Film Festival: Other Israel, (JCC Manhattan, Nov 5-12, 2015)

 

Founded in 2007, The Other Israel Film Festival uses film to foster social awareness and cultural understanding. The Festival presents dramatic and documentary films, as well as engaging panels about history, culture, and identity on the topic of minority populations in Israel with a focus on Arab citizens of Israel/Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up twenty percent of Israel’s population. Our goal is to promote awareness and appreciation of the diversity of the state of Israel, provide a dynamic and inclusive forum for exploration of, and dialogue about populations in margins of Israeli society, and encourage cinematic expression and creativity dealing with these themes. Our programming is guided by our mission to showcase quality cinema that brings to the big screen the human stories and daily lives of Arab Citizens and other minorities groups in Israel, often overlooked by mainstream Israeli society and culture.

07:00 PM – Opening Night Gala: Censored Voices

Join us in celebration of the 9th Annual Other Israel Film Festival, featuring the East Coast premiere of Censored Voices, followed by a Q&A with director Mor Loushy and an exclusive reception with filmmakers & special guests.Censored Voices

Dir. Mor Loushy
2015 | 84 min | Documentary
NY Premiere

One week after the 1967 Six Day War, a group of young Israeli soldiers, led by renowned Israeli author Amos Oz, recorded intimate conversations with their comrades returning from the battlefield. In these recordings, soldiers wrestled with the systemic evacuation of Palestinians, the dehumanizing nature of war, and the echoes of the Holocaust, taking an honest look at the moment Israel turned occupier. These recordings, censored by the Israeli army until now, are played back to the soldiers 50 years later, bringing past abruptly into present and revealing the soldiers’ stunning confessions for the first time.

http://otherisrael.org/

Festival: Rutgers Jewish Film Festival (Opening Night October 28, 2015)

 

Visit website for full program and tickets:  http://bildnercenter.rutgers.edu/film

 

New Article: Brown | Lia van Leer: Founder of Jerusalem Film Festival and Israel’s Cinematheques

Brown, Hannah. “Lia van Leer: Founder of Jerusalem Film Festival and Israel’s Cinematheques.” Jewish Quarterly 62.2 (2015): 88-90.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0449010X.2015.1051735

 

Excerpt

Lia van Leer founded the cinematheques in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, art-house cinemas based on the model of the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris. Van Leer also created the Israel Film Archive, which houses more than 30,000 prints of movies from around the world, as well as more than 20,000 videos and DVDs—among them virtually all movies made in Israel.

In addition, she founded the Jerusalem Film Festival, in 1984, which presents hundreds of movies from around the world, as well as showcasing the newest Israeli films.

 

New Article: Interview with Erez Pery about Sderot, Last Exit, and the School of Sound and Screen Arts at Sappir College

Barlet, Olivier. “‘We need to think again from the beginning!’: Interview with Erez Pery about Sderot, Last Exit, and the School of Sound and Screen Arts at Sappir College, Israel.” Black Camera 6.1 (2014): 215-219.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/black_camera/v006/6.1.barlet.htm

See also film review by Olivier Barlet and Melissa Thackway, pp. 219-220.

 

Excerpt

Olivier Barlet (OB):

What is your feeling about Osvalde Lewat’s film?

Erez Pery (EP):

Well, you ask the million-dollar question! I was surprised to see me and the school and my position within the structure from Osvalde’s point of view. It is what’s beautiful about cinema!

OB:

Does it serve or disserve the school?

EP:

It helps in the sense that more people get to know what we do here in the south of Israel. The festival is already quite known in circles in Europe. It’s funny because people in Paris know better what’s going on in the school than people here in Tel Aviv!

OB:

Would you have taken the same point of view?

EP:

The school is a part of my family. I wouldn’t do a film about it; it is too close, too intimate.

OB:

A lot of documentary films do that.

EP:

Yes, but I don’t really like that. I can only handle it when the private sphere and the public sphere connect together, when your private life some-how captures the zeitgeist of the society. I was surprised when Osvalde came to me with the idea of making a film about the school. It happened because of the festival: I saw Black Business in France and called to invite her. She was totally surprised. She has never been to Israel before. When she was at the festival, she was in a total shock. I think it was a kind of life-changing experience for her.

OB:

Does the fact that she is an African woman make a difference for you?

EP:

The festival is focused on the three continents: Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Finding good films from Africa is not easy these days. Sderot is inhabited by Jews from Africa: Algeria, Morocco, Ethiopia. …

OB:

Do the students of the school tackle the issue of these identities?

EP:

Yes, because Israel is a nation of immigrants who had to curb their own identity to be Israelis, and what we are doing now is going back to our original identity, our own roots, the language that we have never talked, to know who we really are. This is the kind of film that is made here. Films of hybrid people, half Israeli, half something else. This is what Freud called “the return of the repressed.”

OB:

When you present the school outside, what are your main points?

EP:

First and foremost, we are a kind of alternative to the hegemonic center, not only in the subject matter, but also aesthetically. As we are on the periphery, very close to the border with Gaza, we have this little laboratory of our own: we can explore things. We are not afraid of difficult subjects and to open old wounds. This is basically what we do here, in contrast with what is going on in the rest of the country. People from the center think that it is a kind of weakness, giving up the prestige of the conventional aesthetic and big festivals. …

Cite: Greyson, Pinkface

Greyson, John. “Pinkface.” Camera Obscura 27.2 (2012): 145-53.

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URL: http://cameraobscura.dukejournals.org/content/27/2_80/145.abstract

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Abstract

This article presents case studies of two recent Toronto actions protesting Israeli apartheid, as seen through queer eyes: the 2009 Toronto Declaration, a petition with thousands of signatures that condemned the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) collaboration with the Israeli consulate’s marketing campaign “Brand Israel” in the presentation of a city-to-city spotlight on Tel Aviv cinema (known as the Tel Aviv Spotlight); and the 2010 Pride Awards Give-Back, in which twenty-two recipients of various Pride Toronto awards from the past ten years gave back their awards in protest against the banning from the city’s Pride parade of the activist group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

Greyson recounts his experiences as an active participant in both actions: with the former, he pulled his short film Covered from TIFF in protest against the Tel Aviv Spotlight; while with the latter, he gave back his Arts and Culture award, which he had received the previous year. His account explores the tactics and strategies that made these actions effective. In particular, he deconstructs the arguments commonly used by the Zionist lobby on queers, revealing the contradictions and fabrications that are resorted to by those groups convinced that queers should side uncritically with Israel on all issues, simply because of Israel’s recent pro-gay stances on various issues.

The central portion of “Pinkface” presents Greyson’s response to the op-eds and full-page ads of noted Canadian producer Robert Lantos, who repeatedly accused the Toronto Declaration signators of being blacklisters, censors, and fascists (among other choice terms). By deconstructing Lantos’s accusations one by one, Greyson in turn reveals the specific tactics that distinguish this current boycott movement from past efforts, be they in South Africa, Chile, or India.