The Nationwide Library of Israel’s DocuText pageant will return to Jerusalem from August 16-20, bringing collectively new documentaries from Israel and overseas with a program that focuses on movies utilizing archival materials from the library’s archives.
Now in its eleventh yr, the five-day pageant will embody dozens of screenings, Israeli premieres, conferences with filmmakers, workshops, particular displays of archival materials, and outside performances. This yr’s theme is “Uncertainty,” reflecting the nationwide temper amid worldwide unrest.
The pageant typically opens and closes with music-themed movies screened within the backyard, and this yr isn’t any exception.
The official opening program would be the premiere of acclaimed documentary director Ran Tal’s The Sixteenth Sheep: The Reunion, in regards to the return to the stage of one of the vital beloved track tasks in Israeli historical past, which become an sudden success.
The Sixteenth Sheep is an album created 48 years in the past by the collaboration of writer/lyricist Yehonatan Geffen and musician/composer Yoni Rechter.
They set poems by Geffen a couple of little one who can’t sleep to music, and the unique album, a permanent traditional that youngsters at present know in addition to the adults who grew up with it, was carried out and recorded by Rechter with Gidi Gov, Yehudit Ravitz, and David Broza.
On the peak of the struggle, Rechter, Gov, Ravitz, and Broza got here collectively for what was initially deliberate as a few performances, however it become a sensation that was prolonged to incorporate many appearances.
DocuText will shut on August 20 with Tomer Heymann’s 2003 documentary Aviv, a portrait of Aviv Geffen, Yehonatan Geffen’s son, which was made when the singer-songwriter marked a decade of extraordinary fame. Twenty-three years after the movie’s launch, the screening shall be adopted by a reside outside efficiency by Geffen and his band, HaTa’uyot.
Pageant to position emphasis on writers and their archives
A number of of the pageant’s most intriguing occasions this yr give attention to writers and their archives.
Issues Had been Like That, directed by Adi Arbel, turns to the life and work of celebrated Israeli novelist Meir Shalev, who died in 2023. It tells a lot of his life story by his books, recordings, and private archive. The August 19 screening shall be accompanied by An Israeli Novel, a particular show of things from Shalev’s archive on the library.
The library’s archives can even take middle stage in reference to Life as a Rumor, the 2013 documentary by Adi Arbel and Moishe Goldberg, during which the late actor/director Assi Dayan recounts his turbulent life in his personal distinctive voice.
Earlier than the August 19 screening, the library will current Assi’s Drafts, a sequence of shows that includes chosen objects from Dayan’s archive.
Earlier than the screening of LAISHA – The Story of a Girls’s Journal, Anna Somershaf’s documentary in regards to the well-known Israeli journal, audiences can participate within the Can You Hear My Voice? tour, dedicated to writings by girls preserved within the Nationwide Library.
The tour will characteristic manuscripts, early editions, and different works that present how girls steadily established a spot in Hebrew and Jewish literary tradition. The movie itself examines the typically contradictory function Laisha has performed in each reflecting and shaping the lives of Israeli girls.
DocuText pageant to characteristic a lot of English-language items
THE FESTIVAL options a couple of English-language works.
Gaylen Ross’s Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford, screening on the pageant’s opening day, tells the exceptional and surprisingly little-known story of Aaron Sapiro, a Jewish lawyer and organizer who took on vehicle magnate Henry Ford over the antisemitic assaults revealed in Ford’s newspaper, The Dearborn Impartial.
Sapiro filed a libel go well with towards one of many richest and most influential males in America, turning their confrontation right into a David-and-Goliath authorized battle over antisemitism, propaganda, and the accountability of the highly effective. Actor Ben Shenkman offers voice to Sapiro’s personal phrases within the movie.
Secure Room, directed by Haley Geffen, is one other principally English-language documentary centered on an Israeli story. It recounts how, throughout a single harrowing day on October 7, a physician and his spouse sheltered 4 households, creating an sudden neighborhood within the midst of extraordinary hazard.
The August 17 screening shall be adopted by a Q&A with Geffen and Tamar Schlesinger, one of many movie’s contributors.
In We Met at Grossinger’s, director Paula Eiselt seems to be again on the legendary Grossinger’s resort in New York’s Catskills, as soon as the crown jewel of the “Borscht Belt.”
At a time when discrimination restricted the place American Jews may trip and socialize, Grossinger’s grew to become each a refuge and a cultural establishment, welcoming visitors and performers from throughout American public life. The movie makes use of the resort’s historical past to discover immigration, Jewish id, belonging, and the eager for a spot that may really feel like house.
One other literary documentary, having its Israeli premiere, is Siri Hustvedt – Dance Across the Self, a portrait of the Norwegian-American novelist and essayist. The movie traces Hustvedt’s journey from Minnesota to New York and examines her mental and private partnership with the late novelist Paul Auster, who was a distant relative of Daniel Auster, Jerusalem’s first Jewish mayor.
The pageant additionally consists of The Marketing campaign, directed by Kari Hollend and Cristina Bishai, an investigation of the battle over narratives about Israel, Gaza, and the Jewish those who has performed out by social media and different media since October 7. The August 19 screening shall be adopted by a dialogue in English with Hollend and Israeli digital advocates.
The documentary Shalom, directed by Meital Zvieli, is ready in Jerusalem and approaches the influence of struggle from an sudden angle. Its central character is Shalom, a rhinoceros at Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo, whose caregivers embody Rushdi, a Palestinian Muslim, and Gilad, an Israeli Jew.
Different highlights embody Jane Elliott In opposition to the World, in regards to the American educator whose well-known classroom train on prejudice made her a controversial determine within the battle towards racism; A Goodnight Kiss, a portrait of Holocaust survivor, literary scholar, and human-rights activist Irena Veisaite; Ivry Who?, about legendary Israeli violinist Ivry Gitlis; and The Orchestra, which takes viewers behind the scenes with the Orchestre de Paris and conductor Klaus Mäkelä.
This yr’s DocuText options an particularly attention-grabbing and various program this yr.
For extra data, go to the web site at docutext.nli.org.il/en
