Film Screening | In the Beginning Was Desire

A FLOWING THROUGH TIME AND TRADITION PROGRAM

Presented by the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Jewish Studio Project, and Ayin Press. 

Stop by the Magnes and view the 40-minute experimental documentary, In the Beginning Was Desire. A surreal audiovisual journey through the archetypal story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the film was produced and directed by David Grubin, with visuals conceived and created by multimedia artist, Naomie Kremer. The film features Biblical scholar Avivah Zornberg and transforms the story of creation into a world in which all-too-human problems of desire, consciousness, relationship, and authority feel both timeless and timely.

Thursday, January 29, 2026

Screening times: 11:30 am, 12:30 pm, 1:30 pm, 2:30 pm, 3:30 pm, 4:30 pm

Last screening ends at 5:10 pm

In person at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA

Admission is free.

Please join us after the film screening for The Beginning of Possibility a dynamic evening of visual midrash featuring film creator and artist Naomie Kremer and author Rabbi Adina Allen. The Visual Midrash is a ticketed event from 5:30-7:00 pm. Learn more and buy tickets.

About the film
Weaving together the work of multimedia artist Naomie Kremer, interdisciplinary Torah scholar Avivah Zornberg, and Emmy Award–winning filmmaker David Grubin, In the Beginning Was Desire is a surreal audiovisual journey through the archetypal story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The mythopoetic film leads the viewer through a kaleidoscopic landscape that is equal parts sensory, symbolic, and textual, with Zornberg’s deftly probing commentary on humanity’s creation, temptation, and ultimate exile from the Garden of Eden seamlessly threaded into Kremer’s shifting spectrums of light and form. Tapestries of sound, color, and Hebrew script wash over the screen and fade into each other, expanding the experience of this iconic script into new dimensions. Far from an inert or static fable, In the Beginning Was Desire aesthetically transforms this brief passage in the Book of Genesis into a world unto itself, one whose all-too-human problems of desire, consciousness, relationship, and authority feel both timeless and timely. Watch the film here.

PRESENTED BY

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