In This Issue:
A SUMMER OF ISRAELI FILMS
US DISTRIBUTION AWARD, INDIEGOGO, JERUSALEM FILM FESTIVAL PICKS
ISRAELI FILM COLLECTION ON PBS
Film Unfinished _ Lebanon
A Summer of Israeli Films in the USA
Two major Israeli films are hitting the NY box-office this August. The critically acclaimed Lebanon, which won last year's Golden Lion Award at the Venice International Film Festival, and the documentary A Film Unfinished, which won awards at a multitude of other top film festivals, including Sundance.
Shmulik Maoz' Lebanon depicts four young Israeli soldiers inside a tank which lost connection to the other Israeli forces during the 1982 Lebanon war. For our blog review of Lebanon click here.
A Film Unfinished's latest award came from the home-court Jerusalem International Film Festival; the film has yet not to win an award at a major festival it participated in. Yael Hersonski's powerful documentary takes a penetrating look at the infamous Nazi-produced film about the Warsaw Ghetto. The Israel Film Center at The JCC in Manhattan is previewing the film on Aug 9th with Director Yael Hersonski, for more info click here.
Israel Film Center at The Jerusalem Film Festival
The Israel Film Center was proud to give a US Distribution Award this year at the Jerusalem Film Festival to the film Infiltration by Dover Kasashvilli (Late Marriage). An award of $5000 was given to help support its distribution in the United States. The award can be used to help secure distribution for the film, or to support a release in the US through an existing distributor. Infiltration was recently nominated for an Israeli Academy Award.
The Israel Film Center presented a special workshop entitled Where the internet and Independent Film Meet: use the web to finance & distribute your project presented by the co-founder of IndieGogo.com Slava Rubin. The workshop showed the new approaches to using the internet for raising money for films, as well as inovations in on-line distribution. Slava went on to present at the Tel Aviv HUB as well. For more on that click here.
The Israel Film Center team was at the Jerusalem International Film Festival and saw many of the top Israeli premieres and feature films. The general quality of films was high. One film of note was Revolution 101, which won an award for scriptwriting. Mostly documentary but mixing in some drama - which allowed it to compete in the narrative competition - Revolution 101 follows the story of two filmmakers, director Doron Zabari and Ori Inbar, on their quest to fight the corruption of Israel's public TV channel, The Israel Broadcasting Authority. The film exposes the corruption plaguing Israeli society and as the filmmakers battle to change a law and start a revolution, they employ thoughtful film-making, creativity and most of all humor.
PBS Israeli Film Series
An Israeli Film Collection to Air on PBS Nationwide
A brand new selection of Israeli films is hitting the airwaves of public television stations nationwide starting August 17th; the Israeli Film Festival on Public Television's premiere season features the films of filmmaker Duki Dror: Raging Dove, The Journey of Vaan Nguyen and My Fantasia. Funding for the preparation of the films for public television was provided by The Israel Film Center at the JCC in Manhattan.
For more information about the series and air-dates click here.
