Eretz Nehederet takes on Birthright
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, education, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Travel, tv
Eretz Nehederet actors portraying American-Jewish participants of a Birthright trip in ecstacy over learning they're going to visit Yad Vashem.
Only a few months ago, there was the controversy over the video campaign by the Ministry of Absorption to convince expatriate Israelis to come home. Whether due to lack of understanding by the makers of the videos (claim critics) or over sensitivity by those offended by the videos (claim advocates), the results proved that we don’t really see each other in the same we see ourselves.
That’s why it’s good for someone to come along once in a while and flatten the playing field by being so offensive that you can’t help but laugh. And that someone this time is Eretz Nehederet, the irreverent Channel 2 comedy/satire series poking fun at current events, national leaders, and in this case of the premiere of its ninth season last week, the Birthright/Taglit program.
As Haaretz put it, “In a rare jab at visiting Diaspora Jews, Israel’s premier satirical television show, Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country), took on Taglit-Birthright Israel during its Monday night season premier.”
The skit in question follows a Birthright group as they travel by bus through the country accompanied by an Israeli guide.
You’ve got all the Diaspora Jewish stereotypes, as seen through Israeli eyes – the Jewish American Princesses, the partying, vulgar frat boys and the drug and the sex-addled South American participants.
Cynical to the nth degree, the skit – conducted in a mixture of Hebrew and English -manages to make fun of American Jewish allegiance to Israel, Birthright’s use of Holocaust guilt to encourage the participants to hit up their parents for contributions, and the cocky Israeli mentality as portrayed by the tour guide whose bravado gets him blown up by a land mine.
The skit (available here at least temporarily) loses steam half way through, but it’s still worth searching for in Hebrew on YouTube for its first few minutes for the setup, which provides some of the sharpest parody the show has created.
If American Jewish-Israeli ties were tenuous before this, I shudder to think where they’ll go after the sensitive American Jewish community views this.
Nostalgia Sunday – Cinema Savion saved!
Filed under: Business, design, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Travel
The best sort of mayor, it is said, is one who can keep real estate developers under control. Look at some of the architectural monstrosities surrounding us and one has to conclude that modern Israel has had very bad luck with city management. Some lovely buildings have been torn down with the occasional commemorative plaque or, worse yet, commemorative structure erected as an afterthought.
Some of the silliest examples: Talitakumi in front of Jerusalem’s HaMashbir LeZarchan, a strangely out of place wall-and-clock structure intended to replicate the front of a girl’s school that was razed to make room for the department store. The gate leading to Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv was thrown up by sentimental, well-meaning people in recognition of the original structure, demolished to make way for the Kolbo Shalom. And does anybody know that the Gan HaIr mall and residential complex was named for the municipal zoological garden that once stood there?
The most unsung of all are the movie houses, most of them shuttered for decades, fall deeper and deeper into disrepair until they are destroyed to make room for malls, tall buildings and parking lots. No one remembers Tel Aviv’s majestic Mugrabi Cinema or Jerusalem’s historic Edison.
Nonetheless, a small victory was achieved a little over a week ago when high-rise developers were forced to change a plan to tear down Bay Yam’s historic Savion Cinema. The victory belongs to a local activist group of Bat Yam residents, artists and the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites who objected to the demolition and proposed a synthesis of old and new structures.
In its heyday, Bat Yam boasted six movie houses. The Savion Cinema was built in 1957 and — in line with the global trend – closed in the 1980s. “However it remained an architectural icon because of its facade which was characterized by a weave of concrete block units,” states The Marker.
Icon or not, the building was in bad shape. Its most recent tenant: a dollar store in what was once the movie-house’s lobby.
According to The Marker, the design for a 25-story tower by architect Ilan Pivko, will be modified in accordance with preservation plan for the building. The building — a luxury residence and prestigious office space — is a flagship project for the Bat Yam municipality which wants to develop the run-down neighborhoods adjacent to Jaffa. The preservation plan calls for the street-facing facade to remain intact.
One look at Pivko’s work and its clear that adapting his design to the new guidelines goes against his post-modernist grain. He does not favor keeping the facade as is and suggests a modular solution instead. “One can reconstruct, dismantle or in some other way create an interior element within the structure.” How Pivko handles this challenge remains to be seen… he has done this sort of thing before… but if he wanted to do it with the Savion, he would have worked it into the original design…
Hmmm… one gets the feeling that this issue isn’t over just yet.
Whether or not the Savion Cinema facade remains on the street level or whether, in the end, Pivko’s lobby will simply feature a bold construction of recycled concrete filigree, the real significance of the decision is a precedent set in curbing real estate developers’ ability to destroy old structures without recognizing their historic value. Hopefully, that means recognition not just in the form of an incidental plaque, statue or clock, but as part of the planning, putting real thought into paying homage to what came before.
The Savion Cinema photos were taken by architect Sharon Raz who is a one-man documentary powerhouse with a particular interest in Israel’s old cinemas. See his Disappearing Architecture and Disappearing Cinemas sites as well as his Natush blog for more photos and information.
Not just a ‘footnote’ in Israeli cinema
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Movies, Pop Culture
From right: director Joseph Cedar, actor Shlomo Bar Aba, and producer Moshe Edry stand together during a press conference after the film 'Footnote' was nominated for an Oscar last week. (AP)
Cedar, an American-born Israeli, who also directed the 2008 Oscar entry, the Lebanon war film Beaufort, focused Footnote on something completely different – on two professors of Talmud, a father and son, dueling for academic prestige and the prestigious Israel Prize.
It doesn’t sound like standard fare for a gripping movie, but it is, thanks to a winning script and ace acting by stars Lior Ashkenazi and Shlomo Baraba.
“‘Footnote’ deals with the question of what happens when, while you’re living your daily life, a prize is offered, which really takes over your moral reasoning and changes your perspective and sometimes completely destroys your perspective,” Cedar told TIME magazine, summarizing the film’s main plot line.
TIME devoted a story to Israel’s booming film industry – stating that “the budgets are bare-bones and the talent pool is limited, but Israel has emerged as a surprising powerhouse in the foreign film industry.”
It notes that many of the country’s film deal with the Israeli-Arab conflict, citing the last three Israeli films that made it to the Oscar shortlist – Cedar’s Beaufort, nominated, and 2009’s animated Waltz with Bashir, both explored Israeli soldiers’ experiences in Lebanon. Ajami, the 2010 nominee, centers on Arab-Jewish tensions in violence-ridden Jaffa.
The article details the history and struggles the Israeli film industry has and continues to deal with, regarding funding, and how in the late 1990s, when the industry was at a nadir, the Israel Film Fund was created and received government backing to develop new filmmakers, Cedar among them.
The Israel Film Fund supported his first feature, “Time of Favor,” which debuted in 2000.
“We didn’t know him, but he had enthusiasm. There was something about his passion,” said Katriel Schory, executive director of the national fund. “We took a chance.”
The chance has certainly paid off, and we’ll see if it results in Israel’s first Academy Award.
Habima gets facelift
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Social Justice
The renovated Habima Theater (Photo: Haaretz)
The Habima was one of the first Hebrew language theaters, emerging out of Russian origins after the 1905 revolution. Because its performances were in Hebrew and it dealt with issues of the Jewish people, it met with persecution by the Czarist government. Beginning in 1918, it operated under the auspices of the Moscow Art Theater and in 1926, the theatre left the Soviet Union to tour abroad, with some members staying in New York and others taking the company to mandated Palestine. The first play in Tel Aviv was staged in 1928 – Der Oyster (The Treasure), a play in Yiddish by Sholom Aleichem.
In 1945, the company built the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv, which has been officially considered the national theater of Israel since 1958, the year in which it received the Israel Prize for theater.
Sunday’s grand re-opening, occurring some two months after the theater began to stage productions again, was attended President Shimon Peres, Culture Minister Limor Livnat, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, and many dignitaries from the acting world.
Despite the big budget and lavish attention that went into the renovations, the management was surprised a few hours before the opening, when the heavy winter rains sweeping Tel Aviv caused the ceiling to leak in a few places, resulting in water dripping onto the actors during rehearsal. By show time, the rain had stopped, but there was still other controversy.
A few dozen people stood outside the theater protesting against the allocation of funds for the renovation, which they claimed came at the expense of those in need of housing in Tel Aviv.
“On the one hand we are protesting against a lack in public housing and on the other hand we see in front of our eyes the opening of Habima, with nicely dressed people enjoying refreshments,” one of the protesters told Ynet.
It was a fitting dramatic debut for the theater which will continue to lead Israeli theater into the coming decades.
Foto Friday – Retrospective for fashion-forward Mula Eshet
Filed under: Art, design, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Pop Culture, Profiles
In our time, photo manipulation has become as much a part of fashion photography as the photographers themselves. Without Photoshop, a new photo exhibition, opening this week at Holon’s Beit Meirov Art Gallery, takes that concept to task, presenting works from the 60s, 70s, and 80s by fashion photographer Mula Eshet. In those times, as the title implies, photographers worked hard to present the camera lens with the most arresting and interesting scenarios because there were no second chances.
In a radio interview today, Eshet said that he, together with his wife, the artist Dalia Eshet, always tried to find unusual locations and tell a story that expressed thought and originality. Venues like the Dead Sea, the zoo, the streets of Tel Aviv and even the Lebanon War were his backdrops. The couple served as stylists, makeup artists, directors, producers, designers — even model scouts, as there were no modeling agencies when they first started.
Eshet: “In the pre-modeling agency days, the relationship between fashion houses and myself was direct. Entire collections were sent to my studio and from that moment on until I got the photo I wanted I dealt with finding the models, designing and producing the image (including location and accessories) — and ‘decorating’ the model (the term ‘styling’ didn’t exist [in Israel])”.
Dalia Eshet: “He loved select the ones that came with a background in dance and movement. The model’s personality was an important component expressed in his photography”.
The exhibition presents photographs of those personalities, including Israel’s leading fashion models of the period, such as Penina Rosenblum circa 1972, before she became Israel’s most famous cosmetics queen / reality show / hoochie mama / ex-Knesset member…
Heli Goldberg went on to an acting career – including one of her best-known roles as a shopping cart bashing pudding thief in “The Battle For Milky” commercial…
The amazing Michaela Berko, Israel’s first 80s supermodel export (who recently paid homage to her famous Vogue cover on the cover of Israel’s La-Isha magazine)…
Exotic Tami Ben-Ami, who lived a supermodel’s life before they gave it a name. She dated wildly popular basketball player Aulcie Perry and was Gottex’s first house model. Sadly, she died of cancer in 1995 at just 40 years old.
The exhibition photos were selected from tens of thousands of images saved by the Eshets over the years, published in Israeli fashion magazines, catalogs, posters, ads and more. Definitely worth checking out, as is this report about Mula Eshet in his heyday.
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