The 19th annual Israel Film Festival continues Saturday through Thursday, May 10 through 15. Screenings will be at the Esquire and Highland Park, 445 Central, Highland Park. Tickets are $9, $6 for seniors and children aged ten and younger; a festival pass, good for five admissions, is $36. For more information call 877-966-5566. Films marked with an * are highly recommended.
Aviv
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In Moledet (65 min.) documentarian Yaakov Gross tells the story of Israel’s first film studio, opened in the late 1920s by a young cameraman named Nathan Axelrod to produce newsreels. The Moledet archives provide a wealth of fascinating footage, showing the 1929 riots at the Wailing Wall, a ceremony commemorating the completion of Tel Aviv’s first large synagogue, and a bedouin sheikh’s wedding attended by 200 Jewish guests. They’re arresting glimpses of a time when Jews and Arabs regarded each other with curiosity rather than hostility. In his documentary On the Front Line (54 min.) Hanoch Zeevi looks at a group of Israeli high school graduates who deferred their military service in 2000 to perform community volunteer work in Gilo, a neighborhood in northern Jerusalem, but found themselves in a war zone after all when the Al Aqsa intifada erupted. While somewhat pedestrian in its approach, the video shows how quickly children and young adults adjust to the violence surrounding them; most are nonchalant if not philosophical about the nightly blasts of mortar fire. Both films are in English or subtitled Hebrew. (Joshua Katzman) (Highland Park, 11:00 am)
Short films, program two
Ludicrously handsome and endowed with a robust set of pipes, Israeli singer Moshe Brand (in Europe, Mike Brant) dominated the French and Israeli pop charts in the early 70s but committed suicide at age 28. This worshipful 2002 documentary by Erez Laufer interweaves footage of the singer in his playboy prime and recent interviews with surviving relatives, lovers, bandmates, and hangers-on. Musically, Brant was a francophone Engelbert Humperdinck; personally, he comes across as a complete cipher. Loyal fans (who are apparently numerous) and lovers of Euro kitsch (who will watch for Brant’s impression of Jerry Lewis) should be delighted, but everyone else would probably be better off renting George Cukor’s A Star Is Born. In French and Hebrew with subtitles. 102 min. (Cliff Doerksen) (Esquire, 3:00)
Wisdom of the Pretzel
See listing this date above. (Highland Park, 7:30)
