This video sprang out of a day shoot together with photographer Alex Apt and Batsheva Dance Company dancer Shamel Pitts. We bundled into Alex's car and drove down to Nitzana, a remote desert location on the Israeli-Egyptian border, somewhere along the old Nabataean trade route between Africa and Asia. It was a cold, windy day and there was sand blowing everywhere - not ideal conditions for a nude photo shoot, but Shamel got through it spectacularly, with some helpful advice from the crew to run around to keep warm, and quite a bit of whiskey... The quickly captured minute and a half is dictated mostly by the landscape, though a theme arose for me from the location between Egypt and Israel, in the desert where the biblical People of Israel wandered in the wilderness. To this is added the little twist of the fence running along this border, recently constructed to stop the flood of African asylum seeking refugees coming across from Sudan and Eritrea into the 'promised land'. The name "Rakhmok ya Allah" is the Arabic translation of "Oh Lord Have Mercy On Me", both translations of J.S Bach's 'Erbarme Dich', which accompanies this piece. The sentiment 'God Have Mercy' seems to me a very Jewish one, and I think Yehudi Menuhin's violin injects what is originally a very Lutheran and evangelical piece of music with a particularly 'Jewish' angst, a tiny lament at the end of each note. The Lyrics are: Have mercy Lord, My God, because of this my weeping! Look thou here, Heart and eyes now weep for thee Bitterly. Video Directed & Produced © 2013 Dan Farberoff
