Nostalgia Sunday – British Pathe and the Partition Plan
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, War
It was 63 years ago minus one day, on November 29th 1947, that the UN voted for the partition of Palestine and the creation of an independent Jewish state.
The archives of news company British Pathe are an amazing way to travel back in time, and see how the news was reported around the world. Here is their report about the United Nations session on Palestine.
UN SESSION ON PALESTINE
British Pathe’s archive include films that are a rare glimpse into what life was like in 1947. For example, this footage documenting life in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv when martial law was declared following the bombing of a British officers’ club.
MARTIAL LAW IN TEL AVIV & JERUSALEM
(PALESTINE TODAY)
Raw footage from the Exodus when it docked in Haifa.
HAIFA REFUGEES SHIP
Of course, as important as these issues were — and are — to us, plenty of other things happened during that year. To put things in context, here’s a roundup of all the headlines from 1947.
LOOKING BACK – ON 1947
There’s plenty more to view and review at the British Pathe online archives.
Nostalgia Sunday – Tel Aviv on Film
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, design, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Travel
The Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive at Hebrew University is a trove of valuable celluloid treasures — several hundred of which have been uploaded to YouTube. The archive ranges from 1911′s The First Film of Palestine to the present and include home movies, short films and full length features.
Tel Aviv was from the outset was seen both as the first Jewish city for the yishuv (the early settlement) and a center of Western culture and technology that would set an example for the entire Middle East. This thoroughly modern city was celebrated on film, as in The White City, a selection of clips shot from 1926 to 1964 and edited together in 1999 in honor of the city’s 90th anniversary.
There is also Tel Aviv in Colors shot in 1938 by an unnamed cinematographer.
And cameraman Fred Dunkel’s view of pre-state Tel Aviv in the 1940s.
Beautiful Tel Aviv in Winter was created in 1950 to mark the city’s 40th anniversary. It was shot by Baruch Agadati, legendary artist, choreographer, man about town and self-styled “Creator of the First Hebrew Sound Film”. Agadati may have made the first Hebrew talkie but this film is silent. Nonetheless, Beautiful Tel Aviv in Winter is a delight for anyone who loves the White City.
Nostalgia Sunday – Ghosts of Cinemas Past
Filed under: Art, Blogging, design, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
Architect Sharon Raz is a man with a mission: to capture Israel’s disappearing architectural heritage on film, and write about it, too. Going through Raz’s blog, Natush (meaning: “abandoned”) and his Disappearing Architecture website is like falling into a deep, deep well of what once was.
It can also be sad. It means revisiting ideals once held dear — from the fantasy architecture of early Tel Aviv and practical, functional Bauhaus to the swoops and whooshes of our Fabulous 60s (the Fabulous 50s came here a decade late) — seeing how they were expressed in concrete and stucco, and coming to terms with their current state of neglect and decay.
Raz’s special project on Israel’s shuttered cinemas reflects the state of things in general. Movie theaters have given way to small screened mega-multiplexes that, although far cleaner (one must never forget that for generations, Israeli movie goers were warned, “Do not roll bottles or crack sunflower seeds during the show”), they also lack soul.
Raz has methodically visited movie-houses around the country and created a comprehensive index of Israeli movie-houses that includes, in his words, “[the] old, abandoned, closed, destroyed, refurbished, some still standing, some under threat of the wrecking ball.”
With an architect’s eye for detail, Raz tries to present his viewers not only with general site shots but also the little things: the staircase that once led up to the balcony of Jerusalem’s Orna Cinema, now a stairway leading nowhere at the downtown McDonald’s. The Eden at the bottom of Lilenblum Street, Tel Aviv’s first movie-house — still elegant and seemingly waiting for customers to start lining up at any moment. And another Eden Cinema, this one in Jerusalem, whose whimsically round ticket booth now stands at the back end of a grotty parking lot. The Ron in Haifa, gaily decorated with mosaic musicians. Beer Sheva’s Orot, a circle of concrete diamonds, the motif repeated in the wrought iron ticket booth bars. All stand empty.
“In this life’s work, which is original, unique, voluntary, activist and Sisyphean, I work with conviction to preserve on film for future generations our constructed environment. I photograph many structures – abandoned factories, neglected vacation spots, empty houses, shops, industries, farms, centers for culture and recreation, public and private buildings — most of them old and abandoned. But of all the structures I photographed, I’m particularly proud of the old movie-houses. They are romance incarnate; structures we all remember and hold dear in our hearts, buildings where vast numbers of citizens visited, that gave birth to endless memories and longings.”
Raz’s Disappearing Architecture website and Natush blog are available only in Hebrew but there are amazing photos, including pictures of how the cinemas looked in their heyday. Definitely worth a click.
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).
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.
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