Israeli and Palestinian Film Recommendations

[kidc]

What's the Israeli masterwork you're referring to?

[Cinephile1]

somewhere between a quarter to seventy percent of the populace here watched a masterwork I consider as one the four of five greatest this medium has ever produced and about whom nobody outside Israel has, to the best of my knowledge, ever heard.

And this brief extract neatly encapsulates why your posts are so frustrating to read.

Can you really not see the absurdity of writing a hucksterish come-on like that and then not even naming the film that you're talking about? Are you so smugly certain that nobody here will have heard of it that you think it's not even necessary to identify it, even though you personally think it's one of the four or five greatest films ever made?

(UPDATE: I see you went back to add a "colossal" to the "masterwork", lest anyone think you were underselling it!)

What's the Israeli masterwork you're referring to?

Here, it has never been released on DVD/BD ever even here (heck, for a decade or so there has been no legal way to watch it, as the production company declared bankruptcy, can you guess why?) and as far as I am aware (though I know the copyright-holder personally and can enquire) it has never even been subtitled in any language. It is number six on my aforementioned list, the only Israeli/Hebrew entry therein, so, I was thinking that the answer to the question regarding which film I was referring to might be rather self-evident, if this was not, please kindly accept my sincerest apologies.

[MichaelB]

It's a 39-episode TV series called The Bourgeoisie that sounds more like an Israeli version of the BBC's This Life than a towering art-cinema masterpiece. Certainly, that's the direction in which the two IMDB user reviews are pointing pretty firmly.

And I can think of plenty of high-quality episodic TV made in Britain that was never shown abroad - we're actually rather better at that than we are at producing full-blown art cinema. But I'm not going to pretend that any of it ranks up there with Citizen Kane and Vertigo, so what's so outstanding about The Bourgeoisie that you think it does?

[swo17]

Just following films over the years that have been touted as worth seeing, it looks like I've encountered the work of Hany Abu-Assad, Eran Kolirin, Amos Gitai, Joseph Cedar, Samuel Maoz, Dror Moreh, Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi, Ari Folman, David Perlov, and of course, Elia Suleiman. Who is missing from this list that you would recommend?

[Cinephile1]

It's a 39-episode TV series called The Bourgeoisie that sounds more like an Israeli version of the BBC's This Life than a towering art-cinema masterpiece. Certainly, that's the direction in which the two IMDB user reviews are pointing pretty firmly. And I can think of plenty of high-quality episodic TV made in Britain that was never shown abroad - we're actually rather better at that than we are at producing full-blown art cinema. But I'm not going to pretend that any of it ranks up there with Citizen Kane and Vertigo, so what's so outstanding about The Bourgeoisie that you think it does?

Well, have you watched it? I have, many times, and it is my opinion, as stated above, that it is on the same level as the very best of Cassavetes, Dreyer, and Leigh and certainly better than those two. And I am sorry but this is neither the time nor the place to start providing Ph.D.-level and -length explanations, it is almost midnight here and I have some work to do, though I would say that much of what makes Cassavetes, Dreyer, and Leigh great, with whose works it shares many similarities (Leigh was even cited as a direct influence by the director in some interview, as well as modernist avant-garde and experimental Israeli literature and theatre), is also applicable here.

[MichaelB]

It's a 39-episode TV series called The Bourgeoisie that sounds more like an Israeli version of the BBC's This Life than a towering art-cinema masterpiece. Certainly, that's the direction in which the two IMDB user reviews are pointing pretty firmly.

Well, have you watched it? I have, many times, and it is my opinion, as stated above, that it is on the same level as the very best of Cassavetes, Dreyer, and Leigh.

Obviously, I haven't watched it, and your lofty opinion of it has been noted.

But does anyone else share it? What specifically cinematic traits do you think it has that place it at that level?

[Cinephile1]

It's a 39-episode TV series called The Bourgeoisie that sounds more like an Israeli version of the BBC's This Life than a towering art-cinema masterpiece. Certainly, that's the direction in which the two IMDB user reviews are pointing pretty firmly.

Well, have you watched it? I have, many times, and it is my opinion, as stated above, that it is on the same level as the very best of Cassavetes, Dreyer, and Leigh.

Obviously, I haven't watched it, and your lofty opinion of it has been noted.

But does anyone else share it? What specifically cinematic traits do you think it has that place it at that level?

Please see my edited reply above. And some scholars/critics here who write in Hebrew do share it, yes.

[MichaelB]

I'm not asking for a "PhD level and length explanation", I'm asking for a brief description that goes beyond crude namechecks that tell me pretty much nothing. (I'm assuming it's not a cross between The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Vampyr and Topsy-Turvy, as glorious as such a mashup would undoubtedly be.)

Do you really not see the problem here? You're not just being snobbish and condescending towards people who like "explosionfests", but you're treating people who might be genuinely interested in your recommendation in exactly the same haughtily dismissive way. Which is precisely the kind of cultural gatekeeping that I was referring to above, and it's just as irritating in this context as it is on a more national scale.

How would The Bourgeoisie compare with, for instance, the later BeTipul or Hatufim, which are the two Israeli drama series that I have seen, but neither of which I'd regard as groundbreaking artistic masterworks?

[Cinephile1]

Just following films over the years that have been touted as worth seeing, it looks like I've encountered the work of Hany Abu-Assad, Eran Kolirin, Amos Gitai, Joseph Cedar, Samuel Maoz, Dror Moreh, Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi, Ari Folman, David Perlov, and of course, Elia Suleiman. Who is missing from this list that you would recommend?

In addition to the man I consider the greatest Israeli director and one of the greatest directors ever, Eitan Zur (director of the aforementioned The Bourgeoisie), the following names, all just from the previous two or three decades, roughly by order of importance, come to mind: Nir Bergman (whose greatest works have never been screened abroad, though several lesser ones have been, this I know for certain), Yuval Shafferman, Savi Gabizon, Esther Amrami, Shirli Mushoyef, Joseph Pitchhadze, Julie Shles, Roee Florentin, Michal Bat-Adams, Rani Blair, Amit Hecht, Orna and Yochanan Raviv, Tali Shalom-Ezer, Maya Dreifuss, Oded Lotan, Daphna Levin, Sivan Arbel, Ya’ackov Ayali, Hagar Ben-Asher, Menashe Noy, Roee Rosen, Guilhad Emilio Schenker, Dorit Hakim, Keren Margalit, Amos Guttman, Uzi Weill, Ori Sivan, Nadav Lapid, Avishai Sivan, Irit Linur, Shmuel Hasfari, Ram Loevy, Ofer Weitzman, Alon Zingman, Ofri Cnaani, Hagai Levi, Laizy Shapiro, Sharon Bar-Ziv, Alon Benari, Rafi Bukai, Boaz Frankel, plus a great many others that do not immediately come to mind and will require me to go through my files and as I have stated, I got some work to do.

[MichaelB]

See, now you're actually getting interesting. And all it took was a sharp swerve away from attacking people towards enthusing about things you admire.

[Michael Kerpan]

I agree with the other Michael, what I appreciate most here is when people share there loves (in as tangible a fashion as they can manage), even when those loves are for things that are not within my normal; range of interests. I tend to ignore posts about "dislikes" (unless it is something that is of immediate interest to me -- like someone slating Ozu).

[Cinephile1]

I'm not asking for a "PhD level and length explanation", I'm asking for a brief description that goes beyond crude namechecks that tell me pretty much nothing. (I'm assuming it's not a cross between The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Vampyr and Topsy-Turvy, as glorious as such a mashup would undoubtedly be.)

Do you really not see the problem here? You're not just being snobbish and condescending towards people who like "explosionfests", but you're treating people who might be genuinely interested in your recommendation in exactly the same haughtily dismissive way. Which is precisely the kind of cultural gatekeeping that I was referring to above, and it's just as irritating in this context as it is on a more national scale.

How would The Bourgeoisie compare with, for instance, the later BeTipul or Hatufim, which are the two Israeli drama series that I have seen, but neither of which I'd regard as groundbreaking artistic masterworks?

Please accept my sincerest and deepest apologies once again, as I have stated above, I am a bit short on time now, have some important work to do, and it is getting a bit late here at UTC+02:00-land, however, I shall attempt to try writing a couple of words. It is closer to a cross, in my opinion at least, both stylistically- and content-wise, between Faces, Gertrud, and Abigail’s Party, with some dashes of Ordet and A Woman Under the Influence, though of course having much that it wholly original to add and to say (and also echoing a whole other buch of arthouse directors, from Renoir, Rivette, and Sautet via Rappaport, Pasolini, and von Trier to Haynes, Jost, and Vinterberg, to name just a couple that spring to mind immediately). It is certainly much better than BeTipul, which I have also watched, which is far less about raising great questions. Are you familiar with the works of Ray Carney, especially about Cassavetes, Dreyer, and Leigh and emphatically his specific discussion of the films I have mentioned above? In these publications, he frequently discusses the differences between fixed and free/trapped characters, situations, lifestyles, etc. (a distinction I believe he has originally applied to Henry James) in relation to both art (i.e. the way we approach it, naturally, in his case, the focus is on cinema) and life (i.e. how we choose to actually experience our identity, self, and existence), as well those between pragmatic (behaviourally-, sensorially-, experientially- and emotionally-based, to put it rather roughly) and visionary (to put it rather roughly, overdetermined- and socially-limited-based in some know-it-all high-concept pitch session and surface-depth predetermined way) modes of existence with regards to both. I believe that his description of Beverly durring his Leigh book as being less a hostess than something much more unsettling, someone playing at being a hostess and as an impersonation of a person who has given up her identity, such as it is, to play a role, which she acts out not only in public but, more disturbingly, even in private, to validate herself, inseparable from the part she plays sporting an identity that is completely synthetic, is not covering up her real feelings and thoughts but is acting completely and utterly sincere, meaning what she says and having no reality lurking in the depths, everything is fake, or, of Cosmo in one of his Cassavetes books, as someone who devotes his life to looking good – on stage and off – and succeeding, to cite just two examples, is highly pertinent to many situations in The Bourgeoisie. He argues that these films exemplify the difference between a consciousness- and horizons-expanding and consciousness- and horizons-limiting experiences and Dasein-related immanent forms of being in both life and art and beyond (you mentioned The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, which, although content-wise is very different from The Bourgeoisie, does raise many related issue, and Carney underscores how the film engages them, those I mentioned, thoroughly). The Bourgeoisie I believe catches up where Cassavetes, Dreyer, and Leigh left-off and is expanding on the questions, pragmatically and in a multivalent manner, on knowing oneself ontologically vis-à-vis the imaginative questions of what it really means to live with regards to both life and art (and beyond) explicitly, especially commenting, in a manner rather similar to the film I have mentioned above. on the possibilities of creating within society a truly liberated and free consciousness and being-in-the-world through exaltation and worldly abstractions truly living desire imaginatively, transgressing the compromises of society and social expression and defying and negotiating societal obsequiousness, challenging spiritual and imaginative embourgeoisement, radical subversion and the greatest knowledge, becoming the makers of our own lives rather than existing in some zombified void. Art as life and living, life and living as art, and these two aforementioned modes of being, to avail myself of Carney once again, it tell us about life, and aspire to help us to live it, new ways of seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, and being in the world, the performative extravagance, imaginative inappeasibility, and expressive outrageousness violating expressive norms and social expectations and becoming almost crazy, to the point of social ecstasy almost. I sincerely hope that this is the best a non-native speaker asked to provide a very brief précis can do after 01:00 and please accept my sincerest and deepest apologies once again but I hope that you will not get mad again should you consider this insufficient (in which case, please fee free to politely point in which directions do you require further elaboration), I truly am doing my best, writing this took at least an hour if not more and required me to consult several print books, and I harbour no bad will towards you or anybody else here, however, like Carney, I believe that the greatest artworks are irreducible to a couple of sentences. Please also note the rest of my aforementioned list and notice some rather obvious and self-evident common patterns, had it been just another television series, I would not have ranked it amongst the others therein.

[Cinephile1]

See, now you're actually getting interesting. And all it took was a sharp swerve away from attacking people towards enthusing about things you admire.

Thank you, please see my summation that you have requested one post above.

[Cinephile1]

I agree with the other Michael, what I appreciate most here is when people share there loves (in as tangible a fashion as they can manage), even when those loves are for things that are not within my normal; range of interests. I tend to ignore posts about "dislikes" (unless it is something that is of immediate interest to me -- like someone slating Ozu).

Thank you, I hope you too shall find some interest in what I began to write now.

[Mr Sausage]

I doubt I’m alone, Cinephile1, in being more interested in what you have to say about Israeli film than in further criticisms of the lack of culture in the general populace. Lord knows I understand the cathartic relief of a good slagging off, but there’s always the risk of becoming bitter and resentful, airing grievances pointlessly to whoever’ll listen.

But you have this area of knowledge most here are unfamiliar with. Please, share your knowledge and passion; we’re the best possible audience. I’d happily create an Israeli Film thread for you to post thoughts and recommendations in. It’d be great to see you engaging in the forum more positively as well.

[MichaelB]

This is what you wrote, reformatted in a way that people might actually find halfway readable (seriously, you really do yourself a major disservice when you upload these needlessly thick wodges of unformatted text):

Please accept my sincerest and deepest apologies once again, as I have stated above, I am a bit short on time now, have some important work to do, and it is getting a bit late here at UTC+02:00-land, however, I shall attempt to try writing a couple of words.

It is closer to a cross, in my opinion at least, both stylistically- and content-wise, between Faces, Gertrud, and Abigail’s Party, with some dashes of Ordet and A Woman Under the Influence, though of course having much that it wholly original to add and to say (and also echoing a whole other buch of arthouse directors, from Renoir, Rivette, and Sautet via Rappaport, Pasolini, and von Trier to Haynes, Jost, and Vinterberg, to name just a couple that spring to mind immediately). It is certainly much better than BeTipul, which I have also watched, which is far less about raising great questions.

Are you familiar with the works of Ray Carney, especially about Cassavetes, Dreyer, and Leigh and emphatically his specific discussion of the films I have mentioned above? In these publications, he frequently discusses the differences between fixed and free/trapped characters, situations, lifestyles, etc. (a distinction I believe he has originally applied to Henry James) in relation to both art (i.e. the way we approach it, naturally, in his case, the focus is on cinema) and life (i.e. how we choose to actually experience our identity, self, and existence), as well those between pragmatic (behaviourally-, sensorially-, experientially- and emotionally-based, to put it rather roughly) and visionary (to put it rather roughly, overdetermined- and socially-limited-based in some know-it-all high-concept pitch session and surface-depth predetermined way) modes of existence with regards to both.

I believe that his description of Beverly durring his Leigh book as being less a hostess than something much more unsettling, someone playing at being a hostess and as an impersonation of a person who has given up her identity, such as it is, to play a role, which she acts out not only in public but, more disturbingly, even in private, to validate herself, inseparable from the part she plays sporting an identity that is completely synthetic, is not covering up her real feelings and thoughts but is acting completely and utterly sincere; meaning what she says and having no reality lurking in the depths; everything is fake, or, of Cosmo in one of his Cassavetes books, as someone who devotes his life to looking good – on stage and off – and succeeding, to cite just two examples, is highly pertinent to many situations in The Bourgeoisie. He argues that these films exemplify the difference between a consciousness- and horizons-expanding and consciousness- and horizons-limiting experiences and Dasein-related immanent forms of being in both life and art and beyond (you mentioned The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, which, although content-wise is very different from The Bourgeoisie, does raise many related issue, and Carney underscores how the film engages them, those I mentioned, thoroughly).

The Bourgeoisie I believe catches up where Cassavetes, Dreyer, and Leigh left-off and is expanding on the questions, pragmatically and in a multivalent manner, on knowing oneself ontologically vis-à-vis the imaginative questions of what it really means to live with regards to both life and art (and beyond) explicitly, especially commenting, in a manner rather similar to the film I have mentioned above. on the possibilities of creating within society a truly liberated and free consciousness and being-in-the-world through exaltation and worldly abstractions truly living desire imaginatively, transgressing the compromises of society and social expression, becoming the makers of our own lives rather than existing in some zombified void. Art as life and living, life and living as art, and these two aforementioned modes of being, to avail myself of Carney once again, it tell us about life, and aspire to help us to live it, new ways of seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, and being in the world, the performative extravagance, imaginative inappeasibility, and expressive outrageousness violating expressive norms and social expectations and becoming almost crazy, to the point of social ecstasy almost.

I sincerely hope that this is the best a non-native speaker asked to provide a very brief précis can do after 01:00 and please accept my sincerest and deepest apologies once again but I hope that you will not get mad again should you consider this insufficient (in which case, please fee free to politely point in which directions do you require further elaboration), I truly am doing my best, writing this took at least an hour if not more and required me to consult several print books, and I harbour no bad will towards you or anybody else here, however, like Carney, I believe that the greatest artworks are irreducible to a couple of sentences.

From that description you do indeed make it sound halfway intriguing, although I am very much not a fan of Ray Carney, and for much the same reasons that I've been bridling at rather too many of your posts; you're both overly fond of making sweeping dismissals of art that doesn't fit your pretty narrow definitions, which isn't an especially productive tactic if at the same time you're also trying to persuade people to start sharing your own niche interests.

But you haven't yet convinced me that there's anything particularly cinematic about The Bourgeoisie - I note that across hundreds of words you offer no visual or stylistic description at all, and that your more detailed comparisons are with things like Abigail's Party, which is literally an existing stage play captured on video. A terrific stage play, certainly, but not one that makes me think "this is great cinema". You assert not merely that The Bourgeoisie is great cinema but ranks up there with the very best ever, but I'm simply not sensing this from your description. What you're describing sounds more like a good, engrossing TV series to me.

[Cinephile1]

I doubt I’m alone, Cinephile1, in being more interested in what you have to say about Israeli film than in further criticisms of the lack of culture in the general populace. Lord knows I understand the cathartic relief of a good slagging off, but there’s always the risk of becoming bitter and resentful, airing grievances pointlessly to whoever’ll listen.

But you have this area of knowledge most here are unfamiliar with. Please, share your knowledge and passion; we’re the best possible audience. I’d happily create an Israeli Film thread for you to post thoughts and recommendations in. It’d be great to see you engaging in the forum more positively as well.

Appreciate this, thank you for the kind words!

[knives]

Just following films over the years that have been touted as worth seeing, it looks like I've encountered the work of Hany Abu-Assad, Eran Kolirin, Amos Gitai, Joseph Cedar, Samuel Maoz, Dror Moreh, Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi, Ari Folman, David Perlov, and of course, Elia Suleiman. Who is missing from this list that you would recommend?

Eytan Fox, the Elkabetzes, Nadav Lapid, and Boaz Davidson are also worth checking in on. This has turned into a good message from a bad messenger, but there are several great Israeli film which indeed have not gotten love abroad for a variety of reasons not to forget as well the importance of Israeli producers in promoting worldwide art house fare from many countries.

[Cinephile1]

This is what you wrote, reformatted in a way that people might actually find halfway readable (seriously, you really do yourself a major disservice when you upload these needlessly thick wodges of unformatted text):

Please accept my sincerest and deepest apologies once again, as I have stated above, I am a bit short on time now, have some important work to do, and it is getting a bit late here at UTC+02:00-land, however, I shall attempt to try writing a couple of words.

It is closer to a cross, in my opinion at least, both stylistically- and content-wise, between Faces, Gertrud, and Abigail’s Party, with some dashes of Ordet and A Woman Under the Influence, though of course having much that it wholly original to add and to say (and also echoing a whole other buch of arthouse directors, from Renoir, Rivette, and Sautet via Rappaport, Pasolini, and von Trier to Haynes, Jost, and Vinterberg, to name just a couple that spring to mind immediately). It is certainly much better than BeTipul, which I have also watched, which is far less about raising great questions.

Are you familiar with the works of Ray Carney, especially about Cassavetes, Dreyer, and Leigh and emphatically his specific discussion of the films I have mentioned above? In these publications, he frequently discusses the differences between fixed and free/trapped characters, situations, lifestyles, etc. (a distinction I believe he has originally applied to Henry James) in relation to both art (i.e. the way we approach it, naturally, in his case, the focus is on cinema) and life (i.e. how we choose to actually experience our identity, self, and existence), as well those between pragmatic (behaviourally-, sensorially-, experientially- and emotionally-based, to put it rather roughly) and visionary (to put it rather roughly, overdetermined- and socially-limited-based in some know-it-all high-concept pitch session and surface-depth predetermined way) modes of existence with regards to both.

I believe that his description of Beverly durring his Leigh book as being less a hostess than something much more unsettling, someone playing at being a hostess and as an impersonation of a person who has given up her identity, such as it is, to play a role, which she acts out not only in public but, more disturbingly, even in private, to validate herself, inseparable from the part she plays sporting an identity that is completely synthetic, is not covering up her real feelings and thoughts but is acting completely and utterly sincere; meaning what she says and having no reality lurking in the depths; everything is fake, or, of Cosmo in one of his Cassavetes books, as someone who devotes his life to looking good – on stage and off – and succeeding, to cite just two examples, is highly pertinent to many situations in The Bourgeoisie. He argues that these films exemplify the difference between a consciousness- and horizons-expanding and consciousness- and horizons-limiting experiences and Dasein-related immanent forms of being in both life and art and beyond (you mentioned The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, which, although content-wise is very different from The Bourgeoisie, does raise many related issue, and Carney underscores how the film engages them, those I mentioned, thoroughly).

The Bourgeoisie I believe catches up where Cassavetes, Dreyer, and Leigh left-off and is expanding on the questions, pragmatically and in a multivalent manner, on knowing oneself ontologically vis-à-vis the imaginative questions of what it really means to live with regards to both life and art (and beyond) explicitly, especially commenting, in a manner rather similar to the film I have mentioned above. on the possibilities of creating within society a truly liberated and free consciousness and being-in-the-world through exaltation and worldly abstractions truly living desire imaginatively, transgressing the compromises of society and social expression, becoming the makers of our own lives rather than existing in some zombified void. Art as life and living, life and living as art, and these two aforementioned modes of being, to avail myself of Carney once again, it tell us about life, and aspire to help us to live it, new ways of seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, and being in the world, the performative extravagance, imaginative inappeasibility, and expressive outrageousness violating expressive norms and social expectations and becoming almost crazy, to the point of social ecstasy almost.

I sincerely hope that this is the best a non-native speaker asked to provide a very brief précis can do after 01:00 and please accept my sincerest and deepest apologies once again but I hope that you will not get mad again should you consider this insufficient (in which case, please fee free to politely point in which directions do you require further elaboration), I truly am doing my best, writing this took at least an hour if not more and required me to consult several print books, and I harbour no bad will towards you or anybody else here, however, like Carney, I believe that the greatest artworks are irreducible to a couple of sentences.

From that description you do indeed make it sound halfway intriguing, although I am very much not a fan of Ray Carney, and for much the same reasons that I've been bridling at rather too many of your posts; you're both overly fond of making sweeping dismissals of art that doesn't fit your pretty narrow definitions, which isn't an especially productive tactic if at the same time you're also trying to persuade people to start sharing your own niche interests.

But you haven't yet convinced me that there's anything particularly cinematic about The Bourgeoisie - I note that across hundreds of words you offer no visual or stylistic description at all, and that your more detailed comparisons are with things like Abigail's Party, which is literally an existing stage play captured on video. A terrific stage play, certainly, but not one that makes me think "this is great cinema". You assert not merely that The Bourgeoisie is great cinema but ranks up there with the very best ever, but I'm simply not sensing this from your description. What you're describing sounds more like a good, engrossing TV series to me.

Thank you, please note that before noticing your reply, I have made a few edits to this text, so, you might want to revisit it in order to re-arrange this one. Re your technical note at the start, I am doing my best, though please kindly be considerate of the fact that English is a second acquired language for me (and one out of many at that) and that my native one is a non-IE tongue at that. Now, you mention not being that fond of Carney, in which case, assuming that you are familiar not just with his content-related theories but with his visual/stylistic/formal ones as well i.e. that it is not really about being in control about beforehand-knowledge and is more focused on faces/bodies, verbality, interrogating, managing, and scrutinizing the self and identity, letting-go and figuring things out, acting-based, life-changing learning, and such, which you seem to be indeed, I hence assume that you can guess beforehand what I find great visually-, formally-, and stylistically-wise about this work. And I shall assume that you will pretty much disagree with my assessment of it as great. Different strokes for different folks, though, and I would assume that this is neither the time nor the place to rekindle/resurrect and restart this age-old endless debate once again here. I can tell you that the cinematography and camerawork are highly multivalent and, as with Cassavetes, Dreyer, Leigh, etc. as described by Carney, almost never privilege the viewpoint of a single character while meaning is derived virtually wholly from acting, voices/tones, bodies, faces, etc. rather than from anything external to these, though whether you think this is good or bad is another story. My definition of an art film is quintessentially the same as Carney’s rather than that used by more auteurist-formalist camps and I do indeed find films such as Abigail’s Party and the one under discussion to be vastly more interesting than supposedly and ostensibly more so-called “cinematic“ ones such as e.g. the two you have mentioned above. Nevertheless, the acting and writing I can assure you are as good as anything one finds in the very best of Cassavetes, Noonan (another director whose work is rather similar to this one, by the way), Leigh, Dreyer, etc. And I would add that it pretty much predicted the societal phenomena I have outlined above, which is pretty prescient. Life imitating art and the two are strongly linked, analogous to Cosmo, these people do not understand that they are in an Eitan Zur film, they think that they are in a Hollywood movie, the message is the medium and the medium is the message while the plot of this work breaks and freezes its very own self. And I know of nothing other like that in all of cinema and trust me that I know the medium through and through, root and branch, and lock, stock, and barrel.

Please let me add that I am not making any of this up trying to cheat the gullible nor am I being disingenuous, lest somebody here contemplate incredulity. This work has been discussed by academic-level critics/scholars here writing in Hebrew as placing challenging demands on the viewer and has having much less to do with traditional television and being much closer to classics of Israeli experimental avant-garde modernism such as the works of Yaakov Shabtai, Yosef Haim Brenner, or S. Yizhar in literature and Hanoch Levin or Joseph El-Dror in theatre. Online, searching for its name in Hebrew, one can come across a great many complaints against it that are almost identical to the ones that were levied against Cassavetes, Dreyer, Leigh, Noonan, Renoir, etc., e.g. that it is too slow, “boring,” “verbose, chatty, and talky,” “lacking in plot,” “that nothing important ever happens in it,” that it is not “entertaining” and is even “depressing,” that it commits the inexcusable transgression of not being a big-budgeted action thriller, that it is “pretentious/elitist/inaccessible,” that its characters are “annoying,” “impossible to identify with,” and such, which is a fancy way of saying that it does not pander to the audience and that it is too confrontational and critical (ignoring that art is supposed to expand consciousness rather than reinforce it), that it is “ugly,” “cheap, formless and disjointed, a slippery and insecure awkwardness, unpolished, unprofessional, amateurish-looking,” and “not really cinema but uncinematic filmed theatre,” and so forth. Earlier I mentioned that this never got released on DVD/BD and you would simply not believe the temerous hostility I received when trying to advance this cause a couple of years ago in some forum, these people do really wish this work to be forgotten, they really do believe that art films which they claim nobody actually likes and that only exist to make some feel superior take up time, resources, and space from their beloved “normal movies.” The similarities with Cassavetes do not end here: According to some interviews I have read with Zur, he (plus his co-screenwriters and actors which he has explicitly included as co-authors in his creative process i.e. he treats cinema as a collaborative artform, like Cassavetes, Leigh, von Trier, etc., and this is a very facial-bodily/tonal/verbal/linguistic nuances- and acting-based work indeed) has essentially followed the Cassavetes/von Trier method of art as life rather than merely about life, namely, of using it to live through and coping with personal demons and asking ever-evolving, open-ended, and changing questions about what he does not understand about himself/his life rather than about what he already knows instead of coming with some predetermined fixed idea. Sfumato and the radical alterity of the self and identity is another commonality between Cassavetes and Zur. It is ontological rather than sociological, Leigh rather than Loach, there is nobody “else” to blame here, just you and me, neither good nor evil, characters have no motivations, hidden selves, skeletons in the closets, dark and dirty secrets to hide, etc., nor even a fixed identiy or sense of self, in the common Hollywood sense here, there is no true and false self neither is there a “detective and keyhole” method, the only masks people wear here are the ones that became so attached that nothing lies underneath. This I find more interesting than endless camera-movements for no apparent reason.

[Cinephile1]

Just following films over the years that have been touted as worth seeing, it looks like I've encountered the work of Hany Abu-Assad, Eran Kolirin, Amos Gitai, Joseph Cedar, Samuel Maoz, Dror Moreh, Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi, Ari Folman, David Perlov, and of course, Elia Suleiman. Who is missing from this list that you would recommend?

Eytan Fox, the Elkabetzes, Nadav Lapid, and Boaz Davidson are also worth checking in on. This has turned into a good message from a bad messenger, but there are several great Israeli film which indeed have not gotten love abroad for a variety of reasons not to forget as well the importance of Israeli producers in promoting worldwide art house fare from many countries.

Yes, Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz are fine, and I actually have already mentioned Lapid, thank you!

[Mr Sausage]

I'm hopelessly ignorant about Israeli film. Could somebody give me a breakdown of the essential films and why they're worthwhile?

[DarkImbecile]

I’m maybe half a step ahead of you, but I often recommend Samuel Maoz’s two features, 2009’s Lebanon and especially 2017’s Foxtrot to others interested in cinema from the Middle East.

[knives]

I still too ignorant to be overly specific, but I can give a broad breakdown. Obviously, to start with, there’s the colonial period going back to the ottoman period. I don’t believe there’s much of importance in this period, but it might be worth looking into. From independence till the mid ‘60s is a kind of discovery period consisting mostly of documentaries. The style was heavily influenced by Soviet Realism and could be compared to films of much of Eastern Europe of the time as it was trying to establish itself. English coproduction Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer is probably the best known film from the period, though I like the short doc Bayit HaArava. I haven’t seen it, but Chris Marker also did a film in Israel at this time called Description of a Battle.

Starting in the ‘60s access to color prints and the beginnings of an industry independent of England began in an explosion. Nothing I’ve seen is as wildly experimental as the European counterparts, but in many respects Israel’s development is comparable to what was going on in Africa and India at the time. Menachem Golan is the most famous name to Americans from this period for the films he’d produce as the Israeli Cirio H Santiago. Supposedly the films from this time are of a higher quality then he’d be known for later. The film from the period I know best is Sallah Shabati staring Topol. It’s a fun little flick.

The ‘70s and ‘80s were a time of increased production, popularity, and quality. The importance of the Canon Group of Globus and Golan can’t be overstated as their bizarre mix of exploitation and art cinema helped to almost single-handedly make the entire nation’s cinema be flush with cash and quality. The style from this era seems to have retained its realism as a guiding light, but occasionally weird things seem to have popped up. The most major film of the period is Eskimo Limon. It’s a kind of American Graffiti of that generation of Israelis. It’s kind of impossible to overstate it’s importance.

From that point forward Israel seems to have followed suit with the rest of the world in terms of trends.

[Cinephile1]

I'm hopelessly ignorant about Israeli film. Could somebody give me a breakdown of the essential films and why they're worthwhile?

Let us start with some essential classics from the early years (nothing predating the late sixties here is really worth dwelling on) that have been graciously released on DVDs here with English subtitles (and, occasionally, if relevant, even ones in some other languages, please kindly do say if interested and I will get you in touch with shops who sell them): Start with Jacques Mory-Katmor’s exuberant and anarchical 1969 מקרה אישה (i.e. A Woman’s Case), an early exemplifier of the new sensitivity movement (הרגישות החדשה, basically, our new wave) reminiscent of some Lars von Trier. Then watch Victor Nord’s 1977 הגן (i.e. The Garden), a religious experience and spiritual exegesis à la e.g. Tarkovsky, Angelopoulos, and Parajanov and Melanie Griffith’s breakthrough role (people do not believe me that it was an experimental/avant-garde Israeli art film lost to time and memory, yet truth is stranger than fiction), in this same later category one shall also find some early Amos Gitaï works e.g. 1986’s אסתר (i.e. Esther, a bit reminiscent of early Straub-Huillet and Jancsó, who, by the way, directed some films here) and 1989’s exquisite ברלין ירושלים (i.e. Berlin-Jerusalem), just two out of the many masterpieces this underrated director has made. Then move on to documentary filmmaking with one of the greatest documentaries ever made and the film that literally pioneered and invented the personal travelogue cinema on a global scale, David Perlov’s six-hour 1973–1983 יומן (i.e. Diary) and its three sequels produced in the two decades that followed before his passing. Of course, this is just the start and I could not possibly describe the entirety of Israeli cinema in one post, I shall continue sporadically to recommend if I see some interest here. And we still have not even reached the supreme masterworks of Israeli national cinema as discussed above.