“I HAVE TWO CERTAINTIES: ONE IS THAT I DON’T KNOW AND THE OTHER IS THAT I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING”

Yariv Friedman has been one of Impact Hub’s members since November 2016.  He is a thoughtful artist, human who is unafraid to question all things and shuns the title of filmmaker.  Yariv’s insightful nature forces you to ask the deeper meaning of questions; to find the beauty in uncertainty. Yariv Friedman was a longtime Ghostwriter and helped with presentations for students. From his experience, he advises everyone to use a comfortable space, as it affects the quality of the work.

Yariv uses the Impact Hub as a space for editing his documentaries and clips among new and diverse energies.  He loves being in a space where he can watch both members and the core team grow and change, blossoming like a flower in spring.  The Hub is a space where his creativity is met with the innovation and creativity of other entrepreneurs that he greatly respects for the qualities they possess.

His company is called Teki, where they make short clips and explainers to communicate a message on behalf of NGO’s, SME’s and departments within large organizations.

REJECTING CUT & PASTE

Born in Israel, Yariv arrived in Geneva in 1999 and is a former U.N. lawyer who felt that everything he did in that career was monotonous and lacked creativity.  He says:

“I was in a period in my life that everything was very successful for me but I felt that everything I did was cut and paste; there was nothing creative there and I was very frustrated by this vision of myself.  It was like a handicap- that the world was applauding me for everything step I did, but me, I was just going ballistic on myself and it was very much tough on me because I said ‘I’m going to totally ruin my life; it’s senseless- I cannot create anything.’  I had this vision that I cannot create anything and I wanted to create, I wanted to prove to myself that I can do other things than cut and paste.  Then, just to react to reality and to see what (are) the things that would provide me applause.”

Admitting that his original notion of creativity was naive, Yariv now recognizes that creativity was always around him, even in interpreting the law and judicial texts.  However, he has found a different kind of creative fulfilment in making films since leaving his job to pursue his passion in seeking knowledge and communicating what he’s learned in broader and digestible ways, leading him to begin creating documentaries.

“A BRICK IN THE ROAD TOWARDS INFINITY”

Some of Yariv’s work includes Time Machine (2008, 52 mins), the story of scientists at CERN building the greatest particle accelerator in history, recreating the the conditions that existed immediately following the Big Bang and ultimately revolutionizing our understanding of the universe and Assafi Strikes Back (2016, 75 mins), the story of “a peaceful being in a place that is not”.

His first feature documentary, Dialogues With Lonely Men (coming soon), is a film following Higgs Hunters (scientists who try to see if the Higgs boson exists) during the point in time when they are about to find out if the subject that they’ve dedicated their lives to researching exists or not- a revolution in science.  A film which asks the question, ‘why ask questions?’

Yariv chose this subject for his first feature because,

“It is there that scientists have something to convey to people.  They are handling a fact that is doomed to failure.  There is no way they can satisfy the urge to know.  [It is mathematically proven] that you cannot get an ultimate answer (Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem).  Gödel proved that every answer creates automatically a new answer. The act of discovery is basically what creates the unknown.  So, you are basically shooting your legs.  Now, at the same time, these scientists are so passionate and so in (to what they are studying) and so total in their research which is absurd.  It’s illogical; it makes no sense.  They are engaging in something that they consciously know will not bring them to where they want to go.  And this, I think, brings us to mankind.  As they are, we are also doomed to failure, no matter what we are going to do we know how it is going to end for us.  And it is there that I think science can answer the question ‘why [to] live’?”