Fabric Stories

"Fabric Stories", discovered in the Channel 1 archive, provides a snapshot of Israeli fashion — but more than that, it reveals the formative struggles of one of the most important filmmakers to emerge in Israeli cinema. Produced in 1978, five years before Gutman directed his first narrative feature, Drifting, the film appears at first glance to be a documentary about the Israeli fashion scene in the late 1970s. In reality, it is a work that uses the world of fashion as a kind of cinematic language, shifting styles from one scene to the next. This is not a conventional documentary where people speak alongside fashion show clips, but an almost surreal journey into what Gutman himself perceived as fashion. The film’s unique style irritated Channel 1 executives and TV critics, and after a single broadcast, it was shelved. In 2010, thanks to the efforts of Itay Yaakov, the film was rediscovered and restored.