Hamidrasha, Beit Berl College (2007), and studied at the MFA program at the Film and Television department of Tel Aviv University.

His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Israel and abroad, in such places as Artisterium, Tiblisi (2010); European House of Photography, Paris (2012); Martin Grupious Bau, Berlin (2015); HIAP, Helsinki (2017); Petach Tikva Museum of Art (2008, 2010); Haifa Museum of Art (2011); Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv (2010, 2014), and more.
Prizes and grants he received include: The Ostrovsky Family Fund grant for experimental film, The Israel Museum Gerard Levi Photography Prize (2016), Artis Project Development Grant (2016), and Israel Ministry of Culture Prize for Young Artists (2010). Artistic residencies to date: Cité Internationale des Art, Paris (2012), Maquis Projects, Izmir (2015), and Artport, Tel
Aviv (2015-16).
His last solo exhibition (2017) was held at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and was based on two major films.

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