‘They’re gonna put me in the movies’
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Pop Culture, Social Justice
Israel may have been shut out of the Best Foreign Film category in next month’s Oscar competition for the first time in a few years, but that doesn’t mean we’re not represented.
Strangers No More, a 40-minute documentary by American filmmakers Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman, has been nominated in the Best Documentary Short category, to be awarded at the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27. And the subject of the film is the lives of students and teachers at south Tel Aviv school Bialik-Rogozin, home to a diverse student body, including many immigrants and children of African refugees.
The film focuses on principal Keren Tal and teacher Smadar Moeres and takes viewers over the course of a school year into the day-to-day lives of three students: Johannes from Ethiopia, Esther from South Africa and Muhammad from Darfur. With a new culture to adjust to amid strange surroundings, the school becomes the children’s safe haven. The school – in a poor Tel Aviv neighborhood – teaches more than 800 children from 48 countries, all brought together through the language of instruction, Hebrew.
According to The Jerusalem Post, Bialik-Rogozin has become famous in Israel over the past year, as the issue of the children of foreign workers and asylum-seekers and their possible deportation has regularly made the headlines.
Filmmaker Simon said he hoped the nomination would raise the profile of the issue about children of migrant workers in Israel, and enable them to stay in the country.
Though it’s his fourth Oscar nomination, Simon said “this nomination is very special to me, as I’ve grown very close to both the teachers and students at the Bialik-Rogozin school.
“I believe that the mission of the school is worthy of worldwide recognition, and these children should be able to stay and be educated at the school,” he told The Post.
News of the film’s nomination thrilled Keren Tal, the principal of Bialik- Rogozin, who features prominently throughout the film. She said that the school’s success in educating students from dozens of countries speaking a multitude of languages could not have been made possible without “the best teaching staff in the world” and a great deal of support from the Tel Aviv Municipality and the Education Ministry.
“The school’s message of hope and the way it reminds us of our basic moral values as Jews will now be sent across the world,” Tal said.
Oscar fever in Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Crime, General, Israeliness, Movies, Pop Culture
Ajami directors Scandar Copti (left) and Yaron Shani in Hollywood over the weekend (Photo: Reuters)
It’s the third year running that an Israeli film has been nominated (after Beaufort and Waltz With Bashir). And Ajami’s intense portrayals – intertwined stories of a young Muslim in the crime-ridden Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa gets caught in an Arab clan feud and his own forbidden romance with a Christian woman; a Jewish police officer in search of his missing soldier brother, and the tale of a Palestinian youth who sneaks into Israel for menial work – are making it, if not a favorite, then at least a strong contender for the Oscar.
And, as Hannah Brown wrote in The Jerusalem Post, Ajami has already won just by getting to the Hollywood ceremonies. Directed by an Arab – Scandar Copti – and a Jew – Yaron Shani, “it’s hard to overstate the symbolic value of the collaboration and friendship between these two, who are from different ethnic groups, religious affiliations and backgrounds. They spent seven years working on this gritty film about the crime-ridden Ajami neighborhood in Jaffa, which they managed to get into the Cannes Film Festival, where it won a special mention. These two young, first-time directors who had to live with relatives while making the film because they had put all their money into it, have seen it win honors and rave reviews on three continents.”
It’s been fun watching the the two, along with the cast and their families first forays into Hollywood – most of the cast consisted of Jaffa residents who weren’t really acting too much in their portrayals of the working class; for many, it was their first trip outside of Israel and for some, their first airplane ride. Star Shahir Kabahar, 25, had to take vacation days from his job as a bureka baker at his family’s Jaffa bakery, in order to travel to the ceremony.
Footage of them walking outside the Kodak Theater and staring wide-eyed at the spectacles on Hollywood Boulevard demonstrate the huge journey one can make with film and the impact on lives it can create. Good luck to Ajami tonight!
Israeli Oscar nomination imitates life
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Crime, General, Life, Movies
A scene from 'Ajami'
The bad news – if it wins, some of the actors might be in jail instead of at the ceremony in Hollywood.
The film, about the lives of Arabs and Jews in the impoverished, crime-ridden neighborhoods of Jaffa, uses amateur actors to capture the gritty realism that prompted its nomination. However that realism spilled over into… um… reality last week when two brothers of the film’s co-director were arrested for fighting with police in a scene that could have been pinched directly from the film.
According to an AP report, Yaron Shani, a Jew, and Scandar Copti, an Arab — shot “Ajami” on location in the rundown, scrappy neighborhood of the same name in the city of Jaffa, and used local residents to play the main roles in the film. One of them was Copti’s brother, who along with a third brother, was arrested in the skirmish over alleged drug use.
Residents said that on Saturday evening, two teenagers were burying a dead dog when police arrived, suspecting they were hiding drugs. When they questioned the youths, Arab neighbors, who generally distrust law enforcement, came to the scene, some scuffling with police.
Tony Copti, 29, who appeared in the film, told The Associated Press that police are often harsh with Arab residents. After confronting police, he and his brother Jiriass were handcuffed and sprayed in the face with pepper spray before being taken away for questioning, he said.
Police said they briefly detained the men for attacking officers, releasing them after questioning. They gave no further details.
In the ‘Ajami,’ police enter Ajami to arrest a drug dealer and neighbors protest, allowing the dealer to slip away. In the next scene, Jewish police blame Arab residents for preventing them from cleaning up the neighborhood.
“The story in the film, that’s how it really happens in Jaffa,” Tony Copti told AP.
While the whole incident was greatly unpleasant for the principals, it may inadvertently drum up better publicity for the film than a full page ad in Variety.
Waltz with Bashir snubbed in LA
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, General, Movies, Pop Culture
Conventional wisdom unequivocally asserted that the only Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee to hold a candle to Waltz with Bashir was France’s The Class – but that even that movie was hardly as technically groundbreaking or thematically poignant as Israel’s nominee. Regardless, The Academy instead gave the award to Japan’s Departures (pictured in all of its smirking glory).
Bashir therefore joins a long list of Israel-made Oscar losers that includes Sallah Shabati and HaShoter Azoulay.
When Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort failed to take home a statuette a year ago, the director was gracious and stoic, putting the situation in the proper context. He even went so far as to give The Jerusalem Post the ultimate cliché Oscar loser soundbyte:
[Cedar] seemed to keep his hopes in check at a symposium prior to the ceremony, saying he was “happy just to have been nominated. I’m not even thinking about winning.”
….”We have shown that Israel can make very good movies,” Beaufort actor Eli Eltonyo told the cheering crowd [at a post-Oscars party], “and we will prove it again next time.”
Next time was earlier this week, but Eltonyo’s prediction didn’t come to fruition – at least not as fully as he might have hoped. But Bashir‘s creative team was hardly as gracious as Beaufort‘s was. The jPost caught up with director Ari Folman after the show:
“It’s a game,” Folman said, shrugging. “It’s 500 anonymous voters, and I don’t know a single one.”
He said he planned to drink the night away before getting on a plane home to Israel.
“I’ll be glad to be done with all of this traveling, though I am going to miss it in a few months – but right now I just want to go home and be with my kids,” Folman told the Post.
Back here in Israel, the rest of the Bashir team was even more disappointed, as Haaretz notes:
Nitzan Roiy, in charge of composing and special effects, stayed in his chair.
“It’s horrible,” he said. “When we came here we were sure we had it in our hand. It’s a shame.”
…. “We were very confident before the ceremony,” said Neta Holzer, one of the animators who joined the Israeli delegation to Los Angeles. “We didn’t talk about winning, but we had a very good gut feeling. Everyone is disappointed, but we’re getting used to it.”
With so many great movies continuing to come out of our local industry, we can all comfort ourselves by saying, “There’s always next year.” At least that;s what the good sports among us will say.
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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