Film Festival the isrAel strAnD
Whatever the world thinks of Israel, its filmmaking industry is acknowledged as world-class. The UK Jewish Film Festival usually offers the first chance to see both feature films and documentaries on the big screen here in Britain. This year’s selection is extraordinarily rich. The relationship between Israelis and Palestinians is central tomany of the documentaries, though I’mfascinated that ‘the situation’does not loomlarge in feature films, whose directors have other subjects to explore in Israeli society. Intimate Grammar is not the only
bestseller brought to the screen. Dan Wolman’s filmof Shulamit Lapid’s novel Gei Oni travels further back into the past to late 19th-century Palestine and the arrival in Jaffa of a family escaping fromthe pogroms to forge new relationships and work as pioneers on the land, whose 19th-century landscape is beautifully recreated here. Given that Jews are the People of
the Book, it’s hardly surprising to find a filmwhose very title is a biblical metaphor. The Flood, like Intimate Grammar, centres on a boy approaching barmitzvah who is small for his age. He finds himself caring for his older, autistic brother using barmitzvah
rituals.And the flood of the title? There’s the framework of an abandoned boat… FromTorah to Talmud, Footnote
(winner of best screenplay at Cannes this year) is writer/director Joseph Cedar’s story of rival talmudic scholars, father and son, and another prize-winning book. But which of themwrote it…? Rival fathers and sons battle it out
in another film with a prize-winning screenplay from this year’s Sundance Film Festival. In JosephMadmony’s Restoration, veteran Israeli actor Sasson Gabai (The Band’s Visit) is proprietor of a TelAviv antique restoration business, whose son is trying to get him to sell up – until he takes on a new employee and an 1882 Steinway piano takes centre stage. In a particularly strong field of
documentaries it’s astonishing to discover that the family of IbrahimEl Akel, an outed collaborator with the Israeli Shabak security service, have
actually allowed dedicated directorsAdi Barash and Ruthie Shatz to follow the tensions of their life in Israel for The Collaborator and His Family. Surprising to find a pair of would-
be filmmakers in two strictly Orthodox women, but The Dreamers of the title in Efrat Shalom Danon’s documentary are teacher Ruchama and wigmaker Tikva, who lives up to her name (Hope), as the pair attempt to overcome extraordinary obstacles to make films for an all-female audience. Lod Detour follows three students
at a last-chance school in Lod, while Strangers No More goes to TelAviv’s Bialik-Rogozin School, where children from 48 countries,Muslims and Jews, often refugees from poverty and genocide, learn Hebrew and life skills and find emotional support. Shlomi Eldar’s feature-length
Precious Life follows Israeli and Palestinian doctors fighting to save the life of four-month-old Palestinian MohammadAbuMustafa, who desperately needs a bone marrow transplant. Finally, some cheesy fun Glee-style, director Etan Fox’s all-singing, all-
broKen reviewed by
JuDi herMAn
Broken Glass tells the story of Phillip and Sylvia Gellburg, a NewYork couple living in Brooklyn in 1938. Phillip, obsessed with work and his own desire to assimilate, has little time for his wife, but when Sylvia suddenly becomes paralysed after reading newspaper reports of Kristallnacht in Germany, Dr. Harry Hyman is called
in.As he gets closer to the source of Sylvia’s peculiar affliction, a relationship develops that could have devastating consequences on the family, and themes of guilt, personal tragedy and love start to unfold.
You can’t star t becomi people unti l you’ve be
this is an extract from an interview conducted for Jr outloud. sir Antony talked to Judi herman about the play and its writer, his own Jewish identity and his career, and how he and his partner, theatre director gregory Doran, manage their working partnership.
Jh: Just going back to what you said about yourself at a point where you weren’t comfortable in your own skin, hopefully you are more comfortable now? you felt more reconciled with your Jewishness, less rejected?
dancing feel-good homage to Israeli legend Svika Pick, writer of Dana International’s Eurovision-winning song. Indulge in episodes of Israeli TVhit Mary Lou, and thrill to heroMeir’s quest to find themumwho literally walked out of his life on his tenth birthday.Will he find her – or just a new identity as drag- queen divaMary Lou?
uk Jewish Film Festival runs 1-20 november 2011 at the tricycle cinema and 13 other london venues. For the full program go to
www.ukjewishfilm.org or telephone 020 3176 0048. For the first time this year, the Festival will have a screening in Manchester at the same time as the london festival. see What’s happening page 31 for details.
40 JeWish renAissAnce octoBer 2011
As: oh yes, i now totally embrace the different aspects of my identity. i now look back at trying to deny them as an appalling waste of time and energy. how can you not be who you are? And actually it’s particularly true for actors. you can’t start becoming other people until you’ve become yourself, because the best acting is from a centre within the actor of him being able to reveal himself. i don’t believe acting is about disguise, i believe it’s about revealing yourself and so you have to be yourself.
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