The Israeli Oscar babies

November 11, 2010 - 10:03 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Art, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Pop Culture 

My sons had their film debut this month, and I finally got around to actually seeing the movie. As the babies playing one secretary’s single baby for about a four-minute stretch in Eran Riklis’ “The Human Resources Manager,” they had way more time on-screen than I expected, so that I could actually see which one was in which screen. (Just so you know, it’s Lev who’s crying in Mark Ivanir’s arms in the first piece, Ziv who’s crawling on the floor and Ziv again in the infant seat. And no, didn’t get to meet Guri Alfi or Gila Almagor during filming.)

It was fairly thrilling to see them up on the big screen, and you want to let the rest of the theater know that it’s your kids up there, even though the experience of filming them was a pain in the neck. And I wouldn’t do it again. But hey, seeing their little faces up there? Pre-talking and still crawling? Priceless. And we did stay until the very end to see their names almost at the end of the credits, as well as let two fellow moviegoers know that the baby/ies in the movie were ours.

Of course, we were NOT invited to any premiere — if there even was one — and I am not holding out any hope of getting to the Academy Awards ceremony if the movie — Israel’s nomination for Best Foreign Language film for the Oscars — does become one of the five top-runners. At this point, all I want is a free copy of the film so that the boys will believe us when we tell them they were in a movie when they were just one year old.

But I did like it. And imagine if it does win the Oscar…

Tags: , , , ,

And the winner is… Human Resources Manager

September 23, 2010 - 7:33 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Pop Culture 

A scene from Ophir-winning 'The Human Resources Manager'

Yes, the presentation of the Ophir Awards – Israel’s equivalent to the Academy Awards – is like watching a Mahane Yehuda tomato vendor getting forced to dress up in a tuxedo for the night. But given that the budget for the show, which took place on Tuesday night at the Jerusalem Theater and was broadcast across the country, is a fraction of what Hollywood invests into their annual self-congratulatory fest, the Israelis didn’t do too badly.

Eran Riklis’s The Human Resources Manager was the big winner at the awards, winning Best Picture and Best Director for Riklis. In addition, the film’s Rosina Kambus won Best Supporting Actress and Noah Stollman won for Best Screenplay (which was based on an A. B. Yehoshua novel), and it also picked up the Best Soundtrack award.

And most importantly, the film, which tells the story of a Jerusalem factory manager who goes to Russia to bury a foreign worker killed in a terrorist attack, will now go on to be Israel’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Last year, the film “Ajami” became the third Israeli movie in a row to be nominated in the foreign language category as one of the final top five films. In 2008, Waltz With Bashir was nominated, and previous year the film Beaufort was nominated – but none of them received the award.

According to Jerusalem Post film critic Hannah Brown, approximately 65 countries submit films for consideration in this category each year, “so the fact that Israel has made it to the final five for three years running is an amazing achievement. However, no country has received more than three consecutive nominations since 1980, which means it is unlikely (but not impossible) that Israel will be back in Hollywood again in 2011.”

Human Resources Manager beat out front runner, Nir Bergman’s Intimate Grammar, based on a novel by David Grossman
about a sensitive boy who stops growing. The Riklis film recently won the Audience Award at the Locarno Film Festival and competed in the Toronto International Film Festival.

The three other nominated films were Avi Nesher’s The Matchmaker (formerly called Once I Was), The Flood and Revolution 101, but the race was always between Riklis and Bergman, according to Brown.

Whatever the results, the evening proved that as uncomfortable the Israeli film industry is in aping the glitziness of Hollywood, it’s just as skillfull at making first class films that will continue to impress audiences around the world.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Stage mom

November 13, 2009 - 10:01 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Art, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Movies 

Our director, Eran Riklis

Our director, Eran Riklis

I became a stage mother this week. Through a series of amusing connections and events (my babysitter’s younger sister has a starring role in an Israeli television show, Room Service, and the casting director asked her mother if she knew any babies in Jerusalem who could be cast in a new Eran Riklis film), my boys are two of the babies in Eran Riklis’s latest movie, Human Resources.

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.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Hardly a ‘Lemon’

December 5, 2008 - 10:50 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: coexistence, General, History and Culture, Life, Movies, Pop Culture 

For those of us who live in the Modiin area, the reality of being surroun

ded by Arab villages is a part of daily life. The 443 Highway, which connects greater metro Tel Aviv with greater metro Jerusalem – Modiin sitting ab

out halfway in between – snakes alongside the Green Line for its main

stretches. I used to live in Jerusalem, though, where the Muslim call to prayer could be heard many times daily. The Sharon region, which stretches north and slightly east of Tel Aviv, is itself adjacent to Samaria, where the bulk of the non-Gazan, non-Galilean Palestinian population is located.

So for much of Israel, the reality of living in a Jewish homeland that’s situated in a Muslim-centric region extends well beyond our news headlines, our military-security efforts as a collective and the diplomacy moves of our politicians. The children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael are neighbors here.

Fictional community Tzur Hasharon, apparently located in the Sharon region, is the setting of Eran Riklis’ recent movie, Lemon Tree (trailer streams here), which serves to juxtapose the public-collective Jewish-Muslim relations with the personal-neighborly ones. Of course, it’s the latter that comes off as more connected to reality in the movie – not such a stretch – when the Israeli defense minister’s wife forges an unlikely friendship with a Muslim neighbor, whose lemon grove ends up in the middle of an international media and diplomacy firestorm.

Riklis’ likewise nuanced 2004 movie The Syrian Bride garnered several international awards following its overseas cinematic distribution run. And now Lemon Tree has joined the stable of local films enjoying critical, box office and statuette-based success outside of Israel.

We at Israelity have our fingers crossed for at least one win for the movie at the European Film Academy’s European Film Awards tomorrow night in Copenhagen. Held somewhere different each year (except every other year, when it always takes place in Berlin), the 2008 European Film Awards have nominated Lemon Tree in two categories: Hiam Abbass for Best Actress, and Suha Arraf and Eran Riklis for Best Screenplay. The latter category impressively includes another Israeli nominee, the beloved animated documentary Waltz with Bashir.

While our hopes are high, The Jerusalem Post’s Hannah Brown points out that The Band’s Visit won Israeli actor Sasson Gabbai a 2007 Best Actor award, which might make more Israeli prizes less likely. We shall see very soon.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

 

© 2012 ISRAELITY | Site by illuminea | Sitemap