Nostalgia Sunday – Old ads are more fun
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Movies, Music, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
If we are to learn anything from Mad Men, it’s that advertisements are most fun and best viewed in retrospect. We look back in “What were they thinking?” wonderment at the positioning of certain products. For example, here’s a slideshow of Israeli advertisements from yesteryear – including one for Osem’s Bamba as a crispy late-night party snack – a far cry from it’s primary role today as the ultimate teething toy.
Or this one, for Elite powdered instant coffee. Although it employs a completely archaic production method, “Cafe Ness” is still being consumed happily by millions. Or thousands. Or at least by me.
Here’s something you don’t see every day – an advertisement for cigarettes! With actual smoking!
And to close, an ad featuring the Yarkon Bridge Trio (Shlishiyat Gesher HaYarkon) — Benny Amdursky, Yehoram Gaon and Arik Einstein racing around town and touting the wonders of Tadiran’s new-fangled electronic devices.
As you watch, bear this in mind: TV in Israel was black & white until 1980, broadcasting was limited to one commercial-free station until 1993 and ads were shown only in movie houses.
Stage mom
Filed under: Art, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Movies
Our director, Eran Riklis
Set in Jerusalem, and based on the 2004 A.B. Yehoshua book, The Mission of the Human Resources Manager, it’s about a human resources manager in a big Jerusalem bakery during the dark days of the second intifada. A Russian worker dies in a suicide bombing attack and when no one claims her body, he has to take her back to Russia.
Filming is taking place in Jerusalem and Romania, and we were part of the Jerusalem filming, which was set in the ghost-town like atmosphere of the Schneller Army base, in the Geula neighborhood. Our boys’ film father was Mark Ivanir, a Russian-born actor who came to Israel in 1972 and now splits his time between Israel and the U.S. Eran Riklis, the director and a big bear of a guy, was genial enough with the babies, although a tad confused about what 12-month-olds are supposed to be doing. He wanted them to crawl, but also sit quietly in an infant seat; start working at 4:30 in the afternoon, and go strong until 8 pm. And when I questioned whether a 12-month-old sitting in an infant seat perched on a chest was realistic (and safe), I could see the word balloons next to their mouths, saying “Overprotective American mother!”
We worked it out, the boys cooperated for the most part, and now we just sit tight and wait for the movie premiere, with Ziv and Lev’s names in the credits. And it’s probably safe to say that I’ll never do this again, but you never know.
My Israeli flag, love it or not
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, coexistence
The blue and white of the Israeli flag has never been more closely analyzed and inspected than in the documentary film My Flag by Toronto filmmaker Igal Hecht.
The 30-year-old, Israeli-born Hecht has made about 40 documentaries over the last decade, with most of them in recent years focusing on Israel, which he calls his “obsession.”
My Flag , which is having its Israeli debut on Thursday night at the Sixth Jewish Eye Film Festival in Ashkelon, finds Hecht traveling around the country during its 60th birthday year and asking those he encounters one question – ‘what does the Israeli flag mean to you?’
http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=36087766The answers range from humorous to biting to reflective, accurately mirroring the fractures of Israeli society and the attempts by its citizens to understand the nature of their country amid their first identity crisis.
Hecht traveled to Sderot where a man whose wife was seriously injured in a Kassam attack angrily says, “This flag is nothing to me – if you weren’t here, I would burn it like the Arabs do.”
In Mea She’arim, he walked around with flag wrapped around him, like a more thoughtful Bruno, evoking residents to respond, “It’s a rag, I wouldn’t even wash the floors with it.”
“We don’t need a flag, we have Hashem,” another says.
But for every negative connotation, there’s patriotic responses, from singer Saraleh Sharon who says, “The flag of Israel is our home.” Or from a Druze Israeli in the North who says “I am proud to be a son of this nation.”
In a process similar to that in the US, where in recent years, the symbol of the flag has been coopted by a decidedly right-wing, nationalist viewpoint, the Israeli flag has also inadvertently become a symbol of the Right. My Flag is an attempt to return the flag, representing both the achievements and blemishes of an imperfect country, to the Center.
“I learned that there’s frustration in Israel,” Hecht told me. “I end the film with a speech Ezer Weizman gave in 1996 in Germany. He talked about the country standing at a crossroad and unsure of where it was going. Unfortunately, that’s the thesis of the film ultimately. There’s a lot of uncertainty and lack of vision for many Israelis. That can be still translated into love and appreciation of the flag, but it also provokes hesitancy and grasping at trying to understand what’s going on in the country. Is it Zionism, or post-Zionism? What is the new Israel?”
That’s the question we’re all trying to grapple with.
Afraid to go to sleep – Paranormal Activity hits US cinemas
It’s the surprise hit of the year. Audiences across the US are afraid to go to sleep after watching a horror film made by Israeli filmmaker Oren Peli. The low budget movie reportedly cost just $11,000 to produce, but reviewers are calling it the most scary film ever made. Think Blair Witch Project, only worse.
The movie, Paranormal Activity , was filmed in 2006 over a seven-day period. It was set in Peli’s own suburban tract home with a crew of just three including his then-girlfriend Toni Taylor, and best friend (also Israeli) Amir Zbeda.
The film was released in fewer than 200 theaters, but raked in $7.1 million in one weekend – a record for a limited release film.
The film, about a couple who think their house is haunted, has now been picked up by Paramount Pictures . It bills itself as “the first-ever major film release demanded by you.”
Peli is not your usual blockbuster movie type director. He dropped out of school at 16, to set up his own software company. Three years later he immigrated to the US with Zbeda and began work developing animation and video game programs.
He got the idea for the film when he moved into a new home and found the sudden quiet of suburbia disturbing. The house was new and still settling, and at night he could hear the house shifting and groaning.
He wrote a script, fixed up his house a bit, held a casting session in Hollywood, and hey presto, shot a movie. He edited it on his own home PC, and then submitted it to Screamfest – a boutique festival for cult horror in LA.
The film was released in September with limited late-night showings at just 13 college towns, but the ball started rolling and the film became a web sensation on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Critics also jumped on board giving excellent reviews.
Originally Paramount planned to reshoot the film with better-known actors, but studio heads – including Steven Spielberg – decided it could stand as it was, with only a few tweaks.
Peli is now onto his next movie, a thriller called Area 51, but in the meantime Paramount Pictures releases Paranormal Activity at cinemas across the US on Friday. Get ready for some sleepless nights.
Of Matisyahu, Larry David and their [dis]connection to Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Movies, Music, Pop Culture, Religion
Matisyahu - Israel a life-changing experience (AP)
It’s always interesting to learn how the American Jewish experience end up informing their views on Judaism – and Israel. For the 25-year-old, California-raised Attias, having an Israeli father was the key. He used to spend summers with his dad’s family in Kiryat Malachi, and liked it so much that he would lie to his parents about coming home and end up staying another month or two.
“One year, I did the Gadna military program – my Israeli friends said, ‘are you crazy, you’re volunteering?’ But I loved everything about being in Israel,” he told me.
It was also during his summers in Israel in the late 1980s that Attias – nicknamed the Young Lion – first grew to love reggae music, travelling every weekend to the Soweto Club in Tel Aviv.
“I was only 12 or 13 but I used to get on a bus in Kiryat Malachi by myself and go to Tel Aviv to the reggae clubs,” said Atias. “They had this DJ spinning the records, an Arab guy who loved the music but had no idea who he was playing, so they would ask me to announce the songs, and I’d hang out in the DJ booth all night long.”
Matisyahu also has a teenage Israel story which proved to be a life-changing experience. As a secular New York 16-year-old, he spent a semester in Israel at the Alexander Muss High School in Hod Hasharon.
“I remember one moment. They took us up to Mount Scopus around sunset to look at the Old City. For the first time, I got all emotional, and swept up in the idea of me being part of the Jewish people. Until then, it was a minor component of my identity, but it began to raise my awareness of the history and ancestry and rich background that I had. It was overwhelming,” he said, adding that it took a few years until Matisyahu became an Observant Jew and changed his name from Mathhew Miller.
These days, Matisyahu, who performed this week twice in Israel, spends a month here over the holidays every year.
Contrast the Attias and Matisyahu experiences with those of Adam Green and Larry David, born 30 years apart. David, who grew up ‘very Reform’ in Sheepshead Bay, New York, ended his Jewish experience after his bar mitzvah.
Since we were speaking a couple days after Rosh Hashana, I asked David how his holiday was, and he replied, “Uneventful.”
You don’t go to services on Rosh Hashana, I asked, treading dangerously close to a Larry David moment.
“Nah. I used to go to when I was married, that was part of my marriage arrangement, but it isn’t anymore,” he laughed.
Neither is Israel, apparently. When I asked if David had ever visited the homeland of the Jewish people, he answered, “No, I have no particular interest. Naturally, I want Israel to prosper and survive, but I’m not active in my support.”
Thirty years after David’s assimilation, a similar thing occurred to Adam Green, the quirky Brooklyn folkie, who as a member of The Moldy Peaches in 2001, co-wrote “Anyone Else But You,” the cloyingly charming song sung by the main characters in the 2007 indie sleeper hit film Juno.
Growing up in Mount Kisco, New York, he also was bar mitzvahed, but today, “I’m an atheist. I’m not at all observant now, what’s the point?” he said, adding, “I hope it’s not too late to make my first trip to Israel.”
Perhaps that’s the question all of American Jewry should be asking.
Inglourious Basterds strikes a chord in Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Movies
Nazi scalper Brad Pitt talks to his Jewish revenge recruits in Inglourious Basterds.
It’s not that I didn’t immensely enjoy the over-the-top Tarantino blood and dialogue trademark and the standout performances by Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz as ‘The Jew Hunter.’ I could even turn a blind eye to the Holocaust revisionism for the sake of comic book adventure heroic Jews who give Hitler and company what they deserve.
What proved most unsettling, more than the scalpings and crushed skulls via baseball bats, was the audience reaction at the screening. A good percentage of the sold-out crowd consisted of teenage Israelis and young American, religious students apparently studying here for a year.
Whenever another Nazi got his just reward, the crowd broke out in lustly cheers as if Alex Rodriguez had just hit another one out of the park. I know they’re heartless Nazis, but I felt like I was at a Kach rally.
On the one hand, it was liberating to be the avengers of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis, but on the other hand, maybe we shouldn’t have been so happy about it.
It turns out that my colleague Dina Kraft over at The Faster Times related to the same issue in her much better post .
It is this ingrained Holocaust consciousness that colors Israelis’ alternating repulsion, delight, and fascination with the movie hailed abroad as “Kosher Porn,” a fantastical universe of Jewish revenge on the Nazis. It’s been playing to packed theatres and in some cities seats need to be ordered at least a day in advance. The audiences heartily cheer, clap and laugh through their cinematic ride with a band of Nazi-scalping U.S. Jewish soldiers alongside the accompanying parallel plot of a beautiful, blond Jewess plotting her final revenge.
Kraft quoted some of the viewers walking out of the screening, who had differing opinions on what they had just seen.
It was a pale, shaken-looking Erez Makovy, 31, who emerged from a darkened 500-seat theatre, filled to capacity. The crowd had gone silent watching the carnage climax in which the Nazi leadership is devoured by flames and automatic gunfire. But it broke into loud applause when Brad Pitt’s swash-buckling U.S. lieutenant character carved what became a trademark swastika into the forehead of the S.S. officer who serves as the film’s villain in chief.
“The movie left me with a bitter taste in my mouth,” said Makovy, a musician who was disturbed by the audiences’ cheers.
His friend, Itai Zangi, 27, a music producer, however, was among the laugh-out-loud, clapping masses. “It’s nice to be on the winning side, for once. I liked that he (Tarantino) turned things totally upside down.”
Nearby, also contemplating the experience, was Hila Schuman, a 32-year-old biologist. “It’s a bit too over-the-top. For Israelis, it’s hard to take a story out of the context we know so well. So we’re left asking: Is this a parody? Is it serious? … Or is this just what revenge would look like on LSD.”
As the film goes to DVD in the coming months, more Israelis will be able to ponder the same questions.
Will we live in a Flat world?
With one in eight women likely to get breast cancer at one time or another in their lives, it’s a topic that makes an awful lot of women extremely nervous. Israeli film maker and breast cancer survivor Nitsana Bellehsen decided to take a different approach – humor.
Her film, Flat, which has been selected as the only Israeli finalist in the Breast Fest Film Festival in Toronto, tackles the subject of the rising rates of breast cancer with a sense of black absurdity that leaves you both concerned and amused at the same time.
In her short four minute film, Nitsana – who does many of ISRAEL21c’s video features on YouTube – leaps ahead to 2050 to see what the world will look like. It’s not pretty.
You can watch the movie here, and don’t forget to vote. Voting closes on October 15.
A teaser follows.
39 Pounds of Love
Israel was 39 pounds lighter and alot sadder this week, with the passing of Ami Ankilewitz.
The subject of the award-winning documentary ‘39 Pounds of Love’, Ankilewitz was born 41 years ago with Spinal Muscular Atrophy an extremely rare and often fatal condition that limits physical growth and movement.
After defying doctors predictions that he would only live for six years, Ankilewitz succumbed to the disease over the weekend and was buried on Sunday, the second day of Rosh Hashana.
Due to the disease, Ami never weighed more than 39 pounds (17.7 kg.) as an adult and was virtually paralyzed, having the use of only one finger. However, he lived life like he was long distance racer, which prompted Israeli filmmaker Dani Menkin in 2005 to chronicle Ami’s life.
Menkin first saw Ami in a Tel Aviv bar, and was instantly drawn to him and thus, began a relationship that would eventually lead to making the film.
39 Pounds of Love centers on Ankilewitz’s quest across America to make peace with his brother and confront the doctor who predicted his early death. Along the way, he visits the Grand Canyon and rode a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, one of his life’s dreams and passions.
In the film notes, Menkin recalled, “Ami told me that during his first year, the doctor predicted he would not survive past the age of 6. Now he was 33. He was ready to tell his story and I wanted to know more about him. We just started shooting Ami and his everyday life. I was amazed by the fact that a guy like him not only didn’t feel sorry for himself, but lived his life to the fullest. He wanted to go cross country in the US as a way to feel more alive. What amazed me even more is that Ami was a brilliant 3D animator who makes beautiful artwork, using just one finger. When he showed me his work I thought it would be incredible to include Ami’s Animation in the film as a way to express his feelings and desires. Thru the animation he could express himself and leaving the physical limitations aside.”
The film won the Best Documentary category at the Ophir Awards given out by
the Israeli Academy of Film, and was screened extensively in the United States to critical praise.
“I think a person like me would have much more motivation… for the simple
reason that it would be much more important for me to prove that I could be
as efficient as everyone else,” Ankilewitz wrote on his Web site.
“It could have been worse. I could have been ‘normal.’ I have the freedom to be whoever I want. I do not think people should look at me as a hero. Instead, they should think of themselves and put themselves in my position and think what other options do I have. It’s
either live or die, and I chose not to die.”
Ami’s friends and family were due to gather on Tuesday night in Tel Aviv for a public screening of the film and to celebrate his extraordinary life.
Tarantino takes a stab at Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Movies, Pop Culture, War
Quentin Tarantino in Tel Aviv tries to get a waiter's attention. (Photo: AP)
The lauded filmmaker was making his first trip here to promote the Israeli premiere of his latest film “Inglourious Basterds,” his typically violent, quirky World Warr II-based epic that depicts a fictional Jewish-American band of vigilantes who take revenge on Nazis
Wearing an AC/DC shirt, Tarantino met reporters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday and said that the most important part of his visit was to gauge the Israeli audience’s reaction to the boundary-breaking film.
In an AP report, Tarantino called the bloodbath of the Nazi characters a different brand of World War II film.
“To me, taboos are made to be broken. They’re meant to be pushed over,” Tarantino said. “One of the things that I think is a drag a little bit about movies dealing with World War II for the last 20 years is that … all the movies have really focused in on the victimization of World War II.”
“I’ll be seeing it for the first time in an Israeli cinema. I’ll be seeing it for the first time with an Israeli audience,” Tarantino said. “I’m interested to see, ‘OK, are there laughs here? Does the suspense work here as well as it works somewhere else?’”
Appearing with Christoph Waltz, who plays a Nazi in the film, and Lawrence Bender, the film’s producer, Tarantino insisted that the film was an adventure story and not a Holocaust film.
It’s a bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission movie.” In writing it, he said, “I wasn’t influenced by Holocaust movies, I was influenced by adventure films.”
The Jerusalem Post reported that when asked why he made the character of the Nazi colonel played by Waltz (and nicknamed the Jew Hunter) so charming, Tarantino said, “I don’t judge my characters. I’m always surprised by my characters. Each of them has his reasons why. There are no heroes or villains [in the film].”
When a reporter wanted to know what the moral of his film was, Tarantino laughed. “I’m not a moralist. I don’t believe in morals.”
We Israelis are a tad touchy on the Holocaust subject, so Tarantino, who also visited Yad Vashem on his stay here, may be in for a few surprises at the screening on Thursday. However, most reviews agree that the overly gory film is more of an adventure film that won’t offend an Holocaust sensibilities.
Tarantino might also be surprised to discover, if he ventures out to a restaurant or orders room service, that most milk shakes on menus here actually cost more than $5 – and they’re not such “f***** good shakes”
“Garcon!!”
Israeli film ‘Lebanon’ takes top prize in Venice
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Movies, Pop Culture, War
It’s ironic that just as a group of well-known actors and filmmakers, among them Jane Fonda and Danny Glover, are calling to boycott this year’s Toronto International Film Festival because one program there will be devoted to films set in Tel Aviv to mark that city’s centennial, an Israeli film walked off with top honors at the 66th Venice Film Festival.
Israeli director Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon won the Golden Lion, the top prize, at the closing ceremony on Saturday night, the third Israeli film based on soldiers in Lebanon besides Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort in 2008 and Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir in 2009 to win major awards. None of those films could come close to being described as Israeli propoganda, as the pro-boycotters claim all Israeli film is, and in fact, they provide a critical look at Israeli society and the wars we’ve fought.
Lebanon, Maoz’ first feature film, received glowing reviews from critics, with The International Herald Tribune calling it “a powerful and original film.” Based on Maoz’s battle memories, Lebanon depicts the fate of an IDF tank and its crew behind enemy lines at the beginning of the first Lebanon War in 1982.
According to The Jerusalem Post, the hard-hitting film is shot almost entirely from the point of view of the soldiers inside the tank, and is uncompromising in its depiction of the confusion of war, the inevitability of casualties (both civilian and military), and the claustrophobia of being stuck inside a machine that protects soldiers but can also become a death trap at any moment. It is highly critical of the leadership that brought these soldiers into such a deadly situation and left them there with so little guidance.
Lebanon is nominated for several Ophir Awards, the prizes of the Israel Academy for Film, including Best Picture. The Ophir winners will be announced in a ceremony on September 26.
The winner of the Ophir Award becomes Israel’s official entry to be considered for a nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
It’s also ironic, that as more and more quality Israeli films are being made that have nothing to do with war and conflict, it is precisely those war-based movies that are touching an international audience. If the naysayers who would deny audiences in Toronto from viewing the spectrum of film which reflect the diversity of Israeli culture – that don’t attempt to whitewash any blemishes or skirt over the pall of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – would only view some of the films themselves, they may reconsider their decision to boycott.
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