A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of the Israel Museum

The Museum, directed by Ran Tal, is a surprisingly intimate and special documentary about the Israel Museum – its workers, visitors, exhibits, and its meaning as a national museum of memory, history, culture and art.

At the beginning of the film, a group of soldiers in an officer-training course are asked: why do we take you to this place?  What can you learn from this museum that will be important for you to take with you as you become officers in the Israeli army?  This question stays with the viewer as we watch the film.

We see the storerooms, the restorations, new exhibits, preparation of pieces for shipping.  And we meet the guards, curators, designers, and restorers.  There is the immigrant musician from Azerbijan who restores artwork. There is the rabbi of the museum who shockingly tells us that the museum has no meaning for him.  On the other hand, there is the religious guard at the Shrine of the Book who talks about how he loves the nostalgia and the historical connection. And James Snyder talks about how meaningful it has been for him working at the helm of this institution. 

There are personal stories told by visitors to the museum – a second generation Holocaust survivor, a woman who made Aliyah from Venice, a blind woman who comes to “see” art through the eyes of others.  And there are issues discussed by the staff – how do you tell the story of a cruel and violent emperor when putting together an exhibit about Hadrian, who was greatly admired by other nations but hated by the Jews.  In addition, a moral question is raised about whether a Jewish museum, within the current political context, can properly display Palestinian art and culture. 

All of this put together presents us with a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at what is entailed in the running of the Israel Museum. The Museum (documentary, 72 minutes), is available from Ruth Films.

A Film to be Missed

Synonyms by Nadav Lapid recently won the FIPRESCI Award (International Federation of Film Critics) at 2019 Berlin Film Festival.  The jury described the film as “a highly original work with a sharp wit and subtle political message.”  But I disagree.  I found it terribly disappointing, to the point of offensive.  

The film tells the story of a young man who has left Israel and moved to Paris, where he tries to leave his life and his memories behind.  In an attempt to change his identity entirely, he stops speaking Hebrew, and walks the streets of Paris repeating French vocabulary (hence the title of the film).  The opening scene, which explains why he has no “papers”, or perhaps, no identity, provides us with plenty of male frontal nudity – but that’s not enough of a reason to go see a film!  

There is very little story, no complexity, and disappointing relationships.  There are some flashbacks to his military service, but when inappropriate music is played at a military funeral, even I was offended!

Nadav Lapid’s previous films are TheKindergarten Teacher and The Policeman, both of which have been reviewed on this website.

Identity Theft

You Only Die Twice, a film by David Deri and, Yair Lev, is a compelling historical and personal mystery.  The filmmaker, a second generation survivor, sets out on a journey to solve a family mystery.  

When the filmmaker's mother inherits a cottage in an upscale neighborhood of London, she has to prove who she is and how she is related to the deceased.  The lawyer dealing with the case discovers something unsettling in her father's records.  Ernst Bechinsky, her father, lived in Palestine since the 1930s and died there.  But the lawyer has discovered a second death certificate from the 1980s for a man living in Austria, with the same name and the identical date of birth.  How could this be? 

The filmmaker, Yair Lev, travels to Innsbruck to discover who was this imposter who took his grandfather's identity and why would someone steal another's identity? 

The story slowly unfolds as the filmmaker interviews people who might have known the second Ernst Bechinsky, as he reconstructs the past, and considers what might have motivated this man. He discovers a close connection to an Austrian Nazi family and builds a surprising bond with the grandson of this family – a man his own age, a man also grappling with living in the shadow of that time.  This is a film about victims and perpetrators and living with the burden of the past, about identity and about shattering our own assumptions.    

The film won an award at DocAviv 2018 – the jury's comments: "Research is the heart and soul of this film, a film where the director works as investigator, uncovering a personal mystery to reveal a profound truth about family, brotherhood and forgiveness."

You Only Die Twice (documentary, 88 minutes) is available from JMT Films.

Issues of Identity

A.K.A. Nadia by Tova Ascher is a hard-hitting and effective Israeli feature film which premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival this past week.  It is a complex narrative statement about issues of identity, racism and intolerance.  Can we shed our past or our identity the way we shed clothes at the end of the day?  

Nadia is a Palestinian teenage girl whose boyfriend, Namer, is being sent to London (apparently for terrorist activity).  She decides to marry him secretly and follow him to London, where they live separately, due to the dangers of his work.  One day when she is out, her landlady is picked up by the police and Nadia is afraid to return home.  Unable to locate her boyfriend, she eventually finds a job in a laundry, saves enough money and goes to buy a forged passport so that she can return home to Palestine to her mother.  She ends up buying a real passport which belonged to a girl who, together with her entire family, was killed in a terrible crash.  The only problem -- her new identity is Jewish Israeli.

Fast forward 20 years -- Nadia, now called Maya, is living in Jerusalem, married to a lawyer who is involved in the right-wing government, mother to two teenagers, and works as the director of a dance company.  She is passing as Jewish and tries to keep away from political discussions.  For all intents and purposes, we see a typical Israeli family.  When Maya's past comes back to haunt her we realize that one cannot live forever hiding one's past.  

In a very difficult and tumultuous scene, she goes to see her husband in his office, sitting across the desk from him, as if she is a client coming to seek legal advice, and begs for them to live "as if nothing has changed".  But her husband is  no longer capable of seeing her as the woman he loves.  His eyes see a stranger, an Arab woman. One might have thought that we could transcend such definitions. 

 

A.K.A. Nadia is a superb film with complexity of plot and narrative tension.  An Israeli-U.K. co-production, the film is available from Go2Films. 

The Dreams of Youth

How do our priorities evolve and change over time? How do the paths that our lives take influence who we are and what is important to us? Are we forced to make compromises and adapt to new situations? Good Morning Israel (2007), directed by Amir Har-Gil, is a documentary film that provides insight into these issues.

Back in 1987, filmmaker Amir Har-Gil made a short film about five youths from different sectors of Israeli society. He asked them questions about their values and about their dreams. Ten years later, he returned to see what happened to each one. Twenty years later, he takes another look. In this, the third film, he also takes a look at himself and the priorities within his own life.

Har-Gil is now married with children. He is contemplating an offer of a big teaching and administrative position at a university in England, and he asks himself – is Israel the country I love or is Israel the country I might leave? He consults with a friend, with his wife, and with his father, all in an effort to come to a greater understanding of who he is, where he wants his children to grow up, and whether or not he can abandon his aging father. Is it always possible to achieve one’s dreams?

Meanwhile, he revisits the five original men from his film. The first is Saar, who grew up in a wealthy home in north Tel Aviv. There were repercussions to something Saar said as a youngster in the original film, and therefore he refuses to be interviewed again. Then we meet Meir, a disenchanted member of a kibbutz, who believes strongly in his army reserve duty in a combat engineering corps unit and Yossi who has left behind his roots in a development town and moved with his wife to the center of the country. We meet Mondar from Taibe who owns his own garage but still dreams of studying law. We also meet Joshua from Kfar Chabad who now lives with his wife and six children in America.

Each character, in his own way, provides a startling look at the compromises made in life, how one must adapt one’s dreams and how shifts are made in one’s priorities.

Good Morning Israel is a documentary inside look at Israeli society, 74 minutes, available from Dragoman Films

Issues of Identity, Family and Tradition

I just viewed this unique and compelling film which premiered at the Haifa Film Festival during Succot. The film is about Sophie Tzedakah, an actress and TV personality, whose life is filled with contradictions. Sophie, born in 1975 to a Samaritan family living in Holon, has cut off her ties with the Samaritan community and become a Jewish Israeli.

We meet Sophie in the film, Lone Samaritan (Barak Heymann, documentary, 52 minutes, 2009), which provides a small peek at the world of the Samaritan community – 730 individuals, half living in the West Bank on Mt. Gerizim near Nablus, the other half in Holon. The Samaritans preserve the laws of the Torah – brit, family purity, etc. and they speak Hebrew. However, in their need to preserve their small community and due to the fact that they do not have enough women to marry the eligible men in the community, they do not forgive any of the girls who leave the sect.

On camera, Sophie talks about growing up in a shattered home. When she was just a child, her older sister, Orna, disappeared from home and separated herself from the community in order to marry a Jewish man. Their father reacted so badly, that eventually the other sisters left also. But things were not so simple for their parents, Baruch and Tova Tzedakah – they were completely shunned by the other Samaritans and still today suffer from being socially and religiously ostracized. As a result, Baruch is a broken man and Tova is torn between her estranged daughters and her husband. The title of the film refers to her father, a man who continues to observe his faith and tradition -- alone.

Sophie has married – and divorced – outside the community. She traveled abroad and lived all these years outside the community. But, she is very connected to her parents and to the traditional framework in which she was raised. However, she cannot stop herself from being critical of her father who adamantly continues to try to be part of a group even though he is not accepted.

It is so difficult to separate oneself completely from one's roots and to be cut off from the things that are important to you. When asked about her identity and where she feels she truly belongs – Sophie surprises even herself by admitting that if there were no social issues involved, she would return to the community.

The film is available from Ruth Diskin Films

The Tale of Nicolai and the Law of Return

A prize-winning film, The Tale of Nicolai and the Law of Return (2008), directed by David Ofek, tells about a Romanian young father who comes to Israel as a foreign worker. Although the film is a documentary – it stretches the definition of documentary filmmaking. The entire story is a retelling of a true story told by a voice-over narrator, which detracts from the authenticity of the story, but adds to the drama and irony.

As a foreign worker in Israel, Nicolai and his friends work for a company that exploits them, taking a large percentage of their wages in return for having brought them to Israel and providing them with work. Nicolai eventually decides to quit this job and take control of his own work situations and earnings, thereby losing his work permit and becoming an illegal worker. Along the way, he learns that Jews are permitted to come to live in Israel and receive full rights as citizens. Knowing that he has a Jewish grandmother, he sends his wife searching for documents to prove his Jewish roots. Meanwhile, he is arrested and deported. When Nicolai returns with his wife and two sons to live in Israel as new immigrants, he opens a small renovations company and the family settles down.

The voice-over narrator refers to the fact that the Law of Return, which was amended in the 1970's, actually uses the criteria of the Nuremberg laws. According to the Nazis, a Jew was someone who had at least one Jewish grandparent. Thus, in Israel today, a non-Jewish Romanian worker can be treated well, provided with spending money and free language lessons just because one of his grandparents was born Jewish.

The film expresses a criticism of how foreign workers are treated. It is also about the complexities of national identity, and can raise a heated discussion about the Law of Return. In the post-Holocaust reality of Israel, we continue to use a Holocaust definition of "Who is a Jew" for the purpose of aliyah. Isn't this an irony?

The film is available from Eden Productions, Ltd. –
www.edenproductions.co.il