On one hand Nicky’s Family tells his story, with the help of lots of recollection of those children saved (now adults and often grandparents), with archival footage and pictures of the past, with footage from a trip these adults took on the same train they were saved 60+ years ago. There were also quite a few scenes of reenactments of Nicky’s actions. This was the only part of the movie I didn’t appreciate. The way they were done, made it even more explicit that the movie was directed to reach us on an emotional level too. It was designed to stir us up emotionally because through the reenactments we, the viewers could identify more with Nicky and the mothers who he helped by saving their children. This intention is perfectly understandable in a Shoah related documentary, but I prefer the “dryer” type, that is less personally attacking the viewer. I was a bit taken  aback by being sentimentally manipulated.

On the other hand the last third of the film talks about the effects of his “help others” principle. When Winston was finallybrought face to face with the people whom he saved and they asked “how we can  ever repay you for our lives” all he said, help others. S they and their kids and their grandchildren did. They come up with all sorts of ideas on how to help other less fortunate children of the world. Eventually a big gala was organized with all these helping kids and teens, which was yet another emotional high point of the movie. I was touched and inspired. And I also learned about another true hero, which si always worth my time.

Official site

Description from the distributor’s site:

Nicky’s Family tells the nearly forgotten story of Nicholas Winton, an Englishman who organized the rescue of 669 Czech and Slovak children just before the outbreak of World War II.

Winton, now 102 years old, did not speak about these events with anyone for more than half a century. His exploits would have probably been forgotten if his wife, fifty years later, hadn’t found a suitcase in the attic, full of documents and transport plans.

Today the story of this rescue is known all over the world. He was knighted by the Queen Elisabeth II and the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 583 recognizing his remarkable deed.

Winton’s story is a very emotional one, and thousands of children in many countries have decided to follow in his footsteps and do something important. They think up various charity projects and even help in the saving of lives of undernourished and sick children in Cambodia and Africa.

120,000 children in the Czech Republic signed a petition to award Nicholas Winton the Nobel Prize for Peace. Dozens of Winton’s “children” have been found and to this day his family has grown to almost 6,000 people, many of whom have gone on to achieve great things themselves.

It is incredible that all these people live due to the heroic deeds of one man – Sir Nicholas Winton. Producers Matej Minac and Patrik Pass set out to ensure these fascinating, little-known stories and precious facts about the rescue mission are not lost to time. They wanted also to show the unique phenomenon that has emerged from Winton’s story, how his courageous acts many years ago continue to influence people from all over the world and motivate them to do good.

Their film demonstrates that members of Nicky’s Family are not only the thousands of people who owe their lives to Sir Nicholas Winton, but also all those who want to do something positive for our world.

Trailer:

As a member of the Jewish Film Festival, organized by the Jewish Community Center, Sonoma County, I preview movies to help decide which ones to play at the Festival. I watched this movie as part of this volunteer effort.

As far as I know the Kalevet (Rabies) is the first “mainstream” Israeli horror movie. By main-stream I mean that it was done with some of the country’s best known actors. I wish they had chosen to spend a little more money to hire a better story and scriptwriter. This film is a predictable slasher, where almost everyone dies following overused formulas.

The most annoying aspect of the flick: the make-up special effects artist seems to be concerned only around the jaw/lower half of the face area. People kept popping up blood dripping only from that part of their body. This repetitiveness undermined the little credibility the story had.

Enough said.

Description from the distributor’s site:

Fresh from its successful run at Tribeca’s official Cinemania Competition and winning the Critic’s Award at the Fantasporto FF comes Rabies, Israel’s first-ever horror flick.

Shot in 19 days on a shoestring budget, this gruesome slasher pays homage to its American B-movie roots with a winking, camp-heavy script and an impressive A-list cast.

A brother and sister in their twenties, run away from home after their dark secret is discovered. They find temporary refuge in a deserted nature reserve. When the sister falls into a hunting trap, set by a psychotic killer, the brother sets out in a race against time to rescue her. A forest ranger and his old dog, two apathetic cops, four tennis players and a murderer will all be gradually drawn into a whirlwind of misunderstandings, fears and violence.

Trailer

As a member of the Jewish Film Festival, organized by the Jewish Community Center, Sonoma County, I preview movies to help decide which ones to play at the Festival. I watched this movie as part of this volunteer effort.

This article explains our work in designing an interface for a digital movie browsing system in the  specific application context of film studies. The development of  MOVIEBROWSER2  follows some  general design guidelines based on an earlier user study  with  film studies students at Dublin City University. These design guidelines have been used as an input to the MOVIEBROWSER2 system  design. The rationale for the interface design decisions has been elaborated. An experiment has been  carried out among film studies student, together with a one-semester trial deployment. The results show positive feedback and a better performance in the students’ essay outcome with higher perceived  satisfaction levels.

Description from the distributor’s site:

Ilan Ben Natan, a 58-year-old Astrophysics Professor, is obsessively in love with his young wife, Naomi. When Ilan discovers that his deepest fears have come true – Naomi has a lover – he is unable to control himself. He confronts the lover and commits a horrible act, the consequences of which will weigh heavily on his conscience.

Trailer:

As a member of the Jewish Film Festival, organized by the Jewish Community Center, Sonoma County, I preview movies to help decide which ones to play at the Festival. I watched this movie as part of this volunteer effort.

Kiállítás

Fodor

Forgács

“I Shot My Love” follows the dual love story of a man towards his partner and his mother. The documentary follows how Tomer met and fell in love with Wieland, a German dancer, how their quick love affair turned into a full relationship when Wieland moved to Israel too. It also shows how Tomer’s mother reacted to him being a German how she felt that 4 out of his 5 sons decided to leave Israel where she brought them up.

It’s obvious that Tomer, the director, writer and cameraman of the movie, is in love with Wieland as most of the shots of him are at least warm if not sensual. It is also evident that he loves his mother very much, although his camerawork seems less enthusiastic then. The angles he shot her from are not always the most flattering and the same applies to the editing. But this just shows the natural differences between what romantic and filial love.

The movie as a whole was sweet and often touching. But I believe the intention was to convey a more universal, depersonalized message, in which it failed; as it ended up being not much more then a well edited home-movie with some social reflections. The whole movie has a black frame around it as if we’d see an archive footage or through the lens of a single old film frame. I was simply annoyed by this technique as I wanted to see more. Brecht’s influence on Wieland–who recites his poetry several times–and on Tomer–who muses about his own use of the camera as a separator between himself and his subjects–is showing. I think the filmamker intended the movie to follow the footsteps of Brecht, but for that he was too much involved in the process.

Description at the filmmaker’s website:

Seventy years after his grandfather escapes from Nazi Germany to Palestine, Israeli documentary director Tomer Heymann returns to the country of his ancestors to present his film “Paper Dolls” at the Berlin International Film Festival, and there meets a man who will change his life.

This 48-hour love affair, originating in Berghain Panorama Bar, develops into a significant relationship between Tomer and Andreas Merk, a German dancer. When Andreas decides to move to Tel-Aviv, he not only has to cope with a new partner, but to manage the complex realities of life in Israel and his personal connection to it as a German citizen.

Tomer’s mother, descendent of German immigrants was born and lived all her life in a small Israeli village, where she raised five sons. One by one, she watches her children leave the country she and her family helped to build, and now cannot help but try to influence the life of Tomer, the one son who remains.

I SHOT MY LOVE tells a personal but universal love story and follows the triangular relationship between Tomer, his German boyfriend, and his intensely Israeli mother.

Trailer

“Children Without a Shadow”, or as its original title in French says “Les Enfants Sans Ombre,” is a documentary about a person and his story is an example to understand an external and an internal series of events. The person is a Shaul Harel a pediatrist , who was born in Belgium, as a Jewish child was hidden by righteous gentiles during World War II and later emigrated to Israel, where he is living ever since. The external events I referred to were, what happened to him and other hidden children during the war, how they survived and how their lives later evolved in Israel. This is told trough photos, interviews and a revisiting of the places where he lived or stayed in the old country.

A main focus of the film is the psychology of how the above effected him and others in his situation. It explores what happens when you are told as a child that right now and from now on you have to hide who you were and where you came from. This on-demand request has affects that lasted almost a whole life. They ended up hiding so successfully that they hid their own past from themselves too and later from their children and children’s children.

My own grandparents were not children during the war, but they also hid their personal experiences from their descendants for most of their lives. They had different reasons and circumstances than the people in this film, but the results were similar: “second and third generation Holocaust syndrome.” To some extent I have this too, that’s why I found this movie so fascinating.

At one point in the movie a psychologist talks about having a hidden path being like lacking one’s own shadow and the necessity of rebuilding it. Towards the end fo the movie this line of thinking is summed up with these words:

“The paradox for hidden children is that their story is told to them. Sixty years later, they find photos, archives, testimonies. They are told about the childhood that they themselves have denied or rejected, because it was unbearable. It is belated resilience.”

The description at the distributor’s site reads:

The story of Prof. Shaul Harel is the tale of resilience of all the hidden Jews in Belgium. This gentle film allows a peek at a very personal story which embodies the courage and perseverance of those who survived the Holocaust. The story of the Jewish community in Belgium has not been previously explored and in this touching film we meet adults who survived the war and went on to become successful –and even happy adults. A remarkable story told through the experiences of a remarkable man.

Right now I have 242 videos. The top 10 (most viewed) currently are:

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“From Tel Aviv” is one-woman movie about searching for identity and understanding of a country and city. Naruna Kaplan de Macedo moved to Israel following her Israeli boyfriend and started to shoot a movie in her acculturation process. She has an open mind, an inquiring spirit and a focused camera as she learns to live and explore her new homeland. She doesn’t shy away the rabid fans of various soccer teams, the ecstasy of young Zionist celebrating their country. Instead of narrating through these images, which were the most memorable in the movie for me, she chose the visuals to speak for themselves and adds her own thoughts only after we, the viewers, were immersed too long into these emotionally charged scenes.

The bulk of the narration revolves around her reflections and reactions to what she sees. The constant self-analysis is the theme/message of the movie, so it is at least as much about her as about Tel Aviv. I personally found her thinking schematic and formulaic. but I learned never to argue with other people’s experiences. It is always real to them, even if I see the patterns that shows how their interpretation lacks individuality.

The last bit of narration in the movie sums up her conclusions

“War doesn’t hide here. We live with it, within it and it can never be set aside. And through the fear I decide I need to get ready. To get ready for war. Not the declared conflict, which so worried me when I was in Europe. One must prepare for the other war. The day-to-day war. The permanent war. I am searching. The end of the world is moving forward. I will not run away. I will fight.”

And as you can see in her (French language) blog she is still searching and fighting.

The description at the distributor’s site reads:

“I am Jewish because my mother’s mother was Jewish.
I am Jewish because, as my grandfather once told me, “Kaplan means Jewish”. It’s in the name.

I did not know Israel, did not understand Israel: it was confusing and terrifying. Israel meant war, the conflict, images of disaster.

Then one day, in Paris, I meet Nadav. He is Israeli. We fall in love and I understand that I have to know Israel if I am ever going to understand him.

I go to his home, to Tel-Aviv. As I walk through the streets of the city I wonder if I can ever make it my own, my home. In order to protect myself I turn to the familiar, to what I know: the camera. I start filming from Tel-Aviv, searching for identity – the city’s and my own.”

Trailer

The most succinct summary of “The Five Houses of Lea Goldberg“– a documentary, narrated in Hebrew– is early on as we read the subtitles: “This is the story of the loves, poems and fears of the woman who chose Hebrew and Hebrew chose her.” Lea Goldberg was a prolific, influential Israeli poet, born in 1969 in Lithuania and died in 1970 in Jerusalem. The “five houses” in the title refer to the five segments of the movie, as titled below

• First House: The House of Hebrew – about her early years, including how she found Hebrew
• Second House: Tel Aviv 1935 – the war years and how she found home in Palestine in 1933
• Third House: House of Love – on her love life, including a long unrequited love with Avrhama Ben Yitzhak
• Fourth House: In Perpetual Motion – on her work and style
• Fifth House: The Last House – her struggle with cancer and death

I admit I never heard of Lea Goldberg before and I am not much of a poetry aficionado, but I liked this movie for these reasons:

• It was structured as a poem, which fit very well its topic.
• The music was soothing and the songs were beautifully sang, I wish a soundtrack would be available.
• Incorporating innovative animation, evoking Monthy Python but without their harsh humor, added a lot visually and brought even more life to the old photographs used.
• All the doc’s talking heads–her friends, literary theorists, editors–had either fond things to say of her or explained her art with real good analytic sense.

The description at the distributor’s site reads:

Lea Goldberg was a prolific poet, author, playwright, translator and researcher of literature. Her writings, regarded as classics of Israeli literature, remain extremely popular among Hebrew speakers where she is considered the feminine equivalent of Bialik.

Although Lea Goldberg died 41 years ago she is still an enigmatic figure – a powerful woman who lived with her mother and never married, a woman who reinvented herself from the ashes of the First World War and became Israel’s most beloved poet.

The film is a cinematic fantasy in five acts using animation, after effects, still photos, original music and interviews which, taken together, celebrates the story of L.Goldberg.

Trailer: