Camera Proud

The Cagan Community Communications Center in Jerusalem is unique. It brings together and helps persons from all walks of life to realize their own individual potential and overcome personal problems.

Located in a neighborhood known for its low living standard, one of the Center's main principles is integration. Its innovative video and still photography activities have attracted participants from Jerusalem and beyond, and these activities offer a more optimistic future for the 1,500 people who attend each week.

"There are many Communications Centers around the country," explains Jochai Rottenberg, director of the Cagan Center. "But we are the only center with a unique educational philosophy of motivating people, especially those with low self-esteem. The conflicts which ensue from putting together people from different communities bring out their feelings and help them to accept each other."

But while the Cagan Center bridges the gap between different people, its foremost success is in helping individuals to overcome complex personal problems and to realize their full potential.

Yossi Fackenheim, 19, has been coming to the center for six years and takes part in a video production and photography program. He says that he enjoys all aspects of the program, from writing and photographing to acting and producing.

"The most important piece of work that I have completed so far is a documentary about my mother who was dying of Alzheimer's disease," he recounts. "After much suffering she passed away earlier this year. Making a movie about it helped me confront my own pain. It was therapeutic."

After completing his army service, Major Rottenberg in the Education Corps and Mental Health Unit took over the Cagan Center in 1991. Established in 1968 by the Jerusalem Municipality and the British chapter of World WIZO (Women's International Zionist Organization), the Center had functioned as a regular community center until Rottenberg's arrival. He added the unique dimension of photography and video photography and more recently also a radio station and Internet activities.

Gittit Perlmutter, who has taught the video production course for the past six years, stresses that the first aim of the program is to let people have fun. "But beyond that, making a movie is part of the growing up process for these youngsters," she says. "It raises their self-awareness and teaches them about responsibility, decision-making and better social interaction by working together."

Hila Perlmutter, 18 (no relation) who lives near to the Center, started attending three years ago. "I have made movies about motor bikes, my philosophical beliefs and street parties," she explains. "I love to photograph, act and direct. I've learned so much about my feelings. Making films gives you enormous power. You can distort, edit and censor what people say. But it is important to try and film the truth." Hila, who once considered dropping out of school, now hopes to study cinema. This, stresses Rottenberg, shows that creative activities like filmmaking -can influence youngsters who have lost direction in life.

Rottenberg is particularly proud of the opportunities that the Cagan Center has given to special populations - both children and adults with disabilities.

For Avner Moskovitch, 40, who works as a packer in a Jerusalem textiles factory, the visit to the Cagan Center is the highlight of his week. "We are making a movie about my life," he says. "We have been back to the Mahane Yehuda market area where I grew up to film scenes from my childhood. We filmed the stairs from which my father pushed me when I was a child. It has helped me forgive my father for the way he treated me when I was small."

Participants at the Center produce local programs for Jerusalem's cable TV station, and an extension of the Center has been opened elsewhere in Jerusalem to focus on journalistic activities such as producing a newspaper.

"Ultimately we help people find themselves," says Rottenberg. "Sadly this is something that schools and other more conventional frameworks usually cannot accomplish."