Turn Left at the End of the World: Israeli Periphery in Sport Films

Sport films are defined as such for their preoccupation with competitions, athletes, fandom or other related sports aspects. However, they largely address other social issues, which are amplified through sports, constituted as one of the most popular expressions of modern culture. The American sport film industry, often addresses topics such as racism, gender, capitalism and so forth, while Israeli sport films usually focus on politics, culture, and the periphery. The research which resulted in this lecture concentrated on the latter – film representations of the Israeli spatial and social periphery. The aim of the research was to analyze the dominant images and themes in sport films. For this purpose, eight films were chosen, of which the plot takes place in an Israeli peripheral town. Because the research dealt with the cinematic narrative and not contemporary reality, the towns presented in the films are either real or fictional. The research included qualitative analysis of the films. The criteria constructed from the analysis lead to three major themes: crime and poverty as a contemporary aspect of the periphery; sport as a `great equalizer`; ethnicity in the periphery. The findings suggest that towns and the local communities are often displayed negatively, while sport is presented as a means, real or hypothetical, for social change. Likewise, the films repeatedly focus on the human surrounding, people and communities and their attitude toward sport as an integration tool.