Rule of Stone

Rule of Stone is a documentary film that exposes the power of architecture and the role it has played -- aesthetically, ideologically and strategically -- in the creation of modern Jerusalem. In 1967, Israel conquered East Jerusalem, including the Old City, where the Western Wall and the Temple Mount are located. A few years later, the city was declared the united and indivisible capital of the State of Israel. The goal became to make a re-division of the city materially impossible. Architecture and stone are the main weapons in this silent, but extraordinarily effective colonization and dispossession process. At the center of the story is the narrative of Jerusalem Stone, the material decreed by law to give the city its aesthetic quality. The film takes the viewer on a journey seeing how design and the perception of beauty took part in the invisible war of annexation. Jerusalem stone and the way it has been clad on the exterior of every building in the city since the British mandate over Palestine shows how beauty and cruelty go hand in hand.