Screening of Shai Carmeli Pollak’s Film “Refugees”

Screening: Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil

Thursday 03.07
at 20:30

We will be screening

Touch of Evil

by Orson Welles

Mike Vargas, a high ranking Mexican narcotics official on honeymoon with his bride Susie is drawn into a murder investigation because a Mexican national has been accused of the crime. Vargas finds himself going up against many forces working against him. Orson Welles dark and twisted movie from 1958.

English without subtitles

Screenings in Barbur - The Coalition

Thursday 10.04
at 20:30

Screening: The Woman of the Thousand Voices

Thursday 27.03
at 20:00

A film by Amram Jacoby

sound designer
Nissim Massas

Poems and Artworks
Ruth Dorrit Yacoby

The film was produced with the support of The Jehoshua Rabinowitz Foundation
Length: 66 min.
Israel 2007
English subtitles
Original languages: Hebrew, English

The film conveys the voices of the lost children who were sacrificed on the altar of war, through the poems and the artistic creation of the artist Ruth Dorrit Jacoby who serves as their mouthpiece.

Screening of Gali Meiri’s film: Gatos

Thursday 22.11
at 20:30

GATOS

a film by Gali Meiri

Brazilian fishing village, a tropical paradise, becomes a tourist destination, bringing with it money and western culture. The film presents the conflict and reversal of roles - the village young people are striving to earn money and embrace the western way of life, and the western tourists, a group of Israelis in this case, yearn life of simplicity and pleasure at reduced cost.

The film is in Hebrew and Portuguese with Hebrew subtitles.

Screening of Ari Libsker’s film: Stalags - Holocaust and Pornography in Israel

Thursday 15.11
at 20:30

Stalags - Holocaust and Pornography in Israel

a film by Ari Libsker

Stalags were pocket books whose stories revealed lusty female SS officers sexually abusing camp prisoners. During the 1960s, parallel to the Eichmann trial, sales of this pornographic literature broke all records in Israeland hundreds of thousands of copies were sold at kiosks. The popularity of the Stalags only declined after a much-reported trial, in which their authors were accused of distributing anti-Semitic pornography. This film examines the notorious phenomenon, exposing the creators of this genre for the first time. It posits that the combination of pornography and the Holocaust also appears in canonic Holocaust literature and continues to be a widespread part of the representation of the Holocaust in Israel today.

Read the story about the film in Haaretz newspaper

Cocoon and other Swan Songs

On Thursday May 25 at 20:30
Cocoon and other Swan Songs -
video art and experimental films by Felice Naomi Wonnenberg / Rotating Rabbits Video Art.

In the program video works:
Cocoon, 10 min, 2007
A Turtle‘s Life in the Middle East, 10 min, 2003
Jewel Garden, 10 min, 2006
On the Edge of Swans, 12 mins, 2000
Weber C fracture, video installation, 5 min, 2007

Screening - Cemetery club

Thursday, April 26 at 20:30
screening of Tali Shemesh’s film
Cemetery club

Seated between the graves of the nation’s dignitaries, a group of elderly people debates the history of modern philosophy, read poetry, eat lunch and determine the fate of the Jewish nation. Director Tali Shemesh has been following the “Academy” for the last 5 years, focusing on Minia, the director’s grandmother, and Lena, her great aunt. As death decimates the group that has given meaning to their lives, the film explores the conflicts between Lena and Minia, and the family secrets that haunt them.

Screenings: Searching for the Peach Orchard

Friday 19.04.07 at 20:30

Searching for the Peach Orchard - a documentary-poetic film.
Screening with the filmmaker, the poet and translator Dorit Weisman.
In May 2005, 2 years after her mother’s death, Weisman went by herself, without knowing any Hungarian, to search for her roots in villages and towns in Hungary.

She visited the hometown of her mother and the hometown of her grandmother. These towns stretch in the northeast of Hungary, between Budapest and Tokai. She caught the atmosphere of these towns, which were frozen at that time; She followed the craziness in her family - visited a psychiatric wing in a hospital in which, she guessed, her grandmother’s mother was hospitalized. The movie follows her successes and her failures. The film reflects her dual attitude towards Holocaust: her affection for the Hungarian people, from whom originate her genes and her deepest memory, and the understanding that these same people helped to annihilate her family. This travel is a continuation of her relationship with her mother, that became more and more close toward her death.

During her travels she took pictures and wrote a long poem entitled “Hungarian Poema”. Verses from this long poem have been incorporated into the film, as well as two of her poems sang by Yasmin Even.

And what is actually this peach orchard that she was looking for? One can choose his, or her, own private peach orchard from this film.

Sreenings in Barbur - Mother Faiza

Thursday 20:30 15.03
Meeting with the film director and resercher Sigalit Banai
and screening of her film Mother Faiza

The story of Faiza Rushdi, the legendary star of the Israel Radio Orchestra in Arabic, seen through her relationship with her daughter the actress, Yafa Tussia Cohen. Faiza and the musicians of the orchestra bring alive the love stories, the pain and longing of Arabic music that was preserved all these years in Israel Television’s archives.

Meeting with the film director

Buthina Canaan Khoury and screening of

the film “Women In Struggle”

Thursday 20:30 01.03 Meeting with the film director Buthina Canaan Khoury and screening of the film “Women In Struggle” The documentary film “Women in Struggle” is about Palestinian women who were political detainees in the past, dealing with their struggle during the years of imprisonment in Israeli jails, exploring its effects and influence on their present life and their future outlook. The focus is on the lives of four women who came out of their regular roles as sisters, mothers, wives, and took on a different role being involved in the Palestinian national struggle for independence.

Screenings in Barbur - Russkii Battalion

On Thursday February 8, at 20:30
we’ll screen the film by Josh Faudem and Inbal Lori

Russkii Battalion

The long lasting Palestinian-Israeli conflict has created phenomena that have horrified the majority of the Israeli society. The “refuseniks” or those soldiers refusing to fight in the occupied territories, are one of those phenomenons. In opposition to them stand a thousand immigrants from the former Soviet Union, ex-military men from the Red Army, who yearn to be recruited into the IDF and fight for Israel, but who are denied the right to serve in the army. Through the stories of Oleg and Alex, immigrants and the battalion’s charismatic commanders, the story of the Russkii Battalion is told. It is a story of contrasts between the hardships of the daily struggles they face as new immigrants against the pride and the sense of belonging they find in the battalion. The Russkii Battalion is a film about a militaristic social bubble, in a country that is in constant war.

Meeting with Nomfundo Walaza

and A Long Night’s Journey Into Day screening

On Monday, February 5, at 20:00 we have a honour to welcome in Barbur Ms Nomfundo Walaza who is on a three days visit in the region.
Nomfundo Walaza is psychologist and trauma counsellor, former director of the South African Center for victims of violence and torture. She has a strong interest in women’s issues and plays a leading role in shaping a gendered response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The evening will start with the screening of the movie A Long Night’s Journey Into Day, the documentary film folowing four cases of the South African Apartheid which where considered for Amnesty
through the Truth and Reconciliation Committee.

Screenings in Barbur - Berkeley’s Bible

On Thursday January 25, at 20:30
we’ll screen the film by Gad Hachlili

Berkeley’s Bible

Screening - The Film Class

On Thursday January 11, at 20:30
we’ll screen the film by Uri Rosenwaks

THE FILM CLASS
Producers Uri Rosenwaks, Majid Alkamalat
Cinematography Nag’ah Abu Zaeila

“Some two years ago, I came to Rahat, a Bedouin town down in Israel`s Negev Desert, to teach a group of Black Bedouin women a class in filmmaking. Little is known of the Black Bedouins and their history. As a matter of fact, they were brought to the Negev, and the Middle East at large, as slaves. Kidnapped in Africa by Arab slave traders, they were auctioned off in Zanzibar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and until 50 years ago, the Black Bedouins were still enslaved by the White ones.
When I first started working with the group, I had no knowledge of it. The women never mentioned the issue, though I found it increasingly intriguing. Only after about 18 months of working and making short films together did I work up the nerve to suggest that we make a film telling the history of the Black Bedouins. Suddenly, a small and modest course in filmmaking became a place in which a great taboo comes into the open. The women still suffering discrimination to this day unveil a story which few have spoken of.”
Uri Rosenwaks

Screening - (S)elections

On Thursday January 4, at 20:30
we’ll screen the film by Ronen Amar
(S)elections
Producer Osnat Trabelsi
Documentary, 60 min
Hebrew, Eglish Translation

“If there was a moment in my life when I knew what I want of myself, it seems I had missed it. I want to leave my mark in the history books and at the same time I like to sleep and idle. Now I can’t mull over this anymore, the options are in front of me and I have to choose. To learn from my rich uncle and try to devour life like he does, or is it better to get out of the race after money and power and let others to conquer the world.”

The filmmaker Ronen Amar (winner of the first prize at Doc-Aviv festival for “My Family’s Pizza”) follows two totally different characters, both residents of the southern town Netivot which he is originally from.. Amar follows his cousin Eyal Mesika - a succesful building contractor who has decided to run for mayor’s office and change the reality of the town, and his friend Koko Sha’harabani - who has chosen to “withdraw from the race” and search for himself. As the local elections approach, both of Amar’s heros now both face a crossroad in their lives. Both are desperately looking for the right path and both are subject to dilemmas which will ultimately force them to assume responsibility for their destiny.

Screening - Ester’s Children

On Tuesday January 2, at 20:30
we’ll screen the film by Shosh Israeli
Ester’s Children
Documentary

A group of orphan children in Kenya exposed for the first time in their life to the making of art.
The movie is in between the complete lack of knowledge and the craving for the art making, through the exposure to different kinds of tools during a few weeks of work.

Screenings - Enraged

Thursday, Desember 28, 20:30
Enraged

Dir.: Eyal Eithcowich
Pro.: Liran Atzmor
Sc.: Eyal Eithcowich
Pho.: Eyal Eithcowich

In 2002, in the midst of what was thought to be the peak of the wave of terror that assailed the state, a group of young Israelis break the holiest of taboos and befriends Palestinians in an active struggle against the occupation. They had called themselves “Anarchists Against the Wall”, and started, in coordination with Palestinians, to appear wherever they felt they were most needed: in demonstrations, in marches of protest and solidarity, in olive groves and on the roads to schools. “Enraged” tries to follow the motivation of these activists, what makes “regular” men and women, people of great personal potential to leave everything behind, to go after the call of the heart and turn into activists.

The Old Stores - screening

Thursday, Desember 21, 20:30
The Old Stores

Dir.: Yoav Gurfinkel

Sometimes they are hiding but they are everywhere.
From institutions of high cultural values to little family businesses, some of them are keeping the glory of the past, some are dying, some don’t have any reasonable reason to exist.
This is a movie that immortalizes the endangered species, species with historical, cultural and aesthetic values - these who succeeded to preserve themselves so far.

The Katif Dream

November 23, 20:30

The Katif Dream, a film by Yuval and Aliza Ginsburg

A documentary about the last week In Neve Dekalim, at the time of the Gush Katif evacuation (Disengagement Program, 2005), from the directors personal perspective.

In the Company of a Dead Cat

November 9, 20:30

In the Company of a Dead Cat, a film by Vadim Antonevich

Hebrew & Russian, Subtitles in English, 54 min

A park in south Tel Aviv. As night descends, a group of Russian homeless people, lifelong immigrants, is busy with their life routine. It’s an improvised kolkhoz, where each person contributes and receives according to his needs. Angela, shaky from alcohol and love, motherly yet boisterous, gathers the money for the vodka.
The park hosts many lost and deserted souls. Through the camera lens, the survival instincts of a stray cat or dog lucidly mirror those of the homeless. Two years of day-to-day filming turned the director into an integral part of this close-knit group. Through Angela’s stricken eyes, we are exposed to life on the fringe, full of emotions, fights and moments of grace, as the director nearly oversteps the boundaries of documentation.