A Movie in the Making

BY CARMIA

The parking spaces in Wadi Salib, one of Haifa's poorest and most run-down neighbourhoods with a complicated history, were filled to the max today. Normally, the main attractions in this historic neighbourhood are the more recent government buildings and the numerous hummusiyot (hummus joints), each one of which has its own devoted followers.

But for the past few days, Avi Nesher, a well-known Israeli director, has been filming scenes here for his latest movie, גמדים (Dwarfs). According to one of the actresses, the film is about a boy from Haifa who time travels from the Second Lebanon War in 2006 to the 1960s, encountering various characters.

The filming took place at the flea market, which has preserved much of its original character. One of the sets built here is the above movie theatre, complete with a 'Bollywood' poster and actors dressed to look like teens from the 60s.

Locals get a close look at the antique car which is part of the props.

One of the young actors, between shots, looks like he is deep in thought. Behind him, part of the still-functioning Istiqlal Mosque is visible.

Even though Israel has become "Americanized" during the past couple of decades, the society has managed to hold on to a few of its fundamental characteristics. The kibbutz ideals of social equality and fraternity are still visible in many aspects of daily life. For example, Nesher's last two movies, סוף העולם שמאלה (Turn Left at the End of World) and הסודות (The Secrets), were big hits in Israel. It's impossible to even imagine an American director of the same relative stature hanging out and filming a movie literally "among the masses," with no visible security present and no roping off the area. Locals mingled with actors taking a break from shooting, due to the rain. I was free to wander onto the sets and examine props, some of them antique or near-antique items, and expensive film equipment, as closely as I wanted to.

Yet, it seems like many famous Israelis have a love-hate relationship with this quality of approachability/social equality. On the one hand, they love feeling "like a family" and being able to walk on the street undisturbed and live normal lives but are disgruntled because they know that, in America, they would be making oh-so-much more money and be treated with all the perks that come with being a celebrity there.

ADDENDUM: The movie was actually released with the title of "פעם הייתי," (English title: "The Matchmaker") rather than the original "Dwarfs."

International Film Festival in Blue-and-White

BY CARMIA

One of the draws at Haifa's annual International Film Festival is the park in the Carmel Centre, which fills up with little booths selling lots of funky stuff. Admittedly, some of the products look a little too familiar already: the "I've-just-been-to-India" clothes and accessories, the Henna tattoos, and the cheap jewellery, for example.

But here's what I found interesting at the festival:

Udi (left) and his Israeli-invented Discovery ironing board cover which he so passionately demonstrated to me. Honestly, if I ironed more, I would buy it. I don't even know how to explain what that cover does, but it works. He had me stick my hand under it while running a hot iron over it; he left the iron sitting on it for a good few minutes; and he showed me how nothing falls off from it (like the shirt in the picture, hanging off its collar) and more neat tricks. He promised to email me the link.

Then I ran into "Hebrew Goat" (עז עברית), made in Kibbutz Hazorea. The Kachuta cheese below is said to have won 18 competitions,

while I was told that this cheese is the only "yellow" goat cheese (גבינה צהובה) in existence! I was urged to take a picture of it.

When I saw the product below, I just knew this had to be an Israeli invention. It was designed to replace the traditional "threading" method, which lots of Israeli women use to remove facial hair. It's a spring and works by trapping and pulling out the hairs between it. It was marketed under both the name "Spring" and "epi-face," which is a cute word play since most Israelis pronounce the word "happy" as "epi," which is short for epilate here.

Then, of course, there was "The Druze Woman Who Bakes Pita with Za'atar." But in order to appeal to as many taste buds as possible, she not only offered the traditional Labaneh cheese as a topping, but also hummus and chocolate spread.

I also met Asaf Elazary, a student at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. His T-shirt, "Suck My Shmok" (top right), was just one of the original designs he was selling for 40 NIS a piece.

Lastly, I discovered some very young entrepreneurs selling home-made lemonade and magnets for modest prices of 2-3 NIS.

The film festival will wrap up on 10.10.09.

Open Thread: Hillel Halkin on Bashir

BY NOAH K

I must admit, I had a tepid reaction to "Waltz with Bashir," Ari Folman's Oscar-nominated animated film about his experiences during the First Lebanon War and after it, when he seems to have suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The dream sequences were indeed seductive, particularly the young soldier floating back to Israel (or Israeli-occupied buffer territory below the Litani line), the lone survivor of his unit, adrift at sea, forgotten or at least unrecognizable to his own army, safely "stateless" in a way out there in international waters.

But as for the politics? What is there to make a fuss about? What were the film's politics? Or did it have any? Was it just too post-Zionist, too Etgar Keret? I took from the film some bite-size lessons: war, in general, corrodes our moral constitution -- it breaks people; the massacres of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila were committed by Christian militiamen, not by the IDF; however, some IDF leadership looked the other way, while some soldiers on the ground were to a certain, undefined degree culpable -- not only for inaction but for rendering specific services to the Phalangists, which, at least in hindsight, made the massacre possible.

Hillel Halkin's review in Commentary makes to my mind a rather jejune complaint about the film's lack of "historical context." The only "context" he adds to the what the film depicts in that case of the massacres are his imaginative reconstructions of "what really happened:" maybe, he reckons, Israeli soldiers were unwilling to wake up their superiors in the middle of the night to investigate the activities of the Phalangists in the camps; maybe they were scared to go in; maybe they were happy to unleash their local allies on their eternal foes...I don't know, yeah, maybe...maybe Folman nudges the viewer in the direction of some of these interpretations. Maybe he doesn't nudge enough.

True, the film doesn't provide an historical context for the conflict as a whole. Israel's 1982 geo-strategic gambit isn't laid out. Nothing of the war's objectives, the internal Israeli debates that preceded it, the machinations of the PLO and its Syrian backers, etc. These omissions produce, in Halkin's mind, a generic "anti-war" film, which, he condemns as intellectually deficient. Fair enough. Still, the film was about experience; it wasn't didactic. And the reviewer's war experience, as it turns out, was one of trying to explain the war with his fellow reservists as he trained in southern Lebanon in the run-up to the war; of trying to explain the massacres in their immediate aftermath. Folman had a different experience, clearly. Now, it's quite a different thing to accuse the film of providing fodder for anti-Semitism insulting the honor of the veterans, and splashing shame on the Jewish state. It seemed to me that Halkin's review almost makes that leap.

How is that possible? Halkin, naturally, interprets the film as an Israeli; I, on the other hand, as an American (Jew). And, as Halkin points out in introducing the film, Israelis and the rest of us saw this film differently. How else to explain the mild reaction of the domestic audience and the wild accolades it has garnered abroad? The review, even more than the box office receipts, points up the wide (and at times widening) gap between the way Israelis see themselves and the way the rest of the world sees them (see Roger Cohen in the NYT, whatever you think of his opinions). Note that the "hero" of "Waltz with Bashir" has to go abroad (like Oedipus of old) to gather clues about who he really is.

I am puzzled by extreme reactions to this film. Did you have one?

Here's one from the Commentary website, a response to Halkin by a certain Jerome Kaufman:

"The film blames the entire massacre in the Sabra and Shatila camp on the Israelis."

Is this guy serious?

And why did Halkin have to diss the score? I liked the music!