'If someone asked me: what is the film about, I would have to say:


It is really about the essence of human life! I find it incredibly beautiful!

It is really a moving experience. I think it is obviously art

built and master full.' (Prof. Howard Davis, University of Oregon,

on my film And the alley she whitewashed in light blue.)

At a time of existential threat to the physical and human environment

we live in, architect and film maker Nili Portugali takes the

readers through a poetic text and spectacular photo gallery, extracted

from her awarded new film, into a deeply intimate journey

of memories in the Galilean 'Kabbala' holy city of Tsefat.

A childhood journey that unfolds gradually from her present

holistic / Buddhist / phenomenological point of view to a discovery

of profound universal insights of what is the secret of all those

timeless places endowed with beauty and soul where one feels

'at home'? And what is that 'one pure art of making' that creates

them? At any culture at any place and at any time.

Nili Portugali unfolds the way in which her holistic-phenomenological

approach to the arts as a whole and to architecture in particular

generated her creative process in making her film. A process

fundamentally different from the common production processes

in the film industry.

The book includes a free streaming access to watch the film.

Nili Portugali, a seventh generation descendant of a family living

in the city of Tsefat, is a practicing architect, lecturer, researcher,

author and film maker. Her work focuses on both practice and theory,

closely connected to the holistic-phenomenological school of

thought. Her first book The Act of Creation and the Spirit of a

Place. A Holistic-Phenomenological Approach to Architecture

was nominated for The RIBA International Book Award 2007:



'There is no other book quite like this one, it really is singular and

worthy of your close attention.' Her film is the third chapter in her

creative trilogy following the buildings she designed and the books

she wrote. She did post-graduate studies in architecture and Buddhism

at the University of California in Berkeley and participated

there in research with Christopher Alexander at the Center for Environmental

Structure. She taught at the Bezalel Academy of Art

and Design in Jerusalem and at the Technion Institute of Technology

in Haifa.