Jewish film savant tracks evolution of Israeli cinema

By Paul Haist

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Turnout for the Jan. 18 Writers and Scholars lecture at Congregation Neveh Shalom was low, owing to the winter storm from which the city was just beginning to recover.

But that didn't dampen the enthusiasm of guest speaker Janis Plotkin who came from the Bay Area to offer an inside overview of Israeli film, just as the 15th annual Portland Jewish Film Festival was getting under way.

Plotkin is one of the founders of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the nation's first Jewish film festival, which she directed for 21 years.

"I was always surprised at their candor in addressing difficult issues on screen?without censorship," said Plotkin, as she launched a summary of the evolution of Israeli film in the years since the creation of the modern state of Israel.

She said that Israeli film is a "national cinema" after the model of some European cinemas that benefit from government subsidies as a way of competing with an otherwise internationally dominant Hollywood cinema.

The Israeli government provides filmmakers with financial assistance through its Fund for the Encouragement of Quality Israeli Cinema, said Plotkin. The fund was set up in 1978 and currently helps underwrite five to seven films each year, said Plotkin.

Despite the Israeli government's role in deciding which films will receive partial support from the fund, "There's never been any kind of censorship," said Plotkin.

She likened Israeli film to a "barometer" of life in Israel at any given moment. She offered examples.

In the years immediately following Israel's War of Independence, for example, Israeli filmmakers concentrated on stories "that showed heroic Israelis," that "focused on mythic heroic figures," and in which "Arabs were only seen as part of the violent siege."

In the 1960s, Israeli film developed along two lines.

The "auteur film" stressed edgy artistic merit, after the model of key French filmmakers of the mid-20th century, and in which the vision of the filmmaker was the key distinguishing characteristic.

The other was the "boureka film," which—named for a fried flaky pastry—was a highly commercial comedic film that usually satirized and parodied
Sephardic Jews, according to Plotkin.

By the 1980s, Jewish filmmakers telling stories of life in Israel had become willing to "put the Arab in the forefront," said Plotkin, "and also let Palestinians speak in their own voice."

At this same time in Israel, Palestinian filmmakers were emerging who broadened the dialogue "by telling the story from their point of view."

The focus narrowed after 1982 with more films about Israel's war that year in Lebanon.

Where before stories of Israel's struggle had placed the conflict in the foreground, now the conflict was more likely to be addressed via "personal stories, with the conflict in the background," according to Plotkin.

Continuing its pattern of tracking the evolution of the Jewish state, following, like a barometer, the ever-changing circumstances or conditions, Israeli cinema in the early 1990s took a new turn after the fall of the Soviet Union and began to focus on the presence of Russian and Georgian Jewish immigrants.

Plotkin shared clips from landmark Israeli films.

Among those she selected as not to be overlooked were "Aviya's Summer," director Eli Cohen's interpretation of Israeli actress Gila Almagor's script about the life in Israel of a young Holocaust survivor and her daughter. Plotkin called "Aviya's Summer" "the most important film of the outcome of the Holocaust in Israel." Almagor also starred in the film.

Plotkin also showed an excerpt from Uri Barbash's 1984 drama "Beyond the Walls," in which incarcerated Jewish and Arab prisoners form an alliance against corrupt officials, a scenario that allows the director to "play against stereotypes," in Plotkin's words, as he explores the extent and the limits of distrust and hatred between the two cultures.

Plotkin said this film has been immensely popular in Israel and is "one of the most important Israeli films ever made."

Finally, Plotkin shared an excerpt from Ark Kaplan's "Yana's Friends," which presents three parallel stories of immigrants in Tel Aviv during the Gulf War and about their coming together while sealed in a room during the Scud missile attacks.

The film was the first in Israel to address the recent Russian immigrant experience there.