(ARTS) Festival Shows The Many Faces Of Israel

"THREE months after Israel took a global hammering for the Gaza flotilla raid, might the Israeli Film Festival help repair the damage?

The topics of the eight films screening at Palace Verona from tonight - including sumo wrestlers, a radical shut-in and a gay love triangle - certainly present a different side to a country more commonly associated with religious and political conflict.

But Katriel Schory, the festival's artistic director, says no agenda drove the film selection; he was more concerned with each film's 'cinematic merit'.



'We don't raise particular flags, or any of that, we look at the stories,' he says.

'And if the story, cinematically, seems to have the power and the strength, we will go for it.'

The festival, presented by the Australia Israel Cultural Exchange, will 'show that there's many different narratives, not a single overriding narrative in Israel', he says.

Indeed, while the polarisation of Palestinians and Israelis is often reported in the media, tonight's opening film, Ajami, a portrait of a violent, multi-ethnic neighbourhood of Tel Aviv, was co-written and co-directed by a Palestinian and an Israeli, a first for the festival.

The president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Alhadeff, lauds the choice. 'It is important because it broadens the understanding of the region. [Israel is] a society where people of all colours, persuasions and orientations live, work and create together.'

Schory is more amazed by the fact that the cast of Ajami, which was nominated for an Oscar last year, is made up of non-actors who were recruited from the neighbourhood over eight months. The filmmakers, Schory says, 'interviewed each and every one of the people in the neighbourhood' - about 3000 people - 'and slowly created an ensemble of about 20 or 25 characters'.

Another highlight for Schory is the recent decision by the German Ministry of Culture to send A Film Unfinished - a documentary about the recent discovery of a Nazi propaganda film on the Warsaw ghetto - to every educational institution in the country.

And there are stars, with Joseph Fiennes in the Holocaust drama Spring 1941.

Eyes Wide Open tackles one of the most taboo subjects in Israel: gay relationships among ultra-orthodox Jews. So tricky is this topic, Schory says, that the filmmakers shot in ''secret'', recreating the country's largest ultra-orthodox neighbourhood, Jerusalem's Meah Sharim, in a suburb of Tel Aviv.

Schory will take the festival to 20 countries this year, including Bosnia and Russia.

'I would say that in spite of existing resentment towards Israel, and there is resentment, the Israeli films really have managed to make the crossover, to touch the hearts and souls of many people in the world, including areas that are not very welcoming.'

The AICE Israeli Film Festival runs at Palace Verona from tonight until Sunday. For details go to http://www.aice.com.au/2010/08b/index.php." (source)