Contact
Research Areas
Documentary Film, Mass Media, Social Media, Social Memory, Multicultural Memorialization
Education
M.A., Emerson College
B.A., Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Links
Ornit Barkai
Ornit Barkai
Ornit Barkai is a documentary filmmaker whose cinematographic works offer intergenerational, multicultural perspectives on narratives of social memory and memorialization in a variety of genres and formats.
Ornit's cinematographic work has screened locally and internationally, in festivals, museums, universities, schools, conferences and other public venues, among them the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, the Photographic Research Center at Boston University, the Williams College Museum of Art and Israel's Diaspora Museum.
She designs multimedia presentations and lectures on themes of gender, culture and identity in Israeli popular music and art; Intergenerational transference of posttraumatic Holocaust memories; Narratives of social memory and memorialization; and the influences of social media on life and culture. She has presented her work to diverse audiences in public and private forums and at academic institutes, among them Framingham State College, Smith College and Brandeis University.
A former broadcast journalist, news director and radio host, she worked at Boston’s WGBH-TV, WBZ-TV, Monitor Cable News, Cablevision, WERS-FM, WUNR-AM, WTTP-FM and in Israel with the national networks IBA-TV, IDF radio and Kol Israel radio. Ornit started her media career as a commissioned Officer of Media & Cultural Affairs at the Israel's IDF School of Officers.
Current Projects
Ornit's current research focuses on the parallels between the historic narratives of her documentary-in-progress to contemporary patterns of human trafficking into the commercialized sex industry.
Representative Publications
Barkai, Ornit. "Tme'im, the Trade in Women in Argentina and in Israel." Review of a book by Haim Avni. Latin American Jewish Studies 30:2 University of Texas at Austin, Fall 2010/Winter 2011: 25-26.
Barkai, Ornit. "From Anne Frank's Window."