In 2013, I had the opportunity to document Israeli artist and filmmaker Yael Bartana shooting her video Inferno in my hometown, São Paulo. Inferno is a video installation imagining the destruction of the newly-built Templo de Salmoão, built by the Universal Church in São Paulo, Brazil.
I had met Yael in Germany during the fake-real congress of the "Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland," where Yael invited me to take part as the "Brazilian delegate" after I'd written her a long e-mail, in which I narrated my experience of having seen her trilogy during a heritage trip to Poland.
I was lucky that Yael was working on her next film in Brazil, and I joined the production, shooting the making-of documentary, acting as one of the "Temple faithful" in São Paulo, and directing crowds of "New-Cohanim" praying at the fake-real Jerusalem wall that Yael's crew had built in Villa Lobos Park. It was my first time on a real film set. The documentary itself provides rare insight into the work of this major contemporary artist.
