Movie-Database

Bazi Gete

Biography

Author and filmmaker Bazi Gete comes from an Ethiopian family that immigrated to Israel when he was just eight years old, via refugee camps in Sudan. After his schooling he studied at Sapir College in southern Israel, focussing on film and television technology. He has directed two short films, including MEDIUM RARE, which was screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2009. 2014’s RED LEAVES is his first feature film.

Its screenplay was based both on his own experiences and on Shakespeare’s “King Lear”. “The play inspired me to write an immigration story, dealing with subjects such as generation gaps, family life, and my personal story”, Gete said in an interview. “Although 30 years have passed, in my eyes, an immigrant stays an immigrant“, he

stated, though he admitted that his attitude changed during the filmmaking process. “I began to understand there is also the opportunity to change and become someone else“. (Screen Daily, 15 July 2014) He is currently working on his second feature film, which sets Shakespeare’s dramatic love story Romeo and Juliet in the south of Tel Aviv, where an Ethiopian widow and an Eritrean labourer cannot find common ground.

Filmography

eröffnung /opening / ouverture African Diaspora Cinema (2015): Guest

RED LEAVES (2014): Guest, Direction