A new take on an old woman
When I was in college, I was a big fan of conceptual art. I would spend my free time trawling avant-garde museums in search of a performance art video of a man writing on the floor for 25 minutes or a theatrical piece narrated entirely on a Walkman tape player. I even created my own multimedia project, which combined dance, original music and psychedelic video.
I still enjoy the wackier side of art, but my tastes – or perhaps my tolerance level – has become more discerning over the years. But when a show of young Jerusalem video and animation artists took place just around the corner from my home – well, how could I resist?
The program, called Home.Video (yes, that’s spelled correctly), took place at the recently relocated Merkaz Hamagshimim center, a combination absorption, community and activist center for English-speaking new immigrants, sponsored by Hadassah’s Young Judea Zionist youth movement and located in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem.
The exhibit, which included students from Jerusalem’s prestigious Bezalel art school, the Sam Spiegel film school and Sapir College in Sderot (in the news more for its proximity to Gaza and its rockets).
The projects displayed were pretty eclectic, including a woman contorting herself into a narrow bookshelf and a video that featured both a ballerina and a cute kitty (can you say viral YouTube video?)
Our favorite was by Mizmor Watzman (full disclosure: she’s our kids’ old babysitter and the reason we knew about the show in the first place). Nevertheless, her work was an intricate animated piece playing off the classic “Old Woman in the Shoe” folk tale. In the video, the woman had to contend with an animated chalk drawing that was wreaking havoc on her obsessive quest to keep the shoe squeaky clean.
Mizmor told us that it had taken her a week of sleepless nights to film and another 3 months to edit. You can find it on YouTube here. At just a few minutes in length, it’s well worth a look.
Nostalgia Sunday – Strange… I’ve seen that face before
Filed under: design, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture, tv
Went out to dine, en famille, at local Jerusalem eatery Pinati and noticed a change in their corporate image. Instead of a photoshopped photo of a rather excited-looking young man in a Turkish tarbush, what we now have is a cartoon — or is it a caricature? — of a man, still wearing the traditional fez — but looking remarkably like a contemporary US president.
It got me thinking about other brands we’ve had, throughout the years, that were inspired — a nice way of putting it — by other, perhaps more well-known images.
For example, take a look at Dan Haschan (“Thrifty Dan”), the elf that throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, helped Bank Hapoalim to encourage young people to save their agorot. He might as well be the eighth of Snow White’s dwarves. I mean, I get that the bag he’s holding is full of money but if he’s not one of them, then what’s the pickax for?
BTW: Dan was recently revived by Poalim, sans tools and his bag upgraded to a cool moneybox. There’s a good blog posting about the comeback (in Hebrew) on Samlil, a site devoted to Israeli branding and its sister site, Safta, a fantastic Flickr photostream of vintage Israeliana.
I’ve always loved the Ama lady, the face that launched a thousand loads of laundry. But look carefully and what you’ll see is Betty Boop, had she been born in pre-State Mandatory Palestine, served in the Palmach, married, moved into a workers’ residence and had to do all her washing by hand in the communal laundry room.
And who can forget MacDavid, the little kosher fast food chain that could? Certainly not McDonald’s, who sued the now defunct franchise (8 outlets in it’s heyday) for trademark infringement — and lost!
We have to forgive Walla!, Israel’s answer to Yahoo!, for the close resemblance because at the time every country had its own local Nanas, Yallas!, Kartoos or other copycat search engine-cum-web portal.
Clearly, there’s no way that Zakumi, the 2010 World Cup Mascot, could have known about Strauss-Elite’s new chocolate-inspired foursome, the Elite-Team. They probably just go to the same hairdresser.
However, there’s every chance that El-Al’s branding and marketing team had seen a relatively uknown little film called Walt Disney’s Peter Pan. Check out the winged flight attendant and tell me there’s no resemblance to our favorite jealous fairy.
But the biggest “tribute”* around these days has got to be animated cartoon Ahmed & Salim.
The elevator pitch: would-be Palestinian terrorists meet South Park. It’s been narrowcasting on YouTube for a while, earning its share of media coverage, bans and death threats along the way, and last week made its Israeli cable debut on comedy channel Bip.
An 11-year old told me it was really funny. I am unconvinced. But I suppose it beats what they’re showing kids on Palestinian TV. And Israel hasn’t ripped off Mickey Mouse, Maya the Bee and Bugs Bunny… yet.
*Another nice word
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.
Nostalgia Sunday – Joseph Bau’s studio
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
Tel Aviv, like many cities that are cultural centers, houses many small gems, collections of artwork which are part of modern Israel’s history and should be preserved. Intending to do a write-up on the work of painter, graphic artist, animator, author, poet and publisher Joseph Bau (1920-2002), I logged into the Joseph Bau webiste only to discover that the studio where Bau worked for 40 years may close due to financial difficulties.
The modest studio-cum-museum includes paintings by Bau, commercial advertisements, and corporate logos, including those of “Eskimo Lemon” popsicles, Shekem (the IDF equivalent of the PX), and Israeli movies including: “Kazablan”, “Salah Shabati” and others.
Bau’s remarkable story – some of which was dramatized in the film Schindler’s List – began in Poland. He was a student at the University for Plastic Arts in Krakow when World War II broke out and Jews were sent to Nazi concentration camps. During his internment at the Plashow Concentration camp, Bau fell in love with another inmate, Rebecca. They secretly married when Bau smuggled himself into the women’s camp – their love story inspired a scene in the film.
Bau never lost hope or a sense of humor and it was art that saved his life. At Plashow, and then Gross-Rosen, he worked as a draftsman, lettered signs in Gothic type while secretly forging documents and identity papers. According to his online biography, he saved 400 lives in the process. Bau was later transferred to to Oscar Schindler’s camp where he stayed till the end of the war. Bau then returned to Krakow to complete his university studies and work as a newspaper graphic artists and illustrator.
In 1950 Bau immigrated to Israel with his wife and oldest daughter. According to his biography, “He was recruited to a secret unit of the intelligence corps that dealt with technical covert operations that utilized his talent for art and graphics. Later he was transferred, together with other Intelligence corps personnel to a similar unit that was formed and worked as part of the intelligence community belonging to the Prime Minister’s office. Joseph never spoke of these activities.” One may assume however, that his talent as a forger was also not overlooked.
In 1956 Bau opened his studio in Tel Aviv, where he painted, worked in commercial art (including designing the famous Amisragas logo) and animation, as well as authoring and illustrating a number of humorous books – even one about his experiences during the Holocaust.
Bau’s daughters, Hadasa and Clila, want to continue keeping this special little museum alive to commemorate their father’s life, artistic achievements, and his contribution to the State of Israel. They have started a petition requesting the city of Tel Aviv provide support.
Waltz with Bashir gets Oscar nod and Beirut screening
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, coexistence, History and Culture, Movies, Pop Culture, War
In the same week that saw Waltz with Bashir finally secure a place on the short list of movies nominated for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award, the movie was finally shown to the public in Beirut, where much of it takes place. Waltz with Bashir is officially banned by Lebanon, but through a loophole, a Lebanese multimedia war archive organization called UNAM was able to show the movie to a modest crowd of 90 at a “private party,” a piece in Variety reports.
Already a bona fide marvel for the innovative manner in which it melds documentary footage with animated dreamscapes, Ari Folman’s tour de force garnered acclaim on the international festival circuit before winning a Golden Globe earlier this month.
As of late last week, Bashir is one of five finalists for that Oscar, nominated alongside offerings from Austria, Germany, France and Japan, with the winner to be announced at the award ceremony on February 22. Following Beaufort‘s nomination a year ago, Bashir making the short list of Foreign Language Oscar nominees means that two Israeli movies focusing on the IDF’s role in Lebanon have received Oscar nods in as many years.
Folman himself is generally skeptical that Bashir is in a position to make a difference in the world, telling the international press on numerous occasions that he sees war as an unfortunate fixture. On the other hand, now that his movie has screened in Beirut, he has modified his stance. “In principle I don’t believe movies can change the world, but I’m a great believer in their ability to form small bridges,” Folman told Haaretz in the context of that newspaper’s coverage of the Beirut screening.
Small bridges of coexistence and peace indeed. The movie has already been shown in Ramallah and may soon receive a modest theatrical release in the gulf states, according to the Haaretz article, and last Saturday’s screening in a Beirut suburb was not simple to arrange either. The UMAM organization’s leadership is proud to have accomplished what it has with the Israeli movie:
“The subject of this film is a crucial moment in the history of Lebanon, for the history of Israel, for the history of the Palestinians, and for the history of Palestinian life in Lebanon,” UMAM founder Monika Borgmann told Haaretz.
“At some point every state must deal with its violent past and the sooner it does so the better. That’s why I think this movie should be shown,” she said.
“Yesterday, my phone didn’t stop ringing…everyone wants a copy of the film,” she said. “I think it comes out on DVD in March. The next day, it’s going to be pirated all over Lebanon.”
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