Black Bus is political feminine cinema, the third part in a film trilogy documenting tabu issues in Israeli democracy. In the third film of the trilogy I chose to describe a denied reality of gender apartheid in the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jewish Community in Israel, a phenomenon that was at the time not discussed. The public space in Israel has gone through a change in the recent decade when phenomena like gender apartheid in public transportation became a dominating religious norm and a part of the Haredi society characteristics. 

Ultra-Orthodox women found themselves in a changing religious reality, without means of public protest, in a society where breaking prohibitions leads to expulsion from the family and community. I started the film after several ultra-Orthodox women approached me when they found themselves at the back of the bus. Their protest stayed in private, knowing that publicly expressing criticism would harm them and their families.

Following comprehensive research done with Haredi women, the chosen ones were the formerly Haredi Sarah and Shulamit, two young women who were ostracized when they broke rabbinical bans and chose to live as independent women. The script for Black Bus is based on a subversive research work done by the two. They were both “bad girls” and researched by writing and photographing the reality of ultra-Orthodox environment, which was their home before.

The verbal interrogation committed by the blogger Sarah is shown in the film next to a world of visual images taken from the cinematographer Shulamit's point of view. Shulamit photographs women who move in an environment banning representation of the female body, in streets and buses. The female body turned into a major tabu in ultra-Orthodox society and evolved into an element which constantly threatens religious men's purity, and therefore has to disappear from view.

The film describes some of the prices paid by the protagonists for the freedom of speech they allow themselves. Ostracized, they have a hard time releasing themselves from stigmas that were attached to them by their parents and community. Sarah and Shulamit went out of Haredi world to free themselves from the ultra-Orthodox female destiny which haunted them. In a way, the film describes the moments when it seems they won a fictitious freedom and are still haunted by their past.

But in a society where women are not allowed, among other things, to lead and to testify, they become important witnesses to silenced depression of women and an inspiration to independent women hiding inside Haredi society.

Note

In the Haredi street today there is no place for filming or photographing women in public, and the gender separation expands into almost any public space, from buses to health clinics.