A little Yolki Palki
Last night I attended the final evening in Beit Avi Chai’s fine film series “Fact and Fiction.” Each movie, curated by film historian Amy Kronish, presented a different slice of Israeli life from Ethiopia to Russian aliyah. The latter was the subject for last night’s event.
When “Yolki Palki” was first aired on the YES television network a few years back, it garnered controversy for documenting the less than rosy reception some of the million plus immigrants from the Former Soviet Union received on their arrival in Israel.
Indeed, after the film, Dr. Ze’ev Khanin, chief scientist with the Ministry of Absorption and a lecturer at Bar Ilan University, joined Kronish on stage and was at pains to stress that not every Russian oleh suffered the same fate as those depicted on screen.
That said, the interviewees in the film were by and large content with their lives here, despite many falling into the usual stereotype of a former engineer now working in the cow shed at a kibbutz, or a violin virtuoso spending days behind the meat counter in a supermarket.
Has the absorption process changed over the years, I wondered? In the past, most immigrants – wherever they were from – had to take steps down in their careers.
Is that still the case? With hi-tech (and the economy in general) booming in Israel, it’s quite possible for a talented aliyah-bound youngster to land with a high-paying prestigious job already in his or her pocket even before leaving the old country.
Economic success, of course, was not the driver for leaving Russia, those in the film pointed out. Wanting to live in a Jewish country coupled with discrimination and threats back home were much more potent.
At one point in the film, a Sabra informs a Russian immigrant that his children will do fine in Israel, but for him, “your life is over” (the Israeli was presumably referring to his career). The Russian replied “but I’m only 30!” He eventually found a well paying job.
And the violinist working as a butcher – he’s shown later in the film making a comeback as the leader of a Balkan-Gypsy-world music band called Yolki Palki, upon which the film took its name.
The film was ultimately an uplifting, if candid, portrayal of the experiences of one of the largest immigration waves to our small country. Highly recommended if it plays again on TV or appears at a Jewish Film Festival near you.
Oscar fever in Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, General, Israeliness, Movies, Pop Culture, coexistence
Ajami directors Scandar Copti (left) and Yaron Shani in Hollywood over the weekend (Photo: Reuters)
It’s the third year running that an Israeli film has been nominated (after Beaufort and Waltz With Bashir). And Ajami’s intense portrayals – intertwined stories of a young Muslim in the crime-ridden Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa gets caught in an Arab clan feud and his own forbidden romance with a Christian woman; a Jewish police officer in search of his missing soldier brother, and the tale of a Palestinian youth who sneaks into Israel for menial work – are making it, if not a favorite, then at least a strong contender for the Oscar.
And, as Hannah Brown wrote in The Jerusalem Post, Ajami has already won just by getting to the Hollywood ceremonies. Directed by an Arab – Scandar Copti – and a Jew – Yaron Shani, “it’s hard to overstate the symbolic value of the collaboration and friendship between these two, who are from different ethnic groups, religious affiliations and backgrounds. They spent seven years working on this gritty film about the crime-ridden Ajami neighborhood in Jaffa, which they managed to get into the Cannes Film Festival, where it won a special mention. These two young, first-time directors who had to live with relatives while making the film because they had put all their money into it, have seen it win honors and rave reviews on three continents.”
It’s been fun watching the the two, along with the cast and their families first forays into Hollywood – most of the cast consisted of Jaffa residents who weren’t really acting too much in their portrayals of the working class; for many, it was their first trip outside of Israel and for some, their first airplane ride. Star Shahir Kabahar, 25, had to take vacation days from his job as a bureka baker at his family’s Jaffa bakery, in order to travel to the ceremony.
Footage of them walking outside the Kodak Theater and staring wide-eyed at the spectacles on Hollywood Boulevard demonstrate the huge journey one can make with film and the impact on lives it can create. Good luck to Ajami tonight!
Nostalgia Sunday – Netanyahu’s fixer upper
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Movies, Music, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics
The members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet went on a little trip today up to visit historic Tel Hai in the Galilee. Going on tiyul is quite common this season — dozens of people are hiking Shvil Yisrael, the Israel National Trail this month — but it’s unusual for members of Knesset to move en masse out of their comfort zone and into the periphery.
However, this was a special occasion. Today being the 90th anniversary of the battle at the Tel Hai compound — itself refurbished thanks to the efforts of The Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites (SPIHS) — it was selected as an appropriate time and place for a cabinet meeting to approve a comprehensive plan, the largest ever, to “strengthen the national heritage infrastructures of the State of Israel”.
What is a national heritage infrastructure? As set out in Netanyahu’s plan (called TAMAR which in Hebrew is the acronym for “national heritage infrastructure”) it consists of about 150 “tangible/material cultural resources” (archaeological and historic sites) and “intangible/nonmaterial cultural resources” (archives and collections of literature, poetry, philosophy, arts, crafts, music and song, dance, theater, film, traditions, holidays, festivals, ceremonies, etc.) all in need of rehabilitation and/or enrichment. TAMAR will cost almost NIS 400 million, and will be funded by private donations to be matched by allocations from the budgets of 16 government ministries.
The list of sites — which is not yet finalized — includes 37 archaeological sites, 39 museums and collections, and 62 sites relating to Israel’s Jewish and Zionist heritage — many literally crumbling to bits, such as the magnificent painted ceiling in Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim Yeshiva. There are also 13 projects in the “intangible/nonmaterial” category that would restore cultural resources like the backlog of yet-uncatalogued movies still in cartons at the Israel Film Archive – as well as upgrade the archive building itself.
Two additional trails will be created in addition to Shvil Yisrael, promised Netanyahu, one a historic trail of archaeological sites from the biblical, Second Temple and other eras in the history of the Land of Israel, the other a trail tracing the places and events that gave rise to the modern-day State of Israel.
Netanyahu couldn’t have given a better example than this one: dowdy, dingy Independence Hall in Tel Aviv. “It is good that the city is open to the world and good that the city is alive and moving forward. But at 16 Rothschild Boulevard, there is a small auditorium in which the State of Israel was declared. There, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, declared the State of Israel.
“The hall is run-down. I am not saying that it is about to fall over but as far as the many young people and others, who flock to the street, to Rothschild Boulevard, are concerned, they do not know it. They do not visit it at all. And therefore, we will rehabilitate Independence Hall.”
The long-term payoff for TAMAR, say the plan’s authors, will be NIS 630 million in annual tourism revenue, job creation in the amount of 3,500 permanent positions plus 800 more during the 5-year period of the plan’s execution, and development of tourism to the Negev and Galilee regions. Later this week, the cabinet is due to approve the national transportation plan joining the Galilee and other regions to an accessible national transportation grid.
The cabinet also made a separate decision today on a new building for Israel’s National Library, funded by a donation from Yad Hanadiv (the Rothschild Foundation).
An American Idol like an Israeli rose
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Movies, Music, Pop Culture, tv
I admit it – I’m an American Idol junkie. And watching the prelims last week (which are screened here on Saturday night, a few days after their US screening), our family’s ears perked up when we heard a contestant introduced as “Didi Ben Ami.”
“Gotta be Israeli,” my son said. But the young woman who came out and sang “Hey Jude” with a slightly southern twang, and delicately broke down while talking about her late best friend who inspired her to pursue music hardly appeared to be a Sabra.
However, since then, a look at her MySpace page as well as reports on the Web and news reports confirm that Ben Ami has an Israeli connection.
Her given name is ‘Vered Benami’, she’s aged 22, from Tennessee, and now living in LA and working as a waitress. On the American Idol Web site, she pronounces her name, first with an American accent and then with an Israeli one.
Her MySpace page explains that “Vered” means “rose” in Hebrew, and the page lists “faith that some day there will be peace in Israel.” According to Ynet, Benami was born in New York to a “family of Israelis.”
However, a number of Christian music web sites which list American Idol contestants with a connection to Christian music and values list Benami among them. So who know? Meanwhile, Benami has passed the first round of elimination on the way to securing the final 24 candidates to make the finals of the show. If she makes, she’ll join
Elliott Yamin, who placed third on the show’s fifth season, as an Israeli Idol. Yasmin has an American Jewish mother and an Israeli father.
Benami isn’t the only Israeli who’s floating around the show this year. Among the names touted to be replacing departing judge Simon Cowell next year is Guy Oseary, the Israeli-born LA music mogul and manager of Madonna.
Oseary is allegedly in the final pack of possible successors, along with Howard Stern, Jamie Foxx and former Sony music boss Tommy Mottola.
According to Ha’aretz, Jerusalem-born Oseary has made several guest appearances in TV and films such as blockbusters Charlie’s Angels and You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, and has also authored four books including Jews Who Rock, about Jews in the music industry.
If he is chosen, I wonder if we’ll start hearing some Cowell-like insults in Hebrew next year.
Israeli Oscar nomination imitates life
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, General, Life, Movies, coexistence
A scene from 'Ajami'
The bad news – if it wins, some of the actors might be in jail instead of at the ceremony in Hollywood.
The film, about the lives of Arabs and Jews in the impoverished, crime-ridden neighborhoods of Jaffa, uses amateur actors to capture the gritty realism that prompted its nomination. However that realism spilled over into… um… reality last week when two brothers of the film’s co-director were arrested for fighting with police in a scene that could have been pinched directly from the film.
According to an AP report, Yaron Shani, a Jew, and Scandar Copti, an Arab — shot “Ajami” on location in the rundown, scrappy neighborhood of the same name in the city of Jaffa, and used local residents to play the main roles in the film. One of them was Copti’s brother, who along with a third brother, was arrested in the skirmish over alleged drug use.
Residents said that on Saturday evening, two teenagers were burying a dead dog when police arrived, suspecting they were hiding drugs. When they questioned the youths, Arab neighbors, who generally distrust law enforcement, came to the scene, some scuffling with police.
Tony Copti, 29, who appeared in the film, told The Associated Press that police are often harsh with Arab residents. After confronting police, he and his brother Jiriass were handcuffed and sprayed in the face with pepper spray before being taken away for questioning, he said.
Police said they briefly detained the men for attacking officers, releasing them after questioning. They gave no further details.
In the ‘Ajami,’ police enter Ajami to arrest a drug dealer and neighbors protest, allowing the dealer to slip away. In the next scene, Jewish police blame Arab residents for preventing them from cleaning up the neighborhood.
“The story in the film, that’s how it really happens in Jaffa,” Tony Copti told AP.
While the whole incident was greatly unpleasant for the principals, it may inadvertently drum up better publicity for the film than a full page ad in Variety.
Fact and Fiction: Beit Avi Chai launches film series
Beit Avi Chai has launched a fascinating new lecture series at its Jerusalem headquarters. The program is called “Fact and Fiction: Diversity Within” and features documentary films followed by one-on-one discussions between the film director and Amy Kronish, a long-time movie maestro and critic who’s put together the series.
Last night was the opening session and it featured “The Name My Mother Gave Me,” a tearjerker of the Zionist kind. A group of Ethiopian and Russian pre-army teenagers undertake an emotional journey to Addis Ababa and Gondar to explore the Jewish roots of the most recent immigrants to Israel.
In the course of the trip, the Ethiopians visit villages they haven’t seen in a dozen or so years and the Russians gain an appreciation for the Ethiopians’ Jewish history. “Don’t let anyone tell you there were no Jews here” in Ethiopia, one of the Russian teens declares. By the end of the film, these two groups – who were once was at each other’s throats – became a single bonded unit.
The most emotional moments of the film were when the group visits an abandoned synagogue in a remote village that still has Hebrew prayer books, and the meeting of one of the Ethiopians with his mother who he’s been separated from for 14 years. The moment is heartbreaking, however, as the mother shows little interest in her son who has come so far for such a bittersweet reunion.
The film’s director Eli Tal-El described afterward how difficult it was to make the film. Israel Television said they’d pay him for his footage but only to use it as part of a muckraking documentary on the state of Ethiopian immigration in Israel. Tal-El refused. It took him some five years to finish the work and only then when Beit Avi Chai stepped in at the last moment with some long overdue funding.
“The Name My Mother Gave Me” has played at film festivals around the world. A trailer is streaming online; you can also purchase the movie at the same site for $29.90.
Future sessions of the film series will look at Israeli development towns, ultra Orthodox women entering the workforce and the “secret” of Russian aliyah success. More information at www.bac.org.il.
Foto Friday – Design Museum Holon
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Movies, Pop Culture, design
Holon , the city on the dunes, has traditionally been a sleepy satellite and antithesis of Tel Aviv. So much so, in fact, that Holon’s first mayor, Dr. Haim Kugel, envisioned it as a place where the working man would drink a cup of tea on his balcony before retiring to bed at 9:30. No discos, night clubs or decadent “City That Never Stops” frippery for Kugel’s Holon.
Oh well, Haim, times change. Over the years, Holon has positioned itself as Israel’s center for niche museums, providing a home not only to the Egged Bus Museum and Israel Children’s Museum but also to the Mediatheque, a cultural centre that includes the National Cartoon Museum, repertory theater, cinematheque, a unique materials library and public library and the Israel Design Center.
And next week, on January 31st 2010, the Design Center inaugurates its new award-winning building by Ron Arad Architects, thus thwarting Kugel’s dream forever.
Design Museum Holon does fulfill the dream of its founders, Holon’s Mayor, Motti Sasson and Managing Director, Hana Hertsman who term it “the pinnacle of a sixteen-year urban regeneration programme, a process which is transforming the city of Holon, central Israel, into a global epicenter for culture and education.” A series of videos about their vision is available here.
That vision is more than matched by the building, a sexy ribbon of weathered steel, graduated in tone, that winds its way around a large central plaze, flanked by the Mediatheque.
The founders wanted Arad to create an iconic building that would provide visitors with an immersive design environment, and the Design Museum is Arad’s first architectural project of this scale. As he explains it, “Holon is a city which is re-inventing itself culturally, with ambitious plans that are investing a lot into culture. The concept of this museum in the Middle Eastern sun is just one instance.”
“Every project is unique; each one invites a different response. When we started working on Design Museum Holon, it was like a white canvas, things developed and a direction was formed. We created a hierarchy of outdoor spaces so you walk in under the building into a semi-covered yard, where you have a choice to take the air-conditioned route or one exposed to the elements. The building envelope is not just a pretty space; it’s also a structure.”
An interview with Arad about the museum can be found here:
The Design Museum’s annual program will showcase site-specific exhibitions by invited international curators as well as travelling exhibitions. A historical collection of Israeli design is also being created and the museum’s permanent collection will be unveiled in five to seven years. The first exhibition opens on March 4th 2010. More details on www.dmh.org.il. Photos courtesy of Design Museum Holon’s Facebook page – become a fan today!
Israeli film ‘Ajami’ headed to the Oscars?
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, General, Movies, Pop Culture, coexistence
There’s something about Israeli films – they keep getting recognized for excellence. After two years in a row of Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Language film – for Beaufort and Waltz with Bashir respectively, it looks like we might get a hat trick.
The Academy of Arts and Sciences announced on Wednesday their shortlist of nine films out of hundreds of applicants for the category – and it included Ajami, Israel’s official selection for the Oscars.
This year’s shortlist also includes films from Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Kazakhstan, The Netherlands and Peru. The final five nominees will be announced when all the Oscar nominations are revealed, in a press conference on February 2.
Hannah Brown, The film critic for The Jerusalem Post, described Ajami as a gritty drama about crime in Jaffa. It was co-directed by two first-timers, Scandar Copti, an Israeli Arab Christian, and Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jew.
The film – which is in both Hebrew and Arabic – received a special mention at Cannes, as well as winning the Ophir Award, the Israeli Oscar, which made it Israel’s official selection.
Ajami is competing for one of the five nominated movies with Germany’s “The White Ribbon,” which won the 2010 Golden Globe for best foreign movie, “El Secreto de Sus Ojos” from Argentina; “Samson and Delilah,” from Australia; “The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner,” from Bulgaria; “A Prophet,” from France; “Kelin from Kazakhstan; and “Winter in Wartime,” from The Netherlands, in which a Dutch boy aids a downed British pilot during World War II.
Maybe this will be the year – following the nomination of nine Israeli films in past years – that one of ours – especially a ‘coexistence’ project like ‘Ajami’ will walk away with Israel’s first Oscar.
Avatar – the Israeli angle
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, General, Movies, Pop Culture, Profiles
Wherever you look these days, it’s ‘Avatar’ this and ‘Avatar’ that. I’m sure it’s a spectacular film, and one of these days, I’ll get around to seeing it. For a posting on the film, see Brian’s earlier entry.
As I was sitting with my cornflakes a couple mornings ago, I got to wondering about whether there was any Israeli connection to the James Cameron blockbuster. With the Israeli presence so ubiquitous in Hollywood and in technology, I figured that an Israeli had to have taken part in some aspect of the 3-D visual celebration.
As an exercise, sort of like 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon, I found a list of credits to the film online, and started scrolling down – like in the old days to see if there’s a Jew on the baseball team roster, but this time it was looking for a ‘Mizrahi’, ‘Oded’, or ‘Liav.’
Sure enough, about two thirds of the way down the list of hundreds of names doing countless tasks (what is a chief gaffer anyway?), I came across the heading of Chief Animators, and under that list of some 30 names, there he was – Shahar Levavi. No mistaking him for a Mormon.
A quick search on Google, and I found myself in Shahar’s web site. It turns out that the 34-year-old native of Korazin, a small moshav in the North, has been working as an animator for 11 years in the US, and most recently in New Zealand at Peter Jackson’s studio where he made Lord of the Rings.
It was there, three years ago, that he signed on to be one of the animators for Avatar, after having honed his skills on films like The Chronicles of Narnia and Garfield.
Now, having moved back to Israel and ready to take on the Israeli animation world, Shahar is enjoying the accolades Avatar is receiving around the globe. With an animated achievement like that under her belt, he should be able to write his own ticket.
Malls 101 (or how not to design a movie theater)
Filed under: Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Movies, design
Ever since we bought our big screen TV a few years back, I have avoided going to the movie theater. The combination of raucous crowds and cell phones that refuse to be silenced don’t make for a particularly conducive cinematic experience. I prefer cranking up the surround sound at home and microwaving a bag of popcorn.
3D changes all that. It’s the one thing you can’t get from even the biggest plasma screen. So, this week I gave in and headed to the Rav Chen theater in Jerusalem to see Avatar, the stunning new sci fi flick from Titanic and Terminator director James Cameron.
The movie was everything I hoped for: incredible graphics, a gripping storyline, and 10 foot tall blue aliens with tails, dreadlocks and minimal clothing. The crowd nearly restored my faith in Israeli movie audiences: quietly reverent as they sat riveted wearing their dorky 3D glasses as the multi-dimensional action unfolded on screen.
I say nearly because, before we could see the film, we had to get into the theater itself. There was one small door open with single ticket taker, a security guard, and about 150 excited mostly young adult males pushing and shoving their way to the front. An orderly queue, maybe a rope with ticket goers winding leisurely around the building perimeter? That’s so Los Angeles.
And then there’s that second uniquely Israeli movie invention: the snarky exit straight to the parking lot. As we left the theater, I expected to re-enter the mall but no…we were directed into a dank and poorly lit stairwell that led us outside.
Didn’t Israel study Malls 101 at the University of Consumer Culture? The idea is to coddle shoppers into spending more of their disposable income, not to unceremoniously funnel them out into the cold and back to their cars.
Here’s hoping that 3D will be relegated to recycled gimmick drawer. I don’t relish having to return to our pre-big screen movie going days, sexy blue aliens or not.
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