Israeli fest lauds a nation and its culture
PREVIEW | Films, shorts and TV episodes represent a vast range of subjects and perspectives
The 2009 Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema imports 26 features, shorts and television series from the Middle East. Exceptional women and ethnic minorities are subjects of several titles. Three different dramas adopt the perspectives of boys ages 9, 11 and 12. And among the topics addressed in several documentaries are imported pro baseball players, Peruvian converts and cochlear implants.
Festival committee member Beverly Braverman traveled to this year's Jerusalem International Film Festival and Haifa International Film Festival to scope out prospects. Ever see Israeli TV? At the festival, you can check out two hit series: three episodes of "Srugim," set in Jerusalem, and eight episodes of "A Touch Away," set in Tel Aviv.
With five U.S. premieres, the festival aims for the mainstream, compared to the Israeli entries in the Chicago Underground Film Festival or Reeling/Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival. Characters deemed "religious" by others often turn up in Israeli fest plots.
"Applauding, celebrating and supporting Israel, its culture and cinema" is the fest's stated mission. Support comes from the consul general of Israel to the Midwest and from the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. Other groups are sponsoring individual films. Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, for example, will host screenings of "Seven Minutes in Heaven," a psychological drama about a suicide bombing on a bus.
The festival, which began Thursday, continues this weekend on the Magnificent Mile at 600 N. Michigan, then heads on Monday to the Wilmette Theatre on the North Shore. In observance of the Jewish sabbath, programmers have not scheduled screenings tonight or Nov. 6.
All Hebrew and non-English dialogue is subtitled in English. Selected reviews follow.
"Seven Minutes in Heaven" (8:30 p.m., AMC Loews 600): Omri Givon writes and directs this recommended drama about an Israeli woman and her damaged memory. A year after a suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus, Galia (Reymond Amsalem) is still recovering from burns on her hand and back. Recovering her memory and resolving her survivor's guilt is another challenge. Her boyfriend Oren (Nadav Netz) is in a coma. When he dies, her healing takes a new turn. She finds a necklace that she was wearing at the time of the bombing. Tracing its path back to her, Galia meets a paramedic, Boaz (Eldad Fribas). Her flux of amnesia, panic, delusion and new love flows into a compelling puzzle of trauma and its aftermath. (Repeat screening: 6:30 p.m. Nov. 7, Wilmette.)
"Zrubavel" (3 p.m., AMC Loews 600):Billed as Israel's first Ethiopian-born writer-director, Shmuel Beru debuts with a familiar tale of an ethnic family finding its way in a new land. Elders from Ethiopia utter halting Hebrew. Kids identifying with Spike Lee and Tupac Shakur use a smattering of English. Three generations speak Amaric but aren't on the same page. Israeli cops and a private school principal are the family's main contacts with mainstream society. A wedding and a funeral offer the obligatory bondings in this unoriginal 72-minute drama, hosted by Immigration Law Associates in Skokie. (Repeat screening: 7 p.m. Nov. 7, Wilmette.)
"Pinhas" (5:30 p.m., AMC Loews 600):Tel Aviv University student Pini Tavger directs a touching 32-minute drama about a 9-year-old latchkey kid. The Russian immigrant in the title sees little of his mom, a night-shift waitress with a day-shift boyfriend. An upstairs neighbor decides to tutor the pork-eating Pinhas (Anthony Berman) in Judaism. Tavger warns of the danger of a religious lesson taken too seriously. Screening with "Meltdown" and "The Israeli Doc Challenge." (Repeat screening: 8:45 p.m. Monday, Wilmette.)
"Shiva -- The Seven Days" (5:30 p.m., Wilmette): The opening-night film returns for two repeat screenings. This recommended drama observes a large family of Moroccan Jews sitting shiva during the 1991 Gulf War. Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz and her brother Shlomi Elkabetz co-write and co-direct this ensemble portrait of eight siblings with sly humor. Especially fine are indoor tableaus framing up to 14 characters under naturalist lighting. (A repeat screening Nov. 8 is sold out.)
"The Woman from Sarajevo" (8 p.m., Wilmette): After Sara Pizatnich fled war-ravaged Sarajevo with her aged mother, Zineba, and young daughter Stella, she settled in Israel and converted to Judaism. Thirteen years later, she returns to her Bosnian Moslem roots. Filmmaker Ella Alterman, who is slated to attend the screening, relates the family's rescue and relocations by a Jewish charity to her mother's hiding of a Jewish family in Sarajevo during World War II, leading to Zineba's recognition as a "Righteous" Moslem at Israel's Yad Vashem, Holocaust Memorial and Museum. (This documentary is not related to the novel of the same name by Ivo Andric.)
"Valentina's Mother" (5:30 p.m., Wilmette): Another recommended drama about a woman whose memory is damaged by trauma, this film echoes "Seven Minutes in Heaven." Matti Harari and Arik Lubetzky co-direct a script based on a work by Israeli writer Savyon Liebrecht. What starts as a sentimental tale about 79-year-old Pola (Ethel Kovenska) resisting her son's plan to place her in a nursing home turns into something else. Pola hires 20-year-old Valentina (Sylvia Drori) as a live-in companion and caretaker. The Christian Pole reminds Pola of a playmate with the same name, back in Poland during the Holocaust. The ending is a quiet shocker.
"The Fire Within: Jews of the Amazonian Rain Forest" (6:30 p.m., Wilmette): Lorry Salcedo Mitrani directs this uneven account of Moroccan Jews who got rich as rubber barons in Peru. They decamped when the market collapsed, yet their lapsed, intermarried descendants later seek a Jewish identity. But long-established Jews in Lima do not acknowledge the aspiring converts. At stake is their right to emigrate to Israel. Rabbi Alex Felch of B'nai Tikvah in Deerfield, who is interviewed in the documentary, is scheduled to speak after the screening. No doubt he can address some of the age-old tribal issues dodged by the director.
Bill Stamets is a Chicago-based freelance writer and critic.