Cinema of Israel


Cinema of Israel comprises the film industry and its film productions, whether made within the State of Israel or by Israeli film production companies abroad. Most Israeli films are produced in Hebrew, but there are productions in other languages such as Arabic and English. Israel has been nominated for more Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film than any other country in the Middle East.
Israel's first full-length feature film, Hill 24 Doesn't Answer was directed by Britain's Thorold Dickinson and retells the Establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the War of Independence. In the 1950s and early 1960s, a number of British and American films were set and filmed in Israel. These included the epic historical drama, Exodus, also about the founding of the State of Israel. The film, directed by Otto Preminger, was based on the 1958 novel of the same name by Leon Uris and starred Paul Newman.
From the 1960s to the 1970s, films of the Bourekas genre were especially prominent, often including ethnic tensions between the Ashkenazim and the Mizrahim or Sephardim and the conflict between rich and poor. The genre was led by directors such as Ephraim Kishon and Menahem Golan producing popular films such as Sallah Shabati and Kazablan. This period was also marked by the arrival of the New Sensibility genre, influenced by the French New Wave. The genre was pioneered by Uri Zohar with groundbreaking films such as Hole in the Moon and Every Bastard a King. Moshé Mizrahi was also a significant filmmaker of the genre, with I Love You Rosa and The House on Chelouche Street. Stars such as Chaim Topol and Gila Almagor rose to prominence during this period.
Holocaust representation began to appear toward the end of the Mandate Palestine era, with My Father's House, and more projects emerging from the late-1970s onwards.
Israeli cinema has since concerned itself with social themes, Moshe Dayan's Life According to Agfa looks at revellers and employees of a Tel Aviv pub as a microcosm of Israeli society. Dan Wolman's Hide and Seek was the first Israeli picture to address homosexual themes. Amazing Grace by Amos Guttman deals with AIDS in Tel Aviv's gay community. Yossi & Jagger by Eytan Fox explores romance between two Israel Defense Forces soldiers, and returns to central gay themes in Yossi and Sublet. Ofir Raul Graizer's film The Cakemaker was also notable for its depiction of homosexuality and grief.
Marriage and divorce have also been prominent themes for Israeli filmmakers, with Lior Ashkenazi and Ronit Elkabetz in Dover Kosashvili's drama, Late Marriage as a couple who are subject to the intervention of tradition-minded Georgian Jewish immigrant relatives. Elkabetz also starred in a critically acclaimed trilogy about the unhappy marriage of Viviane Amsalem, in To Take a Wife, Shiva and Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem. Rama Burshtein also explores Haredi marriage and engagement in Fill the Void.
Filmmakers have also tackled war with Israel's neighbours, with Kippur by Amos Gitai which deals with the Yom Kippur War and Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman, which tackles conflict with Lebanon. Talya Lavie explores female IDF soldiers in the black comedy, Zero Motivation. Samuel Maoz also deals with military themes in Foxtrot. Arab-Jewish relations are also explored in other contexts, through a friendship between small-town Israeli Jews and a visiting Egyptian Ceremonial Police Orchestra in Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit.
The country is also famed for its prestigious Jerusalem Film Festival, held annually since 1984. The Ophir Awards are the most prestigious awards at national level and awarded by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television. The event is the Israeli equivalent of the American Academy Awards.

Background

Movies were made in Mandatory Palestine from the beginning of the silent film era although the development of the local film industry accelerated after the establishment of the state. Early films were mainly documentary or news roundups, shown in cinemas before the movie started. The earliest film shot entirely in Mandatory Palestine was Murray Rosenberg's 1911 documentary, The First Film of Palestine.
In 1933, a children's book by Zvi Lieberman Oded ha-noded was made into a silent film called Oded the Wanderer, Palestine"s first full-length feature film for children, produced on a shoestring budget with private financing. In 1938, another book by Lieberman, Me’al ha-khoravot was made into a film called Over the Ruins, which tells the story of children in a Second Temple Jewish village in the Galilee where all the adults were killed by the Romans. It is 70-minutes with a soundtrack and dialogue. Lieberman wrote the screenplay. Produced by Nathan Axelrod and directed by Alfred Wolf. Production costs came to 1,000 Palestine pounds. It failed at the box office but is considered a precursor of Israeli cinema.
One of the precursors of cinema in Israel was Baruch Agadati. Agadati purchased cinematographer Yaakov Ben Dov's film archives in 1934 when Ben Dov retired from filmmaking and together with his brother Yitzhak established the AGA Newsreel. In 1935, he directed a film entitled This is the Land.

History

In 1948, Yosef Navon, a soundman, and Abigail Diamond, American producer of the first Hebrew-language film at age 15, Baruch Agadati, found an investor, businessman , who invested his own money in film and lab equipment. Agadati used his connections among Haganah comrades to acquire land for a studio. In 1949 the Geva Films studio was established on the site of an abandoned woodshed in Givatayim.
In 1954, the Knesset passed the Law for the Encouragement of Israeli Films, the following year Hill 24 Doesn't Answer was released as the first Israeli feature film. Leading filmmakers in the 1960s were Menahem Golan, Ephraim Kishon, and Uri Zohar.
The first Bourekas film was Sallah Shabati, produced by Ephraim Kishon in 1964. In 1965, Uri Zohar produced the film Hole in the Moon, influenced by French New Wave films.
In the first decade of the 21st century, several Israeli films won awards in film festivals around the world. Prominent films of this period include Late Marriage, Broken Wings, Walk on Water and Yossi & Jagger, Nina's Tragedies, Campfire and Beaufort, Or , Turn Left at the End of the World, The Band's Visit ''Waltz with Bashir, and Ajami. In 2011, Strangers No More won the Oscar for Best Short Documentary. In 2013 two documentaries were nominated the Oscar for the Best Feature Documentary: The Gatekeepers and Five Broken Cameras'', a Palestinian-Israeli-French co-production. In 2019, Synonyms won the Golden Bear award at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival. In 2021, Ahed's Knee, directed too by Lapid, was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and shared the Jury Prize.
Author Julie Gray notes, "Israeli film is certainly not new in Israel, but it is fast gaining attention in the U.S., which is a double-edged sword. American distributors feel that the small American audience interested in Israeli film, are squarely focused on the turbulent and troubled conflict that besets us daily."
In 2014 Israeli-made films sold 1.6 million tickets in Israel, the best in Israel's film history.

Genres

Documentary films

Israeli and Zionist documentary films were shot both before and after 1948, often with the purpose of not just informing Jews living elsewhere, but also for attracting donations from them and for persuading them to immigrate. Among the pioneers who were active both as photographers and cinematographers are Ya'acov Ben-Dov and Lazar Dünner. Dünner first worked as a cinematographer, gradually moving into other film-making tasks. In 1937 he shot the 15-minute film "A Day in Degania", in full colour, giving us a document about the first kibbutz some 27 years after it being established, and with the Nazi threat still "just" as a background threat, not fully mentioned by name. In 1949, after years of war, Dünner would start churning out short documentaries of this type, narrated in English for the benefit of the mainly US public.

Bourekas films

s were a film genre popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Central themes include ethnic tensions between the Ashkenazim and the Mizrahim or Sephardim and the conflict between rich and poor. The term was supposedly coined by the Israeli film director Boaz Davidson, the creator of several such films, as a play-on-words, after "spaghetti Western:" just as the Western subgenre was named after a notable dish of its country of filming, so the Israeli genre was named after the notable Israeli dish, Bourekas, although somesay the term originated from a scene in The Policeman where the title character is shown giving one of his coworkers a bourekas. Bourekas films are further characterized by accent imitations ; a combination of melodrama, comedy and slapstick; and alternate identities. Bourekas films were successes at the box office but were often panned by the critics. They included comedy films such as Charlie Ve'hetzi and Hagiga B'Snuker and sentimental melodramas such as Nurit. Prominent filmmakers in this genre during this period include Boaz Davidson, Ze'ev Revach, Yehuda Barkan and George Ovadiah.

New Sensitivity films

The New Sensitivity films is a movement which started during the 1960s and lasted until the end of the 1970s. The movement sought to create a cinema in modernist cinema with artistic and esthetic values, in the style of the new wave films of the French cinema. The "New sensitivity" movement produced social artistic films such as But Where Is Daniel Wax? by Avraham Heffner. The Policeman Azoulay, I Love You Rosa and The House on Chelouche Street by Moshé Mizrahi were candidates for an Oscar Award in the foreign film category. One of the most important creators in this genre is Uri Zohar, who directed Hor B'Levana and Three Days and a Child.