And the winner is… Human Resources Manager
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Pop Culture
A scene from Ophir-winning 'The Human Resources Manager'
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.
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 film ‘Lebanon’ takes top prize in Venice
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Movies, Pop Culture, War
It’s ironic that just as a group of well-known actors and filmmakers, among them Jane Fonda and Danny Glover, are calling to boycott this year’s Toronto International Film Festival because one program there will be devoted to films set in Tel Aviv to mark that city’s centennial, an Israeli film walked off with top honors at the 66th Venice Film Festival.
Israeli director Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon won the Golden Lion, the top prize, at the closing ceremony on Saturday night, the third Israeli film based on soldiers in Lebanon besides Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort in 2008 and Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir in 2009 to win major awards. None of those films could come close to being described as Israeli propoganda, as the pro-boycotters claim all Israeli film is, and in fact, they provide a critical look at Israeli society and the wars we’ve fought.
Lebanon, Maoz’ first feature film, received glowing reviews from critics, with The International Herald Tribune calling it “a powerful and original film.” Based on Maoz’s battle memories, Lebanon depicts the fate of an IDF tank and its crew behind enemy lines at the beginning of the first Lebanon War in 1982.
According to The Jerusalem Post, the hard-hitting film is shot almost entirely from the point of view of the soldiers inside the tank, and is uncompromising in its depiction of the confusion of war, the inevitability of casualties (both civilian and military), and the claustrophobia of being stuck inside a machine that protects soldiers but can also become a death trap at any moment. It is highly critical of the leadership that brought these soldiers into such a deadly situation and left them there with so little guidance.
Lebanon is nominated for several Ophir Awards, the prizes of the Israel Academy for Film, including Best Picture. The Ophir winners will be announced in a ceremony on September 26.
The winner of the Ophir Award becomes Israel’s official entry to be considered for a nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
It’s also ironic, that as more and more quality Israeli films are being made that have nothing to do with war and conflict, it is precisely those war-based movies that are touching an international audience. If the naysayers who would deny audiences in Toronto from viewing the spectrum of film which reflect the diversity of Israeli culture – that don’t attempt to whitewash any blemishes or skirt over the pall of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – would only view some of the films themselves, they may reconsider their decision to boycott.
An animated Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, Business, design, General, Pop Culture
The interactive Israeli TV show 'Celebz' created by local animation studio The Box.
In the wake of the success of Oscar-nominated film Waltz With Bashir, the country’s bubbling animation industry is finally getting noticed internationally, and for the burgeoning animation studios producing top industry standard level material, it’s perfect timing.
Gwen Ackerman over at the Bloomberg new agency recently wrote an excellent overview of the Israeli animation industry – focusing on Tel Aviv’s Crew 972, which boasts Alex Orrelle who helped create The Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc. during the three years he worked in California at Walt Disney Co.’s Pixar Animation Studios, and on Jerusalem-based Animation Lab, founded in 2006, which is working on The Wild Bunch, a story of flowers defending their meadow from genetically modified corn stalks.
“[Waltz With Bashir] had a strong impact on the image of Israel as an animation-savvy country,” said Orrelle. “When I call up an animation studio outside Israel, they are no longer surprised. We are definitely seeing business opportunities expand.”
Proving the point that animation is no kid’s game, Ackerman talked to David Chissick, founder of Chissick & Co., a company based in Herzliya that invests in and advises media and technology companies. He estimates that as much as $100 million has been poured into the growing Israeli animation industry in the past five years.
“If you look at the number of people working at the moment and the number of courses there are, the industry has grown four times compared to what it was eight years ago,” Chissick said. Orrelle, the animation artist, agreed, saying an increasing number of Israelis were taking up animation as a profession, while others are returning from studies abroad.
And, as usual, even with something as unrelated as animation, it eventually all comes back to the ingenuity of Israelis and our innovation by neccessity quality derived from having our literal backs against the wall throughout our history.
The founder of the Animation Lab, successful venture wunderkind Erel Margalit, put it this way.
“It is as much about technology as it is about culture, a culture daring to start to do something from scratch.”
Even, a non-Israeli, David Simon, former head of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.’s television studio in Los Angeles, said he saw one of the first real-time three-dimensional cameras on a trip to Israel, adapted from technology originally used on the tip of a cruise missile.
Now, that’s something that Tweety Bird definitely could have made use of.
Lights, camera, Shalom
Academy Award nominee Waltz With Bashir
But one area where the local film industry hasn’t done so well is in attracting foreign film producers to shoot their movies here. It’s a shame, because Israel has such cinematic locations – the beach, the desert, the Golan, the old cities of Jerusalem and Acre.
But until now, it’s been too expensive to bring a huge crew and equipment over, so foreign productions have been few and far between. I was an extra once in 1988 in Appointment with Death, an adaption of an Agatha Christie novel, starring Peter Ustinov, Sir John Gielgud and my personal favorite, David (Starsky) Soul that was filmed in Jerusalem. My portrayal of a British soldier in Palestine circa 1930s did irreparable damage to the reputation of Israeli actors, and since then, we’ve been suffering.
Even Adam Sandler’s Zohan filmed the scenes that are supposedly in Israel in some other location like Hawaii.
But now, things may change. The Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry has announced that Israel will offer foreign film producers tax breaks of 20 percent if they collaborate with Israeli production companies.
The announcement was made a day ahead of the opening of the Cannes Film Festival, and one of the sessions there featuring producers will focus on Israel as a location for making movies and TV shows. The ministry will also man a booth at the festival distributing pamphlets listing the advantages of filming here.
The Jerusalem Post reported that according to the pamphlet to be distributed at Cannes, Israel has several selling points: a vast pool of actors and extras of varying ethnicities representing more than 100 countries, many different types of locations within easy driving distance, and 120 production companies, 10 production studios and 30 post-production facilities.
Israeli producer Gal Uchovsky, the business partner of director Eytan Fox (Walk on Water, The Bubble) said that he was pleased with the move.
“Countries [that] have offered such incentives drew a lot of producers. Morocco and Ireland, for example, have made a lot of effort to draw in foreign filmmakers and it has paid off.
“This is a very good financial decision. It will provide an income for much of the local industry and will raise the local industry’s standards,” said Uchovsky.
We may not see Brad and Angie here tomorrow, but hopefully the government decision will help Israelwood get off the ground.
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