ALLEYS | NILI PORTUGALI | Architect . Filmmaker. Author

A seventh generation descendent of family who lived in Sefad, Israel, the city where mystical scholars of the Kabbalah found refuge in the 16th Century; Nili Portugali is an architect, filmmaker and author. We discuss her film “And the Alley She Whitewashed in Light Blue”, a stunning, poetic, visual masterpiece of the seasonal rituals in her Grandmother Rivka’s hotel, at the end of an alley in that old city. The film is one of her many works which seek to find a universal answer to the question “What is the basis of all those places in which one feels at home, and wants to return to, again and again?”

Transcript

ALLEYS  |  Nili Portal | Architect . Filmmaker . Author
 S3 EPISODE 2 : TRANSCRIPT                  June 15, 2023

[00:00:00] Nili: "Because, you see, when I'm showing my grandmother peeling the apples or white washing slowly the wall in light blue, the reason I'm showing it is because for me, it's really a model for the way that one has to do architecture, art, or anything.. to be really immersed in what you are doing, to be very free. To listen to the voices in the site, which are hidden sometimes, and you have to really be aware of it, to the reality. Also, my memories for the feelings that I had when I was walking in the alleys, everything was very quiet. I could listen to the steps that you can be aware of in the film of the girl walking on the stones, in the alleys. It was like this, you know. I could hear the echos. Everything was very peaceful." 

[00:01:01] Nina: " I'm Nina Freedman, and this is WHEREING. WHEREING explores where we are. It is dedicated to those who believe in the inherent right of belonging and all the ways we feel we belong, and connect to ourselves, to each other and the spaces that hold the stories where all of this comes alive. Where each experience of belonging is a work of art created by chance or by design. Dare I ask, is belonging where you are, not what matters most? WHEREING is the spacial story. Welcome." 

[00:01:44] Today I am sitting with Nili Portugali to discuss her film 'And the Alley She Whitewashed in Light Blue'. Nili wears many hats. She's an architect, lecturer, author, and more recently a film director. A seventh generation Israeli, she descends from a family that lived in the city of Sefad, the city where mystical scholars of the Kabbalah found refuge in the 16th 811century.

[00:02:15] She was a senior lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, and on the faculty of architecture at the Technion in Haifa. Her studies at the Architectural Association in London were followed by postgraduate studies in architecture and Buddhism at the University of California in Berkeley, where she also conducted research with Christopher Alexander. She has written the book, the Act of Creation and the Spirit of Place. Her work seeks universal connections between scientific disciplines and the fundamentals of Buddhist philosophy.

[00:02:58] The film goes back to her childhood story and her observations of her grandmother's hotel. It is through this narrative that she is exploring the presence and making of a home and a human environment. In her book, which is a coupled work to the film, she writes, " I've asked myself, what's at the base of all those places in which man feels at home, those great buildings of the past, the cities, villages, tents, and temples that we want to return to again and again? And, what is the way that created them, in any place, in any culture, and at any time. Along this bending way, I see my own temple.... the hotel grandmother Rifka founded at the end of an alley in the old city."

[00:03:57] Hello Nili. Welcome.

[00:04:06] Nili: Hi, hello.

[00:04:08] Nina: Nili, I've been eagerly awaiting this conversation. "What is the basis of all places where people feel they are at home and where they wanna return to again and again?" What is it about this question that so draws you?

[00:04:27] Nili: Well, I think, since I started to be a student of architecture, I asked this question and maybe because I thought that our role as architect has to be to create places people feel at home, I mean human places. As far as I remember, I wanted to have the answers for that, and I went through the scientific world into research. I worked with Christopher Alexander, and I thought also that the Buddhist philosophy, not in the spiritual matter, but really the science of Buddhism, is engaged with these questions and their holistic approach to phenomena a whole, would be relevant to what I was looking for. But then, after I went all this circle, I thought, wow, maybe all these answers or all these insights I got already subconsciously as a child living in the Holy City of Safed. So then I thought about the film, I was sure that there will be a substantial connection between what I absorbed as a child in Sefad and my holistic approach to architecture from my present point of view. So, this actually was the motivation of doing the film.

[00:05:53] Nina: Right. It's so interesting what you're saying because, so often we circle the world to find an answer for something, and we find it in the very root. 

[00:06:04] So as the film unfolds we watch through the eyes of a little girl, who is you as a child. She's silent through the film and she also shows no emotion on her face, almost no emotion. When I was watching, it felt like she was a white canvas for viewers to feel our own sensory experiences as she takes us into this poetic, mystical place. Now, the film is not completely silent because there are moments where we hear you narrating your memories, but the film seems to sew together so many threads, and I'm gonna call them the alleys in your life, beginning with your time spent in your grandmother Rifka's hotel and all the alleys around it in the northern historical city of Sefad. Through this homage to your grandmother, you explore the creative questions and process of making place as she did. 

[00:07:08] So, you are a seventh generation Israeli, correct?

[00:07:11] Nili: My family has been in Sefad since the early 19th century, and I'm the seventh generation descendant of the family. Right.

[00:07:20] Nina: Right. Can you tell us a little bit about this spiritual city of Sefad in the northern mountains of Israel? It's history, it's beauty, which is the backdrop for the film.

[00:07:31]Nili: Well, you see, the film, as you saw, is not really about Sefad as a whole, but really about my personal experience or feeling of the city. You see Sefad is, since 16th century, where the Jewish people were expelled from Spain and Portugal. They came to Sefad because Sefad was the place where the Zohar, the most important book of the Kabbalah was written before. And, at that time, really Sefad was the most important spiritual center in Israel, more than Jerusalem. So, this is the history of the place. And, of course the people who came then to Sefad we re really prominent scholars, you know, really, really, I mean, we can compare them to the Dalai Lama today. But for me, as I said, Sefad are the alleys where my grandmother was walking in, and the plaster whitewashed walls that she touched. And, this is what I wanted to convey in the film. So, it's not telling about the history, which is important, but that was not the case in this film. And also the film is not on the biography of the people. My, grandmother also. Just maybe in hints, but it's really about the activities or the places. I mean, even the alleys are not locations that are chosen to shoot the film, but the locations were characters in the film. I mean, buildings, alleys are actual characters. So, this was what I wanted to do, tell this story from what I have experienced emotionally in this place as a child, right?

[00:09:18] Nina: Right. Yes. It's very clear. It's based on your personal experience. We don't see the whole city, obviously, except there are some beautiful views of the mountains and the wider landscape sometimes. So, I don't think anyone watching this film wouldn't be moved by the the overlay of the story of your grandmother and her hotel and the care of the guests and the details of the place, which you say are equal characters in the film; the characters of the alleys, the buildings, the stone, the peeling plaster, the courtyard, the kitchen, the textures and the colors, and I love that you call them the characters. Yeah. The hotel itself, can you tell a little bit about the building. How did the hotel come to be?

[00:10:10] Nili: Well ,the building itself was for the residence of the Austrian Consulate in Israel, in the Ottoman period. At that time, Sefad was closer to Turkey than Jerusalem, and all the consulates were in Sefad. So, this was actually the residence of the consul from Austria, and he lived there. Also at one time it was used for a girls school, a secular one, where my grandmother was sent to. It was very unusual to send girls to a secular school; my family were religious, but very liberal and open. And then in 1948, no, I think even before, my grandmother, 30 years after she was a child learning in this building, in the school, she bought the building and turned it into a hotel.

[00:11:09] Nina: Yeah.

[00:11:09] Nili: So, actually the hotel was there until about 12 years ago. It was owned by our family. So, yeah, that was the story.

[00:11:20] Nina: It's such a beautiful story. One wonders also where she got this idea for a hotel. you know? Not a typical thing. 

[00:11:29] Nili: Before there was a hotel, she was running a restaurant. She was really like a developer, you know? I mean, she was a very assertive woman. She was also a business woman, you know? I mean, she did everything. Even when they made additions to the hotel, she used to go to the architect's office, sit with them on the plans and everything. I mean, yeah. She was very unusual. 

[00:11:57] Nina: The images and also the narration that we hear watching her sleep in the laundry room, catching a few hours sleep in between the work. Everything is so simple. The wooden shelves with the towels and the linens, and outside we see the hanging sheets and we watch her making all the rolls and the fish platters for breakfast while the guests are dancing in the dining room and the story really moved me was how she would walk the alleys before the holiday and check which houses the chimneys didn't have any smoke. 

[00:12:31] Nili: Well, she used to send me to see which house doesn't have food, you know, for the holiday. 

[00:12:37] Nina: And you would tell that because you would see if the smoke was coming, right?

[00:12:41] Nili Absolutely. So, the houses which didn't have smoke coming out, she knew that would be the case, but the idea here is not just that. It's what we call 'giving in secret'. It's not like you give a donation and you write your name on the wall. Anonymous. I mean, because she sent me, and as you saw in the film, I used to put it on the stair outside and run away, so they didn't know who gave it to them. And this was her virtue. I mean, this is something that I don't know if you can find it today. It's really amazing actually.

[00:13:16] Nili: Yeah. I remember growing up knowing about charity given anonymously, basically not to shame the people. They don't have to face the people afterwards, et cetera. It's such a beautiful tradition. So generous.

[00:13:32] Anyway, the film is structured in meditative rituals. And, I imagine your own spiritual studies contributed to this. The things that I noticed was the slow pace of the film, the seasons and the holidays. There's this simplicity of everything, authentic materials that you keep showing. Like the way the blue powder paint is slowly mixed into the white plaster over and over, and watching the kitchen. This huge pot of green apples. She's peeling and cutting them. We watch the pot, slowly boiling and we don't see her peeling all these green apples, but we understand by looking at how many there are, that going take her a long time. But she's also in no rush.

[00:14:25] Nili: This is the meditation. She didn't have to go to India or to Japan, or to the Zen centers. She did it in her daily life by peeling the apples.

[00:14:37] Nina: Everything was repetitive because for many guests, there are many portions of everything. So, this constant repetition every day to prepare one by one. I mean, it might exhaust. I know it would exhaust me to do this. It was fascinating to watch this meditative practice, and I felt that this was another alley for you, this linking your spiritual studies into also the process of the film, am I correct? 

[00:15:10] Nili: Yeah. I would say that the visual language or the sounds and the pace, as you said, the slow pace, is related to the context, because what I am showing in the film, if it is in the activities that my grandmother did or the way that I'm designing a building on the site. Trying to hear very peacefully the sounds the things that are happening on the site. This slow meditative rhythm. So, the film actually expresses the context, because you see, when I'm showing my grandmother peeling the apples or white washing slowly the wall in light blue, which she did every Pesach... The reason I'm showing it is actually because for me, it's really a model for the methodology or the way that one has to do architecture, art, or anything, you know, any artifact... to be really immersed in what you are doing, to be very free, you know. Not to have any preconceptions, but really to listen to the voices in the site, which are hidden sometimes, and you have to really be aware of it, to the reality. Also, I must say that my memories for the feelings that I had when I was walking in the alleys, everything was very quiet. I could listen to the steps that you can be aware of in the film of the girl walking on the stones, in the alleys. It was like this, you know. I could hear the echos. Everything was very peaceful. So, I think it goes together. You know, when I started to do the film, as I'm not coming from the film industry, I was sitting in archives looking on Tarkovsky and the Japanese, Iranian films which very much has the same feeling. By the way, my first intention was to have a complete silent film, with no narration at all, just to convey the message by the visuals. But then I showed it to people to get some feedback, and I understood that all the abstract insight that I wanted to put in to do with the patterns in architecture and et cetera, there was no way that anyone could understand it. And, I had to put minimum narration, like in haiku poetry. So this is what I did. It's only 17 minutes of narration, but it was a must.

[00:18:00] Nina: This is Nina Friedman. I am speaking with Nili Portugali, architect, author, and filmmaker about her film 'And the Alley She Whitewashed in Light Blue'.

[00:18:16] The title of the film, is named after the ritual that your grandmother Rifka did every year. Let's talk about this ritual a little bit more, because it's quite astonishing to imagine this.

[00:18:31] Nili: Well first of all this was quite a central theme in in the film as a whole, because what it showed, as I mentioned before, is really I think the methodology or the way one has to do any art, that really brought her to enlightenment because she was so immersed. I mean, it's not like painting the wall, but really the way she did it very slowly. She was almost inside the wall herself. And the light blue, it's one of the two colors of the Kaballah. They said that the light blue is the color that actually brings you to heaven. But you can be aware of it in other cultures also. When you go to many places in the Mediterranean, you see the light blue, which is for different reasons. So, in Sefad they really believed in this color and, of course, this was a very important issue in the film. Basically the activity itself, the way she did it, very slowly. I was actually amazed as a child. Yeah, I think if we do architecture, art in this way, we can get good results.

[00:19:45] Nina: I think that's one of my favorite images in the movie and the book also, which is this closeup of the layers of the plaster over time, going all the way back, peeled away.

[00:19:56] Nili: My model was Sefad and my grandmother, to show that this is really a universal thing. I showed the Thangka paintings in Tibet, and the lady who did it , you saw in the film, was really the same way. She was actually immersed into the canvas, you know, and it's amazing.

[00:20:14] Nina: Yeah. The difference is that one feels this ownership of the streets around the house and I mean, we all know, if we started doing that in our streets, in our cities, right?

[00:20:26] Nili: mm-hmm.

[00:20:27] Nina: It would not be taken so well. It's an understatement. I mean, it's not your property. You don't touch it. But this idea that you belong to the streets, streets belong to you and you can just go paint the walls. It's an amazing thing for me, not so much even the painting, but the feeling of belonging.

[00:20:44] Nili: Yeah, but it's not only that. I think that today because of many reasons, there is no dialogue at all between the street or the public domain and the private domain. But at that time, yeah, there was really almost no distinction, and the feeling you had in the alleys were really feeling at home. If this would be our motivation, people to feel at home in the public domain, I think we can do it in other ways maybe, but I don't think that the past has really a monopoly on beauty.

[00:21:19] Nina: You spent a lot of time also talking about the importance of, and relationship of the courtyard. In your film. It's in the hotel, as a way to talk about this continuous connection between the interior, the building, and the exterior, how it's all one system, like a living organism. And, there was a phrase that you said which was very beautiful, 'that the boundaries are the living centers'. You were talking about these thresholds, how important they are.

[00:21:53] Nili: Yeah. What I was saying actually is that the courtyard or the gardens or the open spaces are not leftovers. You put a building and then what's left? You call it a garden. But no, it's a space by itself and there is no existence to the building or to the courtyard. They are depending on each other, and I think that one has to treat it as a real space. As you saw in the film, in the senior Citizens Day Center I started with the courtyard and not with the building. And, the boundaries of the courtyard, which were around existing trees that were on the site, dictated the edge of the building. So, it's really the interrelation between the two.

[00:22:43] Nina: This also speaks to this process of layering that you do in the film, this both aesthetic process and a structural process, the layering, and this process actually begins to answer this question, 'what is the basis of all places where people feel they are at home and want to return over and over again?' So, the way the light blue plaster is whitewashed in the alleys and you see it peeled away, and we see it this layering over time. The collage of the various types of stones, old and new and big and small and different colors. The layering of history. One of the things I also loved in the movie was watching you as the architect pull out a piece of white tracing paper and drawing with your pencil and showing us the diagram of the building and the layout. So, we understand this connection between the building and the courtyard and how they activate each other. Here's the guest room, here's the courtyard, then there's a stair. It takes you to the garden, how everything is interconnected and you're drawing with pencil and through the tracing paper, we see either an old photograph or we see the movie continuing and the little girl is walking through the photograph and on top of that we hear the strokes of the pencil. It was exquisite for me. But the layering also as the process. It was what you were talking about, embodied in the process of the film, and it's the same thing, about this interconnectivity. Right? You brought it into the process of making the film. It's like the architect made the film.

[00:24:41] Nili: Yeah. Well, it's nice. Your comment I like it. I didn't think it in such a way that you expressed it. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you.

[00:24:51] Nina: For me it was very much about how you were connecting the soul of the place and this interconnected harmony through sound, through drawing, through image. And I know you talk about all the arts also being very connected.

[00:25:05] Nili: Yeah. This, I think, I explained maybe in the book more. But you see, after I was publishing books where I did also the graphic design, and then architecture, and now the film, I really realized that there are more things in common between all these domains of the art, than differences. The foundations of harmony in doing a cluster of buildings around the square is not different than the foundation of harmony of designing a page in a book where you have to make the right balance between the images, the text, leaving some empty spaces like a void. When I was working with the cinematographers, they're more used to work, not with an architect, but with filmmakers, with directors and the emphasis I put on so many things, on a specific door or wall or the right boundaries of everything, it was for them also new. I realized that there are so many things in common really. Differences, but more the same. 

[00:26:16] Nina: Yeah, I understand very much what you're saying. So, coming back to the question the movie was I think essentially asking, where do people feel at home and why do they want to return again and again? After this whole process, the writing of the book, the film, your spiritual studies, the architecture, bringing all this to it, at this point in time, what would you say the answer is?

[00:26:44] Nili: Well, I would say two things, which I also said in the film, and also I wrote about maybe in a more coherent way in ' Holistic Phenomenological Approach to Architecture: The Act of Creation in the Spirit of Place', which was the first book that I published, are two major things to consider. One is, I think that a place that one feels at home or the feeling of a place is really generated by patterns of space. And, it is an objective matter, not a subjective thing. I think that one has to look at Christopher Alexander's 'A Pattern Language'. They did a field study for 12 years trying to find out what is really behind all these places that one feels at home, that might look different. I mean, you can see an alley in Sefad, an alley Greece or an alley in a small city in Japan, and though they look in form different, the underlying structure is the same because the interrelationship between the parts and right patterns of space. What is important to be aware of, that it's not a bunch of patterns that you use. It's a generative language. One is actually building the other, and this is like in any organic system. So, for each project you have to build a pattern language to generate the place. The other important thing, to the peeling of the apple or working on the site or white washing, is the way that you do it. I mean, the methodology, being aware of all the forces, the hidden one and the visible one, the balance between the patterns and the forces acting on the site, which I call the reality. This actually creates an architecture, which one can feel at home. So, it's really science. Although we use our intuition, but as we say, intuition is the most scientific tool because intuition actually captures or embodies everything. If you do just analytical, you get fragments, but the intuition really has the whole. So, this is what I was trying to do and I think that if we adopt this school of thought we can get places that people feel at home. Absolutely.

[00:29:12] Nina: Yeah. And you talk about that the place becomes endowed with a sense of soul.

[00:29:17] Nili: Yeah. Because I think that what we want to achieve is the place that we feel emotionally good. I think that if we look at any building or a place that we want to return to again and again, it's always those things which actually touch you emotionally.

[00:29:37] Nina: Yes. The patterns and history that's imprinted in a place over time. Understanding that. The visible and invisible voices, and the echo, and also then our own imprint; the ability to imprint onto this as well as a continuation, this emotional continuation, right?

[00:30:00] Nili: But Nina, what is amazing is actually that it's really beyond culture and beyond religion. People from different cultures have very similar feeling to a place. So how come? The guests who came to the hotel felt in a very similar way to what I felt , as if it was a subjective matter because I had this relationship with the place. No, because these patterns of space that I'm talking about; reflecting patterns which are maybe printed in us from the outset as human beings. So, it's actually common to all of us, a universal phenomena. 

[00:30:41] Nina: I think one can't underestimate, the more sophisticated we get, the more the simple details provide us with a sense of awe. Just plain and simple. Yeah. 

[00:30:54] Nili: I'm very impressed how in such a profound way that you understood the film and all the issues are that are involved really. I think that you really got the essence of it and I appreciate it a lot.

[00:31:10] Nina: Well, I appreciated watching it.

[00:31:13] Nili: Anyone who wants to see the film, they can buy the book and the re is a free link to the film in the book. 

[00:31:20] Nina: Let me explain that a little bit more. The film again is called 'And the Alley She Whitewashed in Light Blue', written and directed by Nili. All the information is going to be on my website, thewhereing.com. I will provide the link to Amazon, where you can buy the book. The book has a link to the film. So, everything will be there, also some of the images we're talking about. 

[00:31:48] Nili, thank you so much.

[00:31:50] Nili: It was my pleasure.

[00:31:51] Nina: Dear listeners, thank you for being here. I invite you to reflect on what you've heard today and send your thoughts or stories. We would love to hear from you. Stay in touch on Facebook, Instagram, or on our website, thewhereing.com. Subscribe free to WHEREING wherever you get your podcast so that you are alerted when the next episode airs. WHEREING is a pro bono initiative of DREAMLAND CREATIVE PROJECTS, which provides design for the places where we live, heal, age, and inspire. Visit dreamlandcreativeprojects.com or email me nina@dreamlandcreativeprojects.com. Until we meet again, goodbye from WHEREING.