The Israel Film Festival continues through November 14 with an impressive flowering of talent–seven narrative features, eight documentaries, and nine television entries that cover an ambitious range of subjects, from the intimate to the global. All movies are primarily in Hebrew with subtitles and screen at Pipers Alley; tickets are $9.25, $6.50 for students, seniors, and children under 12. For more information call 877-966-5566 or visit www.israelfilmfestival.com/iff04, which has a full festival schedule.
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Stars drive the movies in Tel Aviv as much as they do in Hollywood, so it’s no surprise that Moshe Ivgy (Campfire) has a leading role in two festival films. He’s an amusing curmudgeon in Amit Leor’s frenetic digital-video comedy Cafe Tales (2002, 87 min.), playing a grizzled poet who schemes to save his favorite dive from creditors and his weirdo cronies from each other. (Mon 11/8 and Wed 11/10, 9:45) In Michal Bat-Adam’s so-so seriocomic Life Is Life (2003, 87 min.), he’s charming as a writer whose extramarital flings provide inspiration, until his affair with a troubled married student (Yael Abecassis) forces him to deal with his midlife angst. (Sun 11/7, 9:45 PM, and Tue 11/9, 7:30 PM)
Work is the problem for the title character of Henry’s Dream (2003, 106 min.), a psychological drama directed by Eitan Green about a family man stuck in a low-level film-school job. Menashe Noy plays Henry, a former film pro who walked away from the business after the death of his first wife. The script’s deliberate pacing reflects the slow process of healing, as he and a student crew collaborate on a microbudget movie. (Sat 11/6, 5:15 PM)
