[3] Since the early 1990s, Ben-Ner has filmed a series of short videos starring himself and his family, often using the intimate spaces of their home as ad hoc set, studio, and fantastical playroom.

Ben-Ner’s first narrative video, Berkeley’s Island (1999), based on Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), depicts the solitary life of a castaway.

Set in the family kitchen, it opens with a scene of the artist lying on his back in a bathing suit on a meter-wide pile of sand from which a lone palm tree grows, with a steering wheel across his bare, sunburned chest.

The plot does not follow Defoe’s exactly, though notable moments in the book are re-created, such as the castaway discovering a footprint and training a parrot (played by the family cat) to say his name.

The work consists of two years of weekly video lessons that Ben-Ner gave to Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers at the Holot Detention Center in the Negev desert.