Yarkon River is the star of the Israeli film Winding

The Yarkon River

For many Israelis, to play along the banks of the Yarkon River in central Israel was like playing with fire.

Filmmaker Avi Belkin grew up only a short walk away from the river, the second-largest in Israel, but was warned never to go there. It isn’t hard to see why. In some spots, the Yarkon resembles more of a cesspool than a waterway.

Recently, Belkin found his way into the Yarkon’s murky waters – although he had to don a green bio-hazard suit to fend off infection.

The return to this damaged Israeli river was for Winding, a documentary that Belkin and producing partner Avi Levi spent five years making.

“Our film is not, per se, about the river,” Belkin tells The CJN on the phone from Los Angeles. “It’s much more about the connection between man and nature in Israel.”

The hour-long film, which will premiere at the Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival in Toronto on Oct. 22, focuses on an environmental stain that few, even inside of Israel, acknowledge. (At the festival, it will be co-presented by the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.)

Filled with grime, waste and chemicals, the Yarkon’s decrepit state is the result of sustained negligence by the Israeli government, which built a natural gas station nearby that caused a lot of air pollution.

An irrigation enterprise, which pumps water from the Yarkon to serve communities in the Negev, also depleted the river of much of its clean water.

Belkin says that as the Israeli government is so focused on ensuring the state’s security, there is little thought for the repercussions of state factors that affect the environment.

“Most of the water [in Israel] goes to agriculture, which is crazy, because most of the agriculture is for export,” he says.

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The Yarkon’s infamy reached a peak in 1997, when a bridge over the river collapsed as Australian athletes were crossing to participate in the Maccabiah Games. Three of the four deaths were the result of infections from the poisonous toxins in the water.

Belkin says that some of the athletes wounded from that disaster are still dealing with the river’s effects nearly 20 years later.

Interestingly, Winding doesn’t contain a single talking head interview clip. We hear the audio from some of the more than 100 interviews the filmmakers conducted, but we see the flowing river.

“The first idea we had, and we stuck to it all the way through, was to put the river as the hero,” Belkin says.

Beyond cutting down an excessive number of interviews, a main challenge with the production was finding archival footage of the Yarkon.

Levi spent some three years searching for clips that showed the river during the early to mid-20th century, when it was a popular weekend destination for Israelis.

As the film shows, tragedy befell the Yarkon during the years of Jewish settlement. Some early Jewish arrivals who lived by the water had their homes washed away when the Yarkon overflowed.

Still, as the archival footage in the documentary reveals, in the 1930s and 1940s, the river was a spot for sailing, swimming and recreation.

Winding was a big hit in Israel, playing the art house circuit for about half a year after winning a major prize at the Haifa International Film Festival.

However, its message for more environmental protection hasn’t made much of an impression. While some parts of the Yarkon have been cleaned up and revitalized in recent years, Belkin insists that more Israelis need to press the government to do more.

“When you leave your house, nature is the first encounter you have,” Belkin says. “The way we treat [nature] determines everything about us afterward. Once you take nature and suck it dry and abuse it, that reflects on everything you do.”

Winding screens at the AGO Jackman Hall on Oct. 22 at 9:30 p.m.