Feast of festival films
ISRAELI films that created a buzz at the Cannes Film Festival and were prominent in the recent Israel Film Awards will feature in the Jewish International Film Festival (JIFF).
The new-look festival will be held in Sydney from November 1-18 and in Melbourne from November 7-25.
Festival director Eddie Tamir, who has operated the Classic Cinemas in Elsternwick since 1999 and also has his own film distribution company, is thrilled with the 34 films being screened at JIFF.
“People want to see films about the Jewish experience and I have tried to capture the Jewish voice from Israel and the Diaspora in an integrated program,” says Tamir.
“We have put together an eclectic range of films that are of high quality and will also entertain and challenge audiences.
“There are a lot of good Israeli films being made that are included in the festival,” he says.
“We will build on the proud 22-year tradition of the Jewish Film Festival in Australia with a fresh and diverse program of films that celebrate and explore the Jewish experience around the globe.”
The opening-night film, The World is Funny, is currently Israel’s number-one box-office hit, combining comedy and drama with a nostalgic look at a comedy troupe in the 1960s.
“To get this film into a festival while it is still screening in Israel is terrific, and it will appeal to a lot of people,” says Tamir.
Another highly anticipated Israeli film is God’s Neighbours starring Roy Assaf, who won an Ophir Award for best actor from the Israeli Film Academy last month for his role as the leader of a vigilante squad of young Chassidic fundamentalists in Israel.
God’s Neighbours was one of the films that Tamir saw at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in May.
“I saw it at Critics’ Week with the director, Meni Yaesh, and was really excited by it. The film was challenging but entertaining,” he says.
At Cannes, God’s Neighbours won the SACD Award and at the 2012 Jerusalem Film Festival won a director’s award
A film that also attracted Tamir’s interest at Cannes was Eytan Fox’s Yossi, the sequel to the groundbreaking 2002 film Yossi & Jagger, which tackled the taboo subject of Israeli soldiers in love.
The new film follows Yossi as he continues to serve in the Israeli army a decade later, working as a heart surgeon.
The Israel-French-German co-production Sharqiya is set against a backdrop of the Bedouins in Israel, whose traditional lifestyle is threatened by industrial progress.
Among the Australian films selected for the festival are Tony Krawitz’s Dead Europe, which follows his films The Tall Man (2011) and Jewboy (2005).
Dead Europe is a confronting story set in Greece that encounters European prejudices, anti-Semitism and the drug culture.
Bondi director Trevor Graham travelled to Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, London and New York last year to interview restaurant owners and authors for his documentary Make Hummus Not War.
The film combines interviews, recipes, Monty Python-style animation and humour as it explores the history of hummus and looks at the debate over which nationality has the strongest claims to owning the dish.
British-born, Jerusalem-based filmmaker Alan Rosenthal has brought to life the fascinating story of Jewish convict Ikey Solomon, believed to be the inspiration for Charles Dickens’ Fagin in Oliver Twist, in the docudrama The First Fagin.
The One That Got Away tells the heartfelt story of Thomas Beck, a Jew from Hungary now in his 80s who has been living in Australia since surviving the Holocaust. He recently discovered that his teenage love from the Nazi camps also survived and has been living in Melbourne, and the two get back in touch.
Tamir says the festival has an exciting range of films that will continue the Jewish tradition of debating and arguing about them in the foyer of the cinema afterwards.
The Jewish International Film Festival screens in Melbourne from November 7-25 at the Classic Cinemas, Elsternwick. Bookings: www.jiff.com.au.
REPORT by Danny Gocs
PHOTO: A scene in Dead Europe.
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