Cinema in Israel
by Dan Fainaru
"Our cinema has reached
a turning point," says producer Haim Sharir. "From now on,
it should be perfectly clear that Israeli films cannot rely on
private investments any more. Either we can get enough money from
Public sources or we'll have to look for another profession."
Sharir is not the only one to think so. Jonathan Aroch, whose
"Siren's Song" is considered the most successful Israeli
film of 1994 (approximately 100,000 admissions) concurs, and so do
practically all those who have recently gone through the experience
of producing an Israeli feature film. In other words, history is
repeating itself. Every time it seemed as if Israeli cinema was about
to assume its own place both as an art form and an industry (sadly,
the two are inseparable and interdependent in order to exist),
something happened to set the whole process back.
As awkward as it may seem,
one cannot discuss Israeli cinema before dealing with its economic
condition. This is always frustrating for a film critic, who would
much rather deal with themes and esthetics, form and content, than
dollars and cents. Ideally, money should be the means to an end; a
film may cost a fortune and turn out to be a disaster, and vice
versa. But films, being the costliest artistic medium yet invented,
cannot begin to exist without substantial funds, and every penny
deducted from the budget leaves a visible void on the screen. While
money by itself has never produced a masterpiece, it certainly
doesn't hurt to have some.
And the Israeli cinema does
not get much. The reason may be that, in spite of all statements to
the contrary, the people in charge of the cultural scene in the
country still have doubts about it. Is it indeed an art form, as they
are told ad nauseam by interested parties, or is it a branch of the
entertainment industry that is supposed to survive on its own?
Possibly an outdated question by international standards, which could
be explained by the lack of absolute achievements of Israeli films.
One Bergman or one Anghelopoulos, to give obvious examples, would
have established the reputation necessary to dispel such doubts. But
as long as an indisputable master does not materialize, the arts
establishment will continue to suspect that money invested in films
is a waste.
Such reservations will never
be voiced in public because no one wishes to appear dated and deny
the importance of the "art of the 20th century." But recent
figures indicate that cinema is receiving only about five percent (11
million shekels) out of the budget dedicated to cultural activities
by the Arts Ministry, which is about 64 percent of the sum allocated
to one theatre alone, Habimah.
Investors willing to
underwrite half a film's budget (assuming the other half is covered
by the Fund for the Promotion of Quality Films or TV commitments) are
a rare breed. No wonder, since Israeli film audiences seem to have
lost interest altogether in their home product and too many of 1994's
crop attracted less than 10,000 spectators. Some of the reasons are
obvious. The explosion of the electronic media in recent years has
made a substantial dent in overall cinema attendance. Audiences are
more selective and obviously feel they get better value from American
movies. Moreover, the juggernaut of the Hollywood studios pushing all
competition out of the theatres to intake room for its own products
is making the distribution of Israeli films, unprotected by law,
fiendishly difficult even on its home ground.
On top of this, producers
complain there is a stigma attached to them in recent years, and they
lay the responsibility at the critics' door, accusing them of being
destructive and vindictive. Traditionally, the most successful
Israeli films have never been great favorites 'with the critics,
while most of the films praised by the critics have fared badly at
the box office. Lukewarm opinions on "Zohar," the film
biography of Zohar Argov, a controversial popular singer who died at
the age of 30 from a drug overdose, did not prevent it becoming the
biggest hit of recent years, while Dan Wolman's "The
Distance," considered by most critics to be a lucid, intelligent
and sensitive observation on Israeli society, played briefly to empty
houses. The one place where a film which failed in the cinemas has a
chance to redeem itself, is on television, where home products are
usually highly rated. However, none of the existing channels can
offer the kind of money that would justify the existence of the
Israeli cinema.
If there is any doubt that
commercial Israeli cinema is in deep trouble, a quick glance at the
films made in the course of the last two years will confirm it.
Ethnic comedies, sex-oriented youth pranks, " candid
camera" extravaganzas, all of them commercial genres par
excellence, enthusiastically embraced at one time by Israeli
audiences, in spite of the devastating voices of the critics, have
now been rejected by the audiences, all of them landing up as popular
shows and sitcoms in the warm bosom of commercial television, where
they receive top ratings and the same acerbic reviews they deserved
and received in the past. Obviously, they are still well liked, but
not enough to warrant leaving one's comfortable armchair.
Another type of cinema is
fading away as well. In the not very distant past, it was considered
irrelevant to complain about the quality of certain Israeli films, as
long as the message they tried to deliver was "correct."
Well-intentioned liberal, desperately striving for political
correctness, these films dealt with the Israeli-Arab conflict,
castigating conservatives on both sides, trying to shake the audience
out of its complacency. Sincere, if sometimes clumsy, films like
"The Smile of the Lamb," "Green Fields," "A
Very Narrow Bridge" and many others, were supposed to sound a
warning that not many people wanted to hear.
Somehow, with the outbreak
of the Intifada, which proved
the warnings sounded by these films to be true, they started to
disappear. Possibly, because clear-cut messages in the new climate
were much more difficult to formulate and the notion of political
correctness, at least for an Israeli, became far more complicated to
define. This was certainly true for the audiences, who did appreciate
some well-made militant pictures in the past (to wit, "Behind
the Bars" or "Ricochets,") but chose to ignore Eran
Riklis' "Cup Final," whose humanistic message implied in
the encounter between Israelis and Palestinians during the Lebanon
War was more appreciated abroad than at home.
The most popular genre to
emerge lately is the so-called "Sheinkin movie," named for Tel
Aviv's "in" street, where artists and pseudo-artists,
writers and journalists, trend-setters and groupies rub elbows every
day and night of the week. These films are distinguished by flashes
of "video-clip" glitz, the latest slang and vacuous but
exceedingly loquacious characters. The impact of films like Shabi
Gabison's "Shuru," in which all these people are searching
for a guru to tell them how to live; Nirit Yaron and Ayelet
Menahemi's "Tel Aviv Stories," a triptych on three young
ladies determined to have their own way in a fast-moving,
male-oriented society, or Eytan Fox's "Siren's Song" (based
on Irit Linur's best-selling novel), about the love life of a glib,
30-ish woman publicist during the Gulf
War, indicate that at the moment, although no one knows for how
long, this is the way to an audience's heart.
The other direction which
seems to be extremely popular, if less with the public then with the
filmmakers, leads back into the past, trying to come to terms with
ancestors, parents and childhood. To mention last year's output only,
there is Hanna Azoulai and Shmuel Hasfari's "Sh'hur," a
drama with autobiographical undertones about a Moroccan family
adapting to life in Israel in the early 1970s; "Dreams of
Innocence" by Dina Zvi-Riklis, dealing with the same community,
but focusing on a mythomaniac father who refuses to accept reality;
"The New Land," in which Orna Ben Dor-Niv uses surrealism
in order to recreate the atmosphere of the immigrant camps in the
early 1950s and "Aya - An Imaginary Autobiography," which
allows Michal Bat Adam to explore once again her childhood (already
dealt with in two of her earlier films) from the perspective of her
status as filmmaker and wife. It is interesting to notice that women
are the driving force behind all these projects (Azoulai wrote the
script of "Sh'hur," which her husband, Hasfari, directed).
All of them concentrate on childhood experiences, on the identity
crisis of people from different origins in a new country and on the
generation gap. Three of the examples cited (Bat-Adam's film being
the exception) could be easily defined as ethnic and yet they are far
removed from earlier films of this type - light comedies which made a
joke out of the entire issue. Nowadays, this kind of subject clearly
does not generate any smiles, let alone the guffaws of the past.
Conflict between generations
emerges time and again. In Aner Preminger's "Blindman's
Buff," a young woman severs the umbilical cord which kept her
tied to her parents and prevented her growing into an adult. In
"On the Edge," directed by Amnon Rubinstein from a novel by Yehoshua Kenaz, two daughters
ruthlessly rebel against their father and his second wife. "The
Flying Camel" has a despondent old professor fighting to
preserve the Bauhaus vestiges of Tel
Aviv of the 1930s in the face of the invasion of shapeless
constructions put up by a mindless, profit-driven Tel Aviv of the
1990s.
To be fair, political
relevance has not disappeared altogether. Not as long as there is
Assi Dayan to produce doomsday prophecies such as "Life
According to Agfa," whose portrayal of a self-destructive
Israeli society tearing itself apart in a Tel Aviv pub shocked local
audiences. But when Dayan, the enfant terrible of Israeli cinema in
more senses than one, followed "Agfa" with the chaotically
existentialist and intentionally foul-mouthed "Electric Blanket
Syndrome," even his most devoted followers were taken aback,
some arguing it was intentionally horrifying, others rejecting it as
hopelessly vulgar.
Incidentally, Dayan is one
of the rare examples of an Israeli filmmaker who works regularly at
his craft. And indeed, except for Dayan, Dan Wolman, Michal Bet-Adam
and Amnon Rubinstein, practically the entire output of last year is
the work of newcomers. While it is encouraging to see so many new
faces, this is one of the major problems of the Israeli cinema.
Promising directors, whose work generated interest and who should
have worked constantly, are so exhausted by the effort involved in
making a film that they either give up or allow such a long period of
time to elapse that every time they go back behind a camera, it is as
if they are once again making their first film. Wolman's last film
before "The Distance" was nine years ago; directors like
Avraham Heffner, Daniel Wachsman, Yehuda "Judd" Neeman,
Itzhak "Zeppel" Yeshurun, Eitan Green, while not officially
retired, have been silent for far too long.
Finally, coming back to
political relevance and its absence from most recent feature films,
the one place where they are still of prim importance is the
documentary cinema. Once discounted as no more than glorified
newsreels, Israeli documentaries have lately found a place of their
own, courageously tackling some of the most painful subjects of the
day and often displaying more sense and sensitivity than most of the
feature films which attempted to do so in the past. The heavy burden
of the Holocaust is exemplary dealt with in such films as Orna Ben
Do-Niv's "Because of that War" and Zippi Riebenbach's
"The Choice and the Destiny". Behind the Wall of
Exile," by David Ben-Shitrit, effectively presented the point of
view of three vastly different Arab women, two of them living in Gaza
and a third in a refugee camp near Jericho. Amos Gitai, who updated
an older documentary, "The Wadi," about the mixed
population of a forlorn Haifa slum, and Julie Schlez in
"Sanjin," about a temporary immigrant camp populated by
Russian and Ethiopian newcomers, leave no doubt about the difficulty
of fitting into mainstream Israeli society. Amit Goren uses his own
family in "1966 Was a Great Year for Tourism" to show that
wandering Jews are not a thing of the past. In "6 Open, 21
Closed," he points his camera at Shlomo Tvezer, the commander of
a Beersheba jail, to draw an exceptional portrait of a man who at any
moment in his life might have gone wrong but did not, and can
understand those who did.
As a matter of fact,
documentaries have been so well received lately that a special
government fund (modest, to be sure) has been started to encourage
more initiatives of this kind. Whether this qualifies as cinema and
whether such films have a future in movie theatres and can attract
audiences on their own merits remains to be seen. For the time being,
television remains their only means of exhibition, outside festivals
and cinematheque screenings. But they are well-received and
appreciated, and this is definitely a step forward. Maybe feature
films will follow.
* * *
Three years have elapsed
since the above article was written, and, if anything, the condition
of the Israeli cinema is getting worse. Budgets have been cut,
pledges for new funds have been ignored, the only film laboratory in
the country has closed down and there is no miracle in sight that
will save local cinema from being entirely taken over by television
as a provider of (mostly) mediocre TV drama of sorts. Although, if
the past is any indication, and it usually is, such a miracle may
very well occur without warning, another shot in the arm that keeps
films going for a few years more, until the next crisis erupts.
Crisis or no crisis, films
kept coming up in the course of the last three years, partly out of
inertia, partly because there are always a few fanatics who refuse to
give up altogether and despite the temptation of quick bucks to be
made on commercials and TV productions, still insist on seeing their
names on the silver screen, even if it is only for a brief while,
before the small screens swallow their films up. Thematically, no
clear-cut tendency is in the air, no subject seems to fascinate
film-makers in particular, the way it was in the past. On the
contrary, they seem to be looking everywhere for sources of
inspiration and the more distinguished projects of the last three
years indicate that much.
"Saint Clara"
adapted by Ori Sivan and Ari Fulman from a Pavel Kohut parable on
revolt against totalitarianism, turned into a futuristic tale of
youth rallying round a 12 year-old girl prophet and rising up against
the decadent world of adults, who are no longer able to cope with the
times. Much favored by international festivals (special jury prize in
Karlovy Vary), it is the least Israeli-looking picture made until
now, with its nondescript housing project that could fit into any
country and its reddish, apocalyptic colours suggesting the end of
the world as we know it.
As unlikely as it may seem,
philosophy seemed to be a topic in demand. Igal Bursztein’s
"Everlasting Joy" put the 17th century philosopher, Baruch
Spinoza, in a contemporary Tel Aviv suburban flat and ironically
confronted his maxims of conduct with modern life in Israel. Assi
Dayan wrapped up the trilogy on his personal "accidental
philosophy of life" (which started with "Agfa,") with
"Mr Baum," the story of a man who is told in the first
sequence of the film that he has 92 more minutes to live; and he
indeed dies some 90 minutes later, in the last sequence. This third
episode states that everything, including life itself, is an
accident, that every man is an island and no one gives a damn about
the rest of humanity, though they all pretend to. Don’t believe
your father and mother, wife, children, friends or relatives, it’s
all one to them whether you live or die, as long as it does not
affect their personal comfort.
"Lovesick" took
Shabi Gabizon out of the trendy Tel Aviv society he favored in his
previous film and into a small forsaken immigrant shanty town, to
deal with the impossible love story of an innocent pirate TV cable
operator with a fashionable blonde from the big city. The gently
chiding, often fantastic comedy of manners about the unbridgeable
abyss separating dreams from real-life, was one of the two best-liked
films of recent years, both by audiences and critics. The other being Leilasede ("Passover Fever"), Shemi Zarhin’s debut
picture, a family gathering on Passover night, displaying an uncanny
talent for orchestrating the interaction between a dozen characters
and more, keeping them all in tune and developing each one of them
carefully. If "Lovesick" was a personal triumph for actor
Moshe Ivgi, Leilasede was carried by the actress Gila
Almagor’s presence as the matriarch ruling over her family.
More intriguing than most of
the recent Israeli output, possibly because they cost less, are more
personal and involve less compromise than fiction, are a number of
documentary films. The best of them, by far, being Ron Havilio’s
"Fragments - Jerusalem," a six-hour labour of love. Made
over a period of several years, it reflects the author’s profound
attachment for the city, which he observes from an intimate point of
view, transcending the political, ethical and religious conflicts he
addresses.
But documentaries usually
never go beyond the television screen, and when talking of cinema,
one usually refers to fiction. And for fiction films, it is difficult
to predict what will happen next. How soon can we hope for another
picture with a little bit more depth than the television screen? In
the last reel of Leilasede, it is snowing on Passover night
and a bouquet of flowers magically glides into its rightful place, as
if to tell us all that miracles will happen. If this is true, then
there is no reason to worry about the future of Israeli cinema. There
are no budgets and the government appears not to appreciate cinema
particularly and every bit of film has to be developed abroad – but
as long as the talent is there, solutions will be found for every
obstacle. But please don’t ask when, where or how. That’s the
privilege of miracles; they are unpredictable.
Sources: Israeli
Foreign Ministry |