Hamshush time
Filed under: Business, General, Israeliness, Movies, Music
If it’s the weekend of December 3-5, then it’s the second Hamshushalayim, which is one of those Hebrish idioms for Hamshush — that’s a combo of Hamishi, Thursday, and Shishi, Friday and Yerushalayim, Jerusalem. But what it really means in this context is three long weekends of various Jerusalem events, from plays and musical performances to bar specials and city tours.
It’s all part of Mayor Nir Barkat’s efforts to liven up the city of Jerusalem, and make it a happening place, rather than a place of ‘incidents’ and situations.
“We broke all records this past summer with festivals and events,” he says, whipping out the first statistic: the doubling of the local culture budget. “Journalists don’t always grasp that the public differentiates between a demonstration and a performance, even if they are just 300 or 500 meters apart. Beautiful things are happening in Jerusalem parallel to the demonstrations, even if they lend themselves less to media coverage,” he told Ha’aretz last weekend.
The events are definitely geared toward students, university students that is, in an effort to keep them in Jerusalem. But there’s lots of cultural stuff going on, so it’s worth checking out.
Here’s the PDF brochure in Hebrew, and a few events that I’ve selected that look worthwhile:
*The Psik Theater group will be performing for free on Alrov Mamilla Avenue at 9, 10 and 11 pm on Thursday night.
*All Cinematheque movies are just NIS 28 for all Hamshushalayim participants, throughout the weekend.
*Nighttime tours of City of David, between 9 pm and 12 am, NIS 10-NIS 20 per ticket.
*Craft fairs at the ICCY and on Bezalel Hakatan (in town), on Friday morning.
And if you can’t make it this weekend, there’s always next weekend.
The filmmakers’ visit
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Movies, Pop Culture
There’s plenty of buzz surrounding the possibility that Israeli animated documentary Waltz with Bashir may end up nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar. The official Academy Award nominations won’t be announced until January 22, leaving us plenty of time to focus instead on how the movie has already helped a great deal with putting Israeli film on the international award map, and how the global movie industry and Israel have been going had-in-hand more and more.
Israeli lawmakers took major steps towards enabling Hollywood “runaway production” here this past summer.
More recently, studio mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg organized for Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith to attend the Netanya premiere for Madagascar 2, whipping local fans and less local media outlets into a celeb-feeding storm.
And last month, William Morris Agency senior Motion Picture Department executive David Lonner teamed up with the Los Angeles Jewish Federation to bring several top movie execs to Israel to check out the scene here. Lonner organized a similar trip two years ago, but this time, he managed to bring big names like director Peter Sollett (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) and producers Nathan Kahane (Juno), Darren Star (Sex and the City) and Roger Birnbaum (The Sixth Sense, pictured). The Jerusalem Post recounts the experience in detail, with coverage including these moguls’ advice for how ambitious Israeli filmmakers can make it big overseas:
“They’ve got to cross the bridge,” says Kahane. “Make films inside the system, like some directors from Mexico have recently – Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro. They came and conquered Hollywood, then they can go back and work at home again. But they’ve branded themselves in the international community. It creates the opportunity to grow and play in the A-game. And it broadens the conversation on cultural identity outside the film industry as well.”
Birnbaum agrees, saying, “If they want to be competitive in the world marketplace, they need to tell stories that are more universal and make movies that work all over the world.”
Moreover, the trip included visits to tourist hotspots, a Q/A session at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and a meet-and-greet dinner with local industry luminaries like actress Ronit Elkabetz, the Oscar-nominated writer-director Joseph Cedar and writer Etgar Keret. “They were very eager, very knowledgeable, a talented and diverse group of people,” Kahane says of the group.
Focusing in on Haifa
Funny what a difference two years makes. In the throes of the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, the northern Israeli city of Haifa is thriving once again. And the proof in the pudding is the 24th Haifa International Film Festival, which is running during the Succot holiday from October 14-21 at the Haifa Cinematheque.
In addition to featuring over 150 films from all over the world, the festival is hosting guests like Jeanne Moreau, star of Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, director Paul Schrader, British actress Kelly Harrison, and Joseph Fiennes, best known for starring in Shakespeare in Love. Fiennes’ latest movie, Spring 41, was directed by Israeli Uri Barbash and is being screened at the festival. Moreau appears in Amos Gitai’s Plus Tard Tu Comprendras (One Day You’ll Understand), a movie about a woman who has kept her past as a Holocaust survivor a secret from her children, and she’ll receive an award at the festival.
The festival opened on Tuesday with the Israeli premier of Woody Allen’s latest offering Vicky Cristina Barcelona, starring Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, and Javier Bardem. Original reported stated that the Woodman would be attending the opening, but alas, it was not to be.
Homegrown talent Ayelet Zurer, known internationally for her role in Steven Spielberg’s Munich, will attend screenings of her new movie, Fugitive Pieces, about a child whose family is killed in Nazi-occupied Poland and grows up longing for his lost sister.
And among the seven Israeli feature films being screened is Castles in the Air, Broken Wings’ director Nir Bergman’s look at a family gathering for their parents’ 35th wedding anniversary. Two films focus on the host city of Haifa and the effects the war had on it – Oren Gvili’s Secured Space looks at how that conflict affects a couple trying to hold its wedding, and Tamar Glezerman’s The Other War follows three women during that conflict.
So while it may rain on in most of the country during ‘hol hamoed’, dampening hikes and camping trips, the screening rooms at the Haifa Cinemateque will be dry, warm and full of provocative films. Thanks to The Jerusalem Post’s Hannah Brown for providing the information on the films.
Foto Friday – Sderot Through the Chameleon’s Eye
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, Life, Movies, War
A lot of stuff happened this week in Sderot that you wouldn’t have expected. An antique car rally blew into town, for instance. Who knew? An international film festival opened. I wasn’t there but fortunately, photographer Rafael Ben-Ari was, and this week’s Foto Friday comes courtesy of his news photo syndicate, Chameleons Eye.
My last encounter with Sderot was the inauguration of a portable above-ground bomb shelter. And yes, five minutes after we arrived on site, there was an air raid and we had 15 seconds to run into a dingy stairwell for shelter, (the port-o-shelter not having yet arrived). Some interesting thoughts flash through your mind when you’re struggling to climb over a fence in heels while your bosses sprint vigorously ahead with nary a look backwards, none of them printable. Thank goodness there was someone – a photographer as it happened – who turned around to lend me a hand. A hero. 10 minutes later we were all back on the street again. That’s life in Sderot.
So, in between the rockets, here’s what went down this week. The 7th London to Jerusalem JNF Car Rally started in England on May 18th. Participants drove via France, Switzerland, Italy and Greece, then came by ship to Israel and toured around the country. On Sunday they visited Sderot. Yesterday they were in Jerusalem. I know because I saw this particular car. My cab driver and I were both very thrilled.
Actually, come to think of it, I had another encounter with Sderot this year, when the folks from Hangar 11 at the Tel Aviv Port invited Sderot shop owners to bring their businesses to Tel Aviv for a few days. I couldn’t find a thing I wanted to buy until I saw the woman selling subscriptions to the Sderot Cinematheque. The deal was that they would donate it to a schoolchild in my name. I was charmed by the idea of fostering the next generation of effete little cinema snobs, not to mention keeping a kid off the streets and out of harm’s way, and immediately purchased one.
This week’s 7th Cinema South Film Festival premiered three new Israeli films at the Cinematheque and a host of local celebs made an appearance. Rafael has pictures of them on his site. He also has plenty of pictures of rocket blasts and their physical, political and spiritual aftermaths. But I liked this photo because it’s just a bunch of people having a good time.
This coming week will be Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. In recent years, this holiday tradition of not eating meat has been coopted by Israel’s dairy companies, who’ve turned it into a cheese eating orgy. But down in the southern region of Hof Ashkelon where Rafael lives, grain still ripens in the fields as the moon waxes, becoming ready to be gathered – just as it was 3000 years ago – and you understand this is a holiday of early summer harvest.
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