Taqasim

Israeli musician Felix Mizrahi takes us to his native Cairo in search of recordings by his brother, Faraq Ibrahim, a famous violinist who died tragically when Felix was a boy. During Felix's childhood, there were 200,000 Jews in Cairo; today the remaining families are counted on the fingers of one hand. As we accompany Felix on his search through the old Jewish quarter, instrument stores and music archives in Cairo, we explore the persistence of his identification with Egyptian culture. Featuring beautiful performances by Israeli musicians, TAQASIM embodies Felix Mizrahi's belief that, "Art has no boundaries; it's the same language anywhere. It's the language of the people."

Born in Tel Aviv and educated at UCLA and Columbia College in Chicago, Duki Dror has been directing award-winning documentaries since 1992. His first film "Sentenced to Learn," about "lifers" getting schooled in a Chicago penitentiary, was showcased in 1993 by Cinema Du Reel in a retrospective of American Documentary. After living in the US for 8 years, Dror returned to Israel to document Israel's cultural, social and political margins. An important part of Duki Dror's work has been to document the life work of Jewish musicians from the Arab world. In both "Cafe Noah" and "Taqasim," he captures the beauty and depth of classical Arab music. In "My Fantasia," Dror salvages the history of his Iraqi family out of the dominant European Zionist narrative. "Duki Dror disassembles the notion of migration and presents characters that are detached from the mainstream, enclosed in cultural islands." (Ynet).