ERETZ AND GALUT: Arts & Culture

1,000 strip for Dead Sea nude shoot

2011-09-17T08:08:00.000-04:00

A group of selected Israelis takes part in Spencer Tunick's first mass nude shoot at Dead Sea, as curious bystanders hover nearby

Ynetnews | by Keren Natanzon

A group of 1,000 Israelis especially selected to take part in Spencer Tunick's first mass nude shoot at the Dead Sea, arrived by buses overnight at the famous landmark on Saturday.

The chosen location was not revealed until the moment of arrival so as to prevent religious officials or curious bystanders from disturbing the photo shoot.

The group of Israelis, consisting of both men and women ages 18 to 77, gathered on the beach around 1 am, awaiting the photo session to begin with the sunrise. When the sun finally came up, Tunick instructed a 1,000 Israelis to enter the salty water, as he photographed them floating in the Dead Sea.
Read more »

The Tribal Update interviews General Tantawi and brings you to the deck of a Turkish warship

2011-09-16T13:05:00.000-04:00

Weekly update from LatmaTV - Israel's most trusted news source

Tunick's Dead Sea shoot to be thwarted?

2011-09-16T00:50:00.000-04:00

Some 1,000 Israelis prepared to take off their clothes for famous American photographer on Saturday, but Tamar Regional Council head says won't allow 'provocative event' to go through

by Danny Adeno Abebe

After the Alps, the Sydney Opera House, the Vienna soccer stadium and other famous landmarks, the lowest place on earth will be hosting its first mass nude photo shoot this Saturday – if all goes as planned.

More than 3,000 Israelis have asked to take part in Spencer Tunick's Dead Sea shoot. But the 1,000 who have been selected may be in for a disappointment.
Read more at Ynet »

Q&A: Scott Ian

2011-09-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

Before the “Big 4” heavy metal show at Yankee Stadium, the Anthrax guitarist and lyricist talks Queens, Jews, and Louis Farrakhan

Tablet Magazine
by David Samuels

Scott Ian was a 14-year-old kid from Bayside, Queens, when he saw his first KISS show at Madison Square Garden. Now 47, and living in California with his wife Pearl Aday, who is Meat Loaf’s daughter, the rhythm guitarist and primary lyricist for the heavy metal band Anthrax is an energetic little man with an outlandishly long and pointy billy-goat beard that immediately marks him as a stage performer of some kind, or a refugee from a reality show or a circus.

A proud freak and knowing fan, a talented performer, a songwriter and businessman who has sold over 10 million albums of his music worldwide, Ian is a funny mix of brainless extrovert and outer-borough sharpie. Born Scott Ian Rosenfeld, he at first denied that being Jewish meant anything in particular to him growing up. As he tried to solve the riddle of why a Jew from Queens would be attracted to the music of meth addicts and assembly-line workers, he revealed a streak of ethnic pride that helped him explain why the Jew and the metal-head in him are actually the same person.
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The Turkish dumbbell and the sorrows of the evicted

2011-09-09T21:33:00.000-04:00

Weekly update from LatmaTV - Israel's most trusted news source

Orphaned Land: Heavy metal envoys to Muslim world

2011-09-08T23:45:00.000-04:00

Heading to Istanbul for a show in the wake of downgrade in Israel-Turkey ties, band says they have become Israel’s only ambassador to Turkey.

JPost
by Ben Hartman

Israel’s sole remaining “ambassadors” to the Turkish Republic have long hair, tattoos and legions of fans across the Muslim world.

While heavy metal music probably can’t repair shattered Turkish-Israeli ties, Israeli metal band Orphaned Land is confident leaders in Ankara and Jerusalem can learn a lot from their fan base, which includes Israelis, Iranians, Syrians and other metal fans from across the Arab and Muslim world.
Read more »

The Revered and Reviled Bernard Lewis

2011-09-07T16:51:00.000-04:00

A Retrospective Of The Scholar Who Provided The Intellectual Ammunition For The Iraq War

MOMENT MAGAZINE
by Daphna Berman

Bernard Lewis has just moved to a small apartment in the manicured suburbs on Philadelphia’s Main Line. At 95, it was time for the man the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing calls the “most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East” to leave Princeton—his home for more than 35 years—for a senior living facility known for attracting retired academics.

“I’m getting old, I’m no longer sure about dates,” he tells me in his polished British accent, though this moment of self-deprecation is hardly convincing: Our conversation reflects his uncanny ability to recollect dates, time lines and facts—both from his lifetime and several centuries before. As we talk, Lewis recalls the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 as easily as the Turkish elections of 1950. He also regales me with stories, though it is impossible to predict which millennium they will date to. One minute, it’s the Marx Brothers skits he shared with the Shah of Iran in the days before the revolution, the next, an eighth century Arabian joke about a sinful woman praying to Allah for mercy before she dies. And he speaks with eloquence, his ideas organized into complete paragraphs.
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More than just bricks in a wall: What the entire Kotel looked like

2011-09-07T15:59:00.000-04:00

Two thousand years after King Herod’s builders laid the foundations for the Kotel on the Temple Mount, Israeli archaeologists have reached these foundations. The Wall’s architectonic picture is nearly complete and will soon be unveiled publicly.

Israel Hayom | by Nadav Shragai

These past few months have witnessed the completion of a historic work undertaken in the City of David: the uncovering of the lowest point of the Western Wall’s foundational structure. The discovery, which has been hidden deep underground for thousands of years, was made possible by the uncovering of a Herodian-era drainage canal by archaeologists. Now the Western Wall’s entire architectonic picture is nearly complete, and it will be unveiled publicly in the next few weeks.

The tens of thousands of Jews who streamed toward the Western Wall two nights ago to ask for divine forgiveness could not have known that just south of them, deep underground, a real archaeological drama was unfolding. Two thousand years after King Herod’s builders laid the foundations for the Western Wall on the Temple Mount, Israeli archaeologists have managed to reach these foundations and expose them anew.
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Anti-Semite Louis-Ferdinand Céline and the Jews Who Read Him

2011-09-05T14:58:00.000-04:00

Forward.com
By Benjamin Ivry

Fifty years after his death on July 1, 1961, French modernist author and ferocious anti-Semite Louis-Ferdinand Céline is still causing controversy. Last January, an attempt by France’s Ministry of Culture to “celebrate” Céline on this anniversary ran aground after noted Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld pointed out that Céline was not merely the author of such recognized landmarks of modern fiction as 1932’s “Journey to the End of the Night” and 1936’s “Death on the Installment Plan,” but also of three lengthy anti-Semitic tracts, published before and during World War II, that were, as author Pierre Assouline notes, “authentic calls to murder” Jews.

Novelist Catherine Clément resigned from France’s High Commission for National Commemorations to protest Céline’s official celebration, a nationwide uproar ensued and Céline’s name was eventually dropped from the list of cultural figures honored in 2011.
Read more »

Yiddishkeit

2011-09-01T21:39:00.000-04:00

The last fully realized work by the late Harvey Pekar illuminates the bluntness and delight of American Yiddish in the last century. An excerpt from a new anthology of comics.

Tablet Magazine
by Neal Gabler

Perhaps the greatest difficulty in trying to describe “Yiddishkeit” to an English-speaking audience, as this book attempts to do, is that there is really no English equivalent for the word. “Yiddish culture” comes close, but Yiddishkeit is so large, expansive, and woolly a concept that culture may be too narrow to do it full justice. “Jewish sensibility” comes closer still because it internalizes the notion of Yiddish, places it in the head as well as on the stage and the page, but sensibility is itself a rather loose and elusive idea and within Yiddishkeit there are several sensibilities that, while closely connected, are still not congruent. In effect, Yiddishkeit isn’t a thing or even a set of things, an idea or a set of ideas, which may explain why a book about Yiddishkeit is itself so sprawling, kaleidoscopic, disjointed, eclectic, and just plain messy. You really can’t define Yiddishkeit neatly in words or pictures. You sort of have to feel it by wading into it.
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In the Picture

2011-09-01T11:47:00.000-04:00

Bruce Jay Friedman’s darkly comic novels, short stories, and screenplays place him among the past century’s best American writers. In his new memoir, Lucky Bruce, he reminisces about many of them.

Tablet Magazine

Bruce Jay Friedman has been writing across genres and media for more than half a century. Literary types remember Stern, his 1962 breakout book, referred to by one critic as “the first Freudian novel.” Movie buffs know him as the screenwriter of blockbusters like Splash and Stir Crazy. The film The Heartbreak Kid was based on his short story “A Change of Plan.” And then there were his several plays, including the popular 1970 Steambath.
Read more. Listen to Audio »

Roman Holiday

2011-09-01T00:49:00.000-04:00

Italy’s glorious food is well-known, but not its rich Jewish culinary heritage, spanning 2,000 years. In honor of the 40th birthday of Chez Panisse, I’m planning a menu of Italian Jewish classics.

Tablet Magazine
by Joan Nathan

Years ago, when I was in graduate school, I spent a wonderful summer in Chieti, a city in the Abruzzi region of central Italy, leading a group of high-school students. I lived with a local family, the patriarch of which we called Signor Franchi. Every day we sat down for an enormous lunch. When the pasta came out—a big bowl of it, before the main course—a hush would fall over the room. We would wait for Signor Franchi to take the first bite. He would taste it, checking to make sure it was perfectly cooked, al dente. It almost always was. Then he would shoot a smile at his wife, and we would all dig in.
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Coming to a theater near you... Jerusalem in 3D

2011-08-28T22:38:00.000-04:00

MAX extravaganza with bird's eye views of the capital city to be screened for next 5-10 years on 35 screens around world.

JPost
by Melanie Lidman

Jerusalem is a city that likes to think of itself as the center of the world and as larger than life. Starting in 2013, it will be larger than life – and 3D – at movie theaters in 35 countries.

Swooping over the Old City, with bird’s eye views in eyepopping 3D projected onto a giant screen, JERUSALEM: IMAX 3D is not your typical documentary about Israel’s ancient capital.
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Jerusalem | Filmed in Imax 3D from JerusalemGiantScreen on Vimeo.

For one week, Warsaw will turn into a world capital of Jewish culture | EJP

2011-08-25T01:17:00.000-04:00

WARSAW (EJP)---From August 27 until September 4, Warsaw will turn into a world capital of Jewish culture with the Jewish Culture Festival Singer’s Warsaw, one of the biggest world events promoting Yiddish culture.

Thanks to many street scenes, theaters and clubs, participants will be able to enjoy Jewish culture by all senses and move on to the colorful world of Warsaw’s bygone era, and admire its pre-war atmosphere.

Organized for the eight time by the Shalom Foundation, the Jewish Culture Festival Singer’s Warsaw reunites the most outstanding artists and producers of Jewish culture.

It enjoys a growing popularity among guests and artists, who for this occasion come from all over the world.

The Festival is dedicated to Isaac Bashevis Singer, the renowned Jewish writer of Polish origin, honored by the Nobel Prize in literature. Read more »

A Sky Above Jerusalem

2011-08-23T16:47:00.000-04:00

Serge Gainsbourg Is Hero of Joann Sfar’s Film Tablet Magazine

2011-08-23T15:29:00.000-04:00

French singer and icon Serge Gainsbourg—once reviled and now beloved—is the subject of Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, the first feature film from Joann Sfar, creator of the Rabbi’s Cat comic book

Serge Gainsbourg was, depending on whom you ask, a brilliant songwriter, a buffoon, an outrage, a Don Juan, or the definition of French cool. To French comic book artist Joann Sfar, growing up in a strait-laced observant family in the 1970s, Gainsbourg—born Lucien Ginsberg in 1928—was a hero. Sfar was enthralled by Gainsbourg’s outrageous antics on French television, his unabashed romps with knockouts like Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin, and his reckless smoking and drinking, not to mention his talent as a singer and songwriter. All this from a skinny Jewish guy with protruding ears and a big nose. Read more. Listen to Audio »

The Voice | by Katie Schneider | Tablet Magazine

2011-08-21T17:13:00.000-04:00

Before he was the famous voice of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Woody Woodpecker, Mel Blanc was a Jewish kid in Portland, Ore., doing impressions of his immigrant neighbors

Museum exhibits are often about visuals, but the first thing you notice when you walk into the Oregon Jewish Museum’s current show celebrating Mel Blanc’s life and career is his voice. That manic patter is familiar and unmistakable: It’s the voice of Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig, Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird, Barney Rubble and Dino and so many other beloved cartoon characters. Blanc, in fact, voiced so many different characters—over 400—that Jack Benny once remarked, “There’s only five real people in Hollywood. Everyone else is Mel Blanc.” And all of Blanc’s characters, as the new exhibit deftly reveals, owe a part of their existence to his upbringing as a young Jewish boy in Portland, Ore., performing in the city’s vaudeville houses and mixing with its various ethnic populations.

Born in San Francisco in 1909 as Melvin Jerome Blank, he moved north with his family at the age of 6. His father owned several apparel businesses, and young Melvin spent his days running around south Portland, observing its residents, many of them Jews. Among the first people he befriended were the elderly Jewish couple who ran the local grocery; they spoke Yiddish, and the boy became fascinated with the strange dialect and its intonations. He learned to imitate it. It was, by his own admission, the first voice he ever performed. Read more »

Unrepentant | by Rachel Shukert | Tablet Magazine

2011-08-20T18:46:00.000-04:00

Larry David, the antihero of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, is particular, a prig, and constantly aggrieved. But he’s fine with that—which is why, contrary to type, he’s not at all neurotic.

There are three adjectives that are often used to describe Larry David, the star and creator of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which recently premiered its eighth season after two excruciating, Curb-less years. One is “bespectacled,” which is fair enough. Another is “bald,” a signifier David’s television alter-ego regards as a traditionally oppressed tribal identity (spitting in biblical fury when the assimilationists among this imagined fraternity of the hairless attempt to “pass” under the camouflage of a baseball cap or, God forbid, a toupee). Finally, and most ubiquitously, he is “neurotic.”

“Larry David plays himself as bald, bespectacled neurotic,” the New York Times wrote in a review of the new season. “Larry David plays a neurotic fussbudget named Larry David,” the Washington Post said in 2010. “He’s officially an LA neurotic,” the New York Post recently bemoaned. Far be it for me to argue with writers for such august publications. But having said that: I don’t think any of these people actually know what “neurotic” means, other than a word you swap in when you think it’s impolite to say “Jew.” Read more »

Tel Aviv -- voted top world city

2011-08-20T15:51:00.000-04:00

The Tribal Update Presents Palestinian independence, and a tribute to Israeli fine arts and film

2011-08-19T21:29:00.000-04:00

Richard Wagner’s Music Is Effectively Banned in Israel

2011-08-18T23:10:00.003-04:00

Tablet Magazine
by David P. Goldman

The composer Richard Wagner was an anti-Semite, a German nationalist, and a genius. Performance of his music—masterworks like the “Ring” cycle and “Tristan und Isolde”—is effectively banned in Israel. Should it be?

Richard Wagner, the most repugnant of musical nationalists, has become an unlikely poster child for culturally progressive Israelis. The recurring controversy over the public performance of work by the Nazi Party’s favorite composer erupted again in late July when the Israeli Chamber Orchestra, led by the Austrian conductor Roberto Paternostro, performed a much-publicized Wagner program at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, Wagner’s self-erected shrine and a pillar of the Nazi movement well before Hitler took power. (Paternostro received a standing ovation from the largely German audience, which understandably liked the idea of Jews playing Wagner.) Morbid ethnocentrism with overtones of nationalist extremism is acceptable to the Israeli left, it seems, as long as it isn’t Jewish.

Daniel Barenboim

Every so often a prominent musician makes a point of sneaking Wagner into a public concert in Israel. Zubin Mehta, the Indian-born conductor of the Israel Philharmonic, played a Wagner excerpt as an encore to a 1981 concert; Daniel Barenboim, conducting a German ensemble, did it again at the 2001 Jerusalem Festival. And in each case public opprobrium put Wagner’s scores back on the shelf. At the Bayreuth concert, some of the Israeli musicians explained that they never would perform Wagner in Israel but felt free to do so elsewhere. Performance of Wagner’s music is unofficially—but effectively—banned in Israel. But should it be? Mark Twain quipped that Wagner’s music is better than it sounds. By the same token, banning Wagner’s music is a better idea than it sounds. Suppressing the performance of important musical works is not a small matter, though, and deserves careful thought rather than emotional reflex. Read more »

Sophie Milman - Eli, Eli‬‏

2011-08-18T11:57:00.002-04:00

Concert at Sultan's Pool a great treat | CANOE Travel

2011-08-16T12:52:00.000-04:00

By MIKE KEEN

ISRAEL - A smartly-dressed middle-aged man sits in front of me, arm draped snugly around an attractive and be-jewelled lady, clearly half his age. He and his jet-set friends have purportedly paid 2200 Shekels per seat. ($640 US).

I sit alone but free, courtesy of Israeli tourism, and what a seat it is! I'm ensconced at the base of Mount Masada, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where the Israeli Opera company is dramatically producing Giuseppe Verdi's famous Aida, the Italian maestro's masterpiece amongst his 28 written operas.
In 2010, their 25th anniversary, the Israeli Opera inaugurated this spectacular outdoor festival, and it has secured Israel a place on the map of world opera festivals alongside the likes of Italy, France, Switzerland and Finland. Read more »

‪ If you remember Yiddish and not anti-gay - a set of zero - enjoy

2011-08-16T12:46:00.002-04:00

'Policeman' Is Not Your Typical Israeli Movie | indieWIRE

2011-08-16T12:42:00.002-04:00

LOCARNO REVIEW

Everyone seems lost in Nadav Lapid “Policeman” (“Ha-shoter”), an unsettling story of brawny Israeli anti-terrorist officers and the equally clueless activists they’re eventually tasked with hunting down. While blatantly topical, this is not a political film of the moment, but rather a calculated meditation on purpose.

Developed by first-time director Lapid at a Cannes Film Festival residency, the script for “Policeman” contains a persistently muted, disquieting tone that the director could expand upon in subsequent efforts. While somewhat problematically fragmented, “Policeman” is loaded with insight into the nuances of Israeli society. Read more »

Israeli film undergoes a renaissance

2011-08-16T12:18:00.004-04:00

The innovative animated film Walt
with Bashir was nominated for an
Oscar for best foreign film.

Joseph Cedar's latest award-winning Israeli film Footnote sheds light on an industry that portrays a vibrant, conflicted, modern society to worldwide audiences.

Joseph Cedar's Footnote won the best screenplay award at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
The Cannes Film Festival 2011 award to Joseph Cedar's Hearat Shulayim (Footnote) for best screenplay was the latest indication that Israeli cinema has become a world force, with Israel enjoying "a remarkable film renaissance," according to the Los Angeles Times.

Cedar's personal achievements are impressive. His first two movies, Time of Favor and Campfire, were domestic box-office hits. His third, Beaufort, a gut-wrenching war film about the last days of Israel's military presence in southern Lebanon, was an international phenomenon. Beaufort won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and became the first Israeli film in a generation to be nominated for a best foreign-language film Oscar.

Footnote, which is distributed in the United States by Sony, tells the story of a father and son, both scholars of the Talmud, locked in academic rivalry.

Cedar, who immigrated to Israel from New York with his parents when he was six, has often drawn on his personal religious observance to imbue his movies with authentic Jewish storylines. He told reporters in Cannes that he was struck by the human dramas bubbling behind the rarefied research of Talmudic scholars at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

"When you see a Chinese film, you often feel it is rooted in some kind of ancient Chinese tradition," Cedar told the LA Times. "The Talmud is our primary text, our tradition. It's something I want to deal with if I am making movies in Israel."

Cedar's success mirrors the growing achievements of other Israeli filmmakers in the past decade.

Israeli writer Etgar Keret won the Golden Camera award for best first film at Cannes in 2007.
Israeli films have an impressive track record at Cannes. Keren Yedaya's My Treasure (2004) as well as Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen's Jellyfish (2007) won the Golden Camera for best first film. Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani's Ajami (2009) received an honorable mention, and later also was an Oscar candidate for best foreign film. Hanna Laslo won best actress in 2005 for her work in Amos Gitai's Free Zone. In 2007, The Band's Visit won the audience award, the young judges award and the international critics award.

"Israel is saturated with drama," Cedar told the LA Times, "so it's natural that it's reflected in our cinema."

The 'reel' image of Israel

For millions of people around the world, Israeli cinema on the wide screen is replacing the image of Israel on the small screen. Reaching way beyond the conflict that obsesses news reporters, the new generation of Israeli filmmakers is holding up a mirror to the conflicts within Israeli society. In the movies, viewers find a full-color, fictional Israel that is ironically more real than the monochrome, two-dimensional Israel depicted in the news.

Israeli movies give a different perspective to the places mentioned so often in news broadcasts but so little understood.

The 2011 Oscar for best documentary went to Strangers No More, a US production filmed at a school in Tel Aviv struggling with the integration of children from more than 40 countries, including illegal immigrants and refugees. It's a human story that received scant attention from international news media, perhaps because it lay outside the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has become almost their sole point of reference.

Many of the country's most striking movies in recent years have used urban landscapes to create a short biography of their chosen city. Someone to Run With, the adaptation of David Grossman's magisterial evocation of a teenage Jerusalem underworld of runaways and street kids, features the city as if it were a character on its own. The same is true of Haifa in Broken Wings and The Matchmaker, Tiberias in Aviva, My Love and Safed in Secrets. The desert is used to great effect to create space and distance from humdrum normalcy in two more favorites, Turn Left at the End of the World and The Band's Visit.

The renaissance of Israeli cinema has also been accompanied by an increasingly complex view of war and terrorism.

The reference point for the previous generation was Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, with Israeli heroism reaching its zenith in Menahem Golan's 1977 Operation Thunderbolt (Mivtsa Yonatan) celebrating the triumphant hijack rescue at Entebbe in 1976.

A scene from Joseph Cedar's award-winning movie, Beaufort, about Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon.

By contrast, modern Israeli cinema lives in a post-Lebanon trauma. Three of the greatest Israeli movies produced in the past decade - Beaufort, Waltz with Bashir and Lebanon - dealt directly with the 1982 invasion, the effect of the 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon on the Israeli psyche, and the eventual pullout in the summer of 2000.

Just compare Yehoram Gaon's heroic, decisive, Yoni Netanyahu in Operation Thunderbolt with Lior Ashkenazi's conflicted, failed Mossad assassin Eyal in Walk on Water - which preceded Eric Bana's similarly troubled Mossad man in Spielberg's Munich by two years. Ashkenazi reprised the spirit of his self-doubting warrior with his portrayal of Yadin, a conflicted and psychologically tortured Israeli Air Force pilot who seeks therapy at the hands of Assi Dayan in the acclaimed TV series B'Tipul, which became the first Israeli drama adapted for US television as the HBO hit In Treatment.

Making the desert of Israeli film bloom

Structural changes in the Israeli film industry have also been crucial in its success.

B'Tipul was created by Hagai Levi and Ori Sivan, key figures in a new generation of filmmakers. When they graduated from Tel Aviv University's film school in 1990, the future looked bleak. "When we graduated film school, the Israeli industry was a desert," says Levi. "There was only one state-run television channel and it was very poor. We were the first class to grow up into the industry."

Levi became head of the drama department at Keshet, franchise-holder for Channel 2. His credits include several award-winning documentaries and series, among them the daily drama Love Around the Corner, which with three seasons and 270 episodes is the longest-running soap opera ever aired on Israeli television. Sivan was head writer of the successful Israeli series Florentine and Shabbatot Vehagim. Nir Bergman, another co-director and co-writer of B'Tipul, wrote and directed the acclaimed feature film Broken Wings.

"Now there is an industry and money which is attracting good people," says Levi. And in a country of just seven million citizens, where everyone seems to know each other, movie and television benefit from complete cross-fertilization between the two genres. "There is a total mixture," says Sivan. "Israeli Academy Award winners, writers, directors and actors move freely back and forth between film and television."

Just as the Israeli film schools were unleashing this new generation of artists on the scene, funding for Israeli movies underwent a radical advance. The Israel Film Fund began to create partnerships with foreign funds that brought millions of dollars into the industry. The combined effect on the quality of Israeli cinema was reflected in hard cash at the box office.

Israeli cinema was "practically wiped out" by the late 1990s, recalled Katriel Schory, executive director of the Israel Film Fund. "1998 was the worst year ever in the history of Israeli cinema, with only 0.3 percent of all box-office receipts attributable to Israeli films. In other words, 36,000 tickets out of 10 million," said Schory. By 2006, Israeli films accounted for 14% of the local box office.

"The Fund managed to turn the image of Israeli cinema around," boasts its website, with some justification. It has helped produce 300 films, of which 100 have been screened in official competition at major festivals, winning more than 250 prizes. Up to 16 Israeli feature films are now released each year.

In addition, the launch of the new commercial TV channels brought new investment from franchise-holders keen to nurture new talent and fulfill their public-service commitments. The relationship between the emerging television powerhouses and the new generation of filmmakers created an interconnecting web of talent and relationships that helped fuel a revolution.

Digital age advances Israeli filmmaking

As the money started moving, the country was undergoing a high-tech revolution that was transforming many aspects of Israeli society and its economy. The effect of the new digital age on Israeli filmmaking was staggering.

Debut films and documentaries that previously had cost tens of thousands of dollars and required huge lighting, sound and technical crews - not to mention expensive and time-consuming editing and post-production - found their production crews condensed into tiny, agile, cost-effective teams that could film and edit an entire movie in a fraction of the time at a small percentage of the cost.

Entire movies, particularly student productions and documentaries, could successfully be filmed and edited by one director/cameraman/editor with a digital video camera and a mid-range laptop. Raw new talent sprang from this digital revolution and transformed the face of Israeli cinema.

The most brilliant example is Ajami, the Oscar-nominated crime drama with masterly timing and plotting, acted by amateurs, evoking the spirit of an entire community in Jaffa, posing searching questions about the nature of Arab-Jewish relations in the Jewish state - and shot entirely on a hand-held digital video camera.

"You can actually buy a camera for less than $2,000 and theoretically you can shoot a whole film with it," says Eitan Riklis, who shot the acclaimed documentary Sons of Sakhnin United on a mini-digital video camera.

Erel Margalit, the multimillionaire high-tech entrepreneur behind the Jerusalem Animation Lab recently opened in a disused government mint, predicts that the combination of Israeli technology and talent will create a potent mix in the growing field of computer graphics, digital special effects and animation.

"Israel is a powerhouse of creativity," says Margalit. "In the 1990s we made a big splash in the world with enabling technologies that operated behind the scenes. Now we are seeing a renaissance of Israeli movie-making. The presence of so many gifted Israeli animators in Hollywood shows we have big talent in terms of content creativity as well as technology."

"Israeli movies are getting better because they are more personal," says Riklis. "The directors and writers and filmmakers are making stories that they relate to and they question their lives. I think that makes a much better film."

"What's happening now with storytelling is what happened in the United States after the Vietnam war, when suddenly people began to realize that America is not as big as they thought it was and can't really win every war. As a country, we're not exactly sure where we're heading so filmmakers are obviously relating to it and telling that story," he says.

And what a story they tell - of a vibrant, conflicted, modern society grappling with issues that audiences throughout the world can relate to.

Courtesy Ministry of Foreign Affairs - The State of Israel

Argentina's Jewish Villages Keep Traditions Alive | NPR

2011-08-14T21:47:00.000-04:00

In the 1890s, Russian Jews fleeing anti-Semitic violence and discrimination arrived by the thousands to a remote corner of the Argentine Pampas. They founded hamlets similar to the shtetls they left behind. They spoke Yiddish, built synagogues and traditional Jewish schools — and became farmers and gauchos, the mythical Argentine cowboys.

Now, only a dwindling number of their descendants remain, but they're intent on saving the Jewish culture that flourished for decades. In Entre Rios province, the center of Argentina's rural Jewish communities, there are still gauchos, Hebrew lessons and sacred scrolls to be found.

Jaime Jruz is among those who consider keeping the old traditions alive a debt owed to those who first settled the region. He roams his ranch on horseback, rounding up cattle and keeping track of his goats. His farm, on the outskirts of Carmel, goes back more than a century.

It was bought on a payment plan by his grandfather, who had arrived in Argentina aboard the Bismarck, a ship carrying Jews seeking a new life in the New World. Now 65, Jruz says he has lost a step or two and is one of the last Jewish gauchos around.

Many of his friends have given up the backbreaking work, and his three daughters, like most young Argentine Jews, live in the cities. But Jruz says the past and the work his ancestors put into the farms of Entre Rios weigh heavily on him. Read more »

Philip Levine named U.S. poet laureate | Jewish Journal

2011-08-14T16:30:00.000-04:00

Philip Levine, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1995, has been named the 18th poet laureate of the United States.

The appointment of Levine, who at 83 is one of the oldest poet laureates, was announced Wednesday by Librarian of Congress James Billington.

Levine, of Fresno, Calif., is the author of 20 collections of poems, including “The Simple Truth,” for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.

“Philip Levine is one of America’s great narrative poets,” Billington said. “His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling ‘The Simple Truth’—about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.” Read more »

Yiddish's Enduring Influence on Literature | Tablet Magazine

2011-08-13T11:24:00.000-04:00

Yiddish is far from dead. It’s undead, and it haunts everything from Harvey Pekar’s comics to the vampire literature of the early 20th century.

Yiddish isn’t dead; if anything, it’s undead. Think about it: Is there anything more unkillable, vaguely erotic, ridiculous, and toothy than the language of the Ashkenazim? In fact, a book published this spring—Sara Libby Robinson’s Blood Will Tell: Vampires as Political Metaphors Before World War I (Academic Studies, March)—argues that Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the single most recognizable undead gentleman in history, was, as Allan Nadler phrases it, a reflection of “widespread anxieties about the dangers posed by the flood (and the blood) of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to Great Britain.” Read more »

The new Jewess: A rising generation of actresses overturns old tropes | Jewish Journal

2011-08-12T19:00:00.000-04:00

by Danielle Berrin

The year is 1950. The setting is a dimly lit movie studio backlot. It’s the middle of the night, and an attractive young woman named Betty Schaefer is explaining to her screenwriting partner why she became a writer instead of what she really wanted to be — an actress. The movie is “Sunset Boulevard.”

“I come from a picture family,” Schaefer (Nancy Olson) tells Joe Gillis (William Holden). “Naturally, they took it for granted I was to become a great star. So I had 10 years of dramatic lessons, diction, dancing. Then the studio made a test. Well, they didn’t like my nose — it slanted this way a little. I went to a doctor and had it fixed. They made more tests, and they were crazy about my nose — only they didn’t like my acting.”

Though it’s never overtly stated, the obvious implication is that Betty Schaefer is Jewish. If you’ve ever wanted to understand the ambivalence Hollywood has felt toward Jewish women, there it is in glorious black and white. Read more »

The Russian-American Jews of ‘Russian Dolls’ Tablet Magazine

2011-08-12T14:11:00.000-04:00

The new Lifetime reality show Russian Dolls portrays the Russian-American Jews of Brighton Beach as celebrating neither America nor their Judaism but the freedom to be stereotypically Russian

BY ALLISON HOFFMAN

In the first episode of Russian Dolls, a new Lifetime reality show set in Brooklyn and billed as a cross between Jersey Shore and the Real Housewives franchise, a 23-year-old bleached-blonde named Diana Kosov spends a lot of time fretting about her new boyfriend, Paul, who drives a Maserati and lavishes her with flowers and teddy bears but who is unfit to bring home to her parents. The problem? “He’s Spanish, and I’m Russian,” Kosov explains. “In this community, if I date someone who’s not Russian, it’s a big deal.” Later, her mother, Anna, shows up to prove the point. “I would like you marrying Russian guy,” she tells her daughter, as they practice making borscht. “We have same kultur. It’s very important, you understand?

The astute viewer will notice that, in both of these interludes, Kosov is wearing a large Star of David pendant that dangles above her dramatically pushed-up cleavage. In a phone interview this week, she said the message she heard was clear: “I’m looking for a Russian Jewish guy.” But, on the show, the word Jewish never enters the dialogue—not in an aside to the camera, not with Kosov’s mother, and not, eventually, with Paul, who gets the heave-ho over a plate of tuna tartare. “My parents, they came to America for a reason,” Kosov says, earnestly. “To look for Russians?” Paul retorts. “Yeah,” Kosov replies, without elaboration. Read more »

Israel's Nascent Film Empire

2011-08-12T13:59:00.007-04:00

Israel, a nascent cinematic empire, produces great films. But the 28th annual Jerusalem Film Festival, the industry’s most prominent showcase, is still plagued by informality and inattention

Tablet Magazine
BY DAPHNE MERKIN

What can you say about a country that has 15 film schools and only four medical schools? Does it suggest Israel’s abiding love for cinematic distraction over the concerns of life and limb—or does it suggest something simpler and more reflexive, a preference for proliferation for its own sake, not all that different from the overwhelming variety of yogurts that are available in Israeli supermarkets? Perhaps the smaller the land, the more important the illusion of choice.

And what can you say about a country that has steadfastly refused to learn the rudiments of PR, both for political and cultural purposes? That invites journalists over, expenses paid, for a much-touted cultural event and then pretty much leaves them to their own devices once they arrive? That insists, say, on misspelling my last name as Mirkin rather than Merkin despite many emails over many months attesting to the correct spelling? Is it a form of arrogance or a kind of autism? Read more »

Jerusalem light festival

2011-08-12T13:30:00.000-04:00

Israel Festival celebrates its jubilee

2011-08-02T22:58:00.002-04:00

Touching Israel through film

2011-08-02T22:14:00.001-04:00

John Power
The Korea Herald

Country’s new talent connects at PiFan showcase

Israel and Korea may not share a common tongue, but it was the international language of film that shone through at the Israeli Film Reception on Wednesday, held in cooperation with the 15th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival.
Two Israeli films showcased at PiFan were celebrated at the event: “Rabies,” a horror written and directed by Navot Papushado and Aharon Keshales, and “Guest,” a dark restaurant-set satire by Roy Krispel. Read more »

‪13-Year-Old Israeli Prodigy Ariel Lanyi: Brahms Fantasies Op. 116, # 7‬‏

2011-08-02T20:17:00.001-04:00

Israeli museum showing Muslim-world artists - 3 News

2011-08-02T12:31:00.006-04:00

Amy Teibal

A museum on the road separating Jewish west Jerusalem from the Arab neighbourhoods in the city's east is attracting a daring group of artists from Middle Eastern nations that shun contact with Israel, trying to erode political barriers through art.

It's been a years-long process for the Museum on the Seam, which is one of the few art museums in Israel that aggressively tries to convince Arab and Muslim artists to show in its galleries. Read more »

See Gallery »

Museum on the Seam

Beach Gallery in Bat Yam

2011-07-24T14:17:00.011-04:00

Last weekend, on the beach of Bat-Yam opened an exhibition of contemporary art that will last a month. The event, initiated by the local municipality, and donors - a number of different Israeli and foreign organizations, residents and visitors can see very unusual paintings, sculptures and compositions, often made of unexpected materials: bags, newspapers, empty bottles, etc.
Their works for this exhibition provided the students and graduates of art academies Shenkar and Bezalel, Haifa's Technion and Mihlelet Minhal.
See Gallery >>
Originally reported by http://newsru.co.il

Jerusalem tries to get its cultural groove on

2011-07-24T11:42:00.002-04:00

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Amid the alleyways that zigzag through Jerusalem's Nahlaot neighborhood, a nonprofit collective run by five young artists is trying to make art more accessible in a city known more for conflict than culture.
The turquoise gate of Barbur Gallery opens onto a stone courtyard and garden where secular and religious locals -- and the occasional tourist from Tel Aviv -- drop in for a look at the latest exhibit: a collection of black-ink drawings mixed with splashes of bold color. The gallery also is a regular gathering spot for lectures, movie screenings and musical performances.
Barbur is one of a growing number of independent art spaces here that along with booming music venues, a growing list of festivals and the newly redesigned Israel Museum is breathing fresh cultural energy -- and even a hipster edge -- into Jerusalem. Read more >>

Pressing Matters

2011-07-24T11:22:00.006-04:00

by Toby Perl Freilich
Tablet Magazine

The Jerusalem Print Workshop, providing free workspace for artists, revives an artistic tradition in an ancient city struggling with changing demographics and religious tensions.

In 1576, Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yitzchak Ashkenazi, a printer of religious texts driven from Prague by anti-Semitic edicts, arrived in the Holy Land by way of Lublin, Vienna, Constantinople, Rhodes, Sidon, and Damascus. Hauling his printing presses by horse cart, mule, and ship, Rabbi Eliezer finally settled, exhausted and nearly bankrupt, in Safed, in the Galilee. Though his shop was known to have printed only six books, it marked the birth of Hebrew printing in the Holy Land. Read more. See Gallery >>

A look in the mirror - Ofer Lellouche

2011-07-22T21:08:00.000-04:00

Between Jaffa and Paris, between self-portraits and self-destructiveness, Ofer Lellouche, whose works are now on show as part of the new permanent exhibition at Vienna's Albertina Museum, talks about narcissism and about why he prefers sculpture to painting.

An artist's biography, claims Ofer Lellouche, interferes with understanding his work. "They never ask a mathematician about his biography. But they ask an artist, because they think it's relevant," he says. "Van Gogh was known as a madman who cut off his ear. But the painter Van Gogh was not at all crazy. He progressed step by step: He did preparatory sketches, mixed colors, put them on the palette, took a paintbrush, put it on the canvas, cleaned the brush, took another color and applied it to the canvas. That's not a scribbler; that's a very calculated, very level-headed
painter."
For about three decades Lellouche, 63, has been considered a major painter and sculptor in the Israeli art world. At the same time his work appears frequently in exhibitions abroad, and it often seems that the focus of his artistic career is there. In the past decade he has had two major exhibits here, at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the open museums in Tefen and Omer, plus another one in the Jaffa port.
As of late June, his works are being exhibited alongside those of Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz and others in: "Albertina Contemporary: From Gerhard Richter to Kiki Smith" - the new permanent exhibition at one of the major classical art museums in western Europe: the Albertina in Vienna. Read more >>

Ofer Lellouche Self Portrait on a Transparent Mirror from Ofer Lellouche on Vimeo.

Israel's "Tales in the Sand" exhibition

2011-07-21T17:10:00.000-04:00

Tales in the Sand Opens at Eretz Israel Museum

Castles in the sand, Goldilocks, Cinderella, and even the Tower of Babel can be found at the Eretz Israel Museum outdoor exhibit “Tales in the Sand” which opens tomorrow, July 20, 2011. 18 giant sand sculptures, each about 4 meters high, have been created by sculptors from the World Sand Sculpting Academy in Hague and Israeli sculptors for a unique nighttime experience just right for summer.

The sand sculptures are lovely, with character, charm and fine details, all dramatically lit for nighttime viewing. For those who want to try their hand at the art, there is a huge sandpit with instructors available to give friendly advice. Guy Melamed is the artistic director of the exhibit, which will be open from 19:00 to 23:00, through the end of August. Eretz Israel Museum, 2 Haim Levanon Street, Tel Aviv, 03-6415244.

SEE MORE >>

‪Israeli violinist shares top award at international music competition‬‏

2011-07-20T19:51:00.000-04:00

Dreaming of clouds of butterflies

2011-07-20T15:30:00.000-04:00

A cloud of butterflies flutters in a corner of Bangkok: it glows with beautiful colours, and speaks of simple forgotten pleasures of life.
Their ethereal wings take the name of David Gerstein, world-acclaimed Israeli artist whose works are displayed in an exceptional art exhibition titled "Infinity", at the National Gallery of Bangkok.
"We strive, we dream of a perfect veil of butterflies, but they are not real. They are perfumes of memories left behind, they are a dream of how life should be. In a puff of wind, they flap away," the artist said.
A forest of bicycles, human characters, and bouquets of flowers accompany the butterflies through the three themes of the exhibition - namely nature, urban life, and sport - and are reproduced with the same innocence and pleasure found in a child's drawing. Read more >>

‪Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar wins Screenplay award at Cannes

2011-07-20T15:19:00.000-04:00

Joseph Cedar is a talented Orthodox Jewish Film Director that recently won the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes film festival in France for a movie called “Footnote ( He’arat Shulaim)” . Cedar has also done writing for movies. He has won several significant awards in the past for other films and for his directing ability, as well. Read more >>

‪footnote teaser-english subtitles‬‏ - YouTube: ""

‪Art Biennale 2011 - Israel‬‏

2011-07-19T19:15:00.000-04:00

‪Thru Jerusalem‬‏

2011-07-19T19:05:00.000-04:00

YouTube - ‪Israeli film takes top Karlovy Vary award‬‏

2011-07-13T13:54:00.000-04:00

YouTube - ‪Israeli film takes top Karlovy Vary award‬‏: ""

Micha Ullman on view at Israel Museum

2011-07-03T11:07:00.000-04:00

The Israel Museum is showing the first museum retrospective of the work of Israeli artist Micha Ullman, spanning the artist's fifty-year career in sculpture, drawing, and installation. Sands of Time: The Work of Micha Ullman brings together approximately 120 works, dating from the 1970s through the present, including a 200-square-meter site-specific installation created by Ullman in celebration of the exhibition using his own distinctive sand-throwing technique. The exhibition features nearly 50 of Ullman’s indoor sculptures made of iron and sand, and 70 works on paper from the Israel Museum, together with loans from collections from Israel and abroad.
Micha Ullman, born in Tel Aviv in 1939, is known for his subterranean outdoor installations, some of which barely protrude from the ground, and his sculptures made of iron and sand, which address such universal themes as home and place, and absence and emptiness. Read more >>

Beyond Hollywood: A Look at Israel Through Israeli Film

2011-07-03T11:01:00.001-04:00

Robert Altman once said what film lovers already know, that filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes. Israel is too far away, and certainly too expensive for most of us to visit. Luckily, the new crop of Israeli films such as Strangers No More - winner of the Best Documentary Short Subject in 2011, and recent Academy Award nominations for Ajami (2010), Waltz With Bashir (2009) and Beaufort (2008) in the Best Foreign Language Film category and Precious Life (2011) nominated for Best Documentary Feature can provide a glimpse into life in Israel. Read more >>

Tel Aviv Graffiti & Street Art

2011-07-02T23:51:00.000-04:00

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'Mabul (The Flood)' to open Jewish Film Festival

2011-07-02T18:32:00.004-04:00

The 31st San Francisco Jewish Film Festival opens July 21 with the North American premiere of the "Mabul (The Flood)," a film from Israel that has been nominated for six Israeli Oscars. The festival announced its complete program Tuesday.
"Mabul" is a drama about an autistic son's return home to the collective farm where his troubled family lives.Director Guy Nattiv will attend the screening. The 6:30 p.m. show at the Castro Theatre will be followed by a party at the Swedish American Hall.
The 2011 festival, which ends Aug. 8, includes 38 features and 19 shorts from 16 countries, with screenings at the Castro, the San Francisco Jewish Community Center and three other Bay Area venues. Read more >>

Deaf-blind theater troupe touches audiences

2011-06-24T07:14:00.001-04:00