Views from the top

The Cinematheque’s Lia van Leer and new executive director Alesia Weston on what to see at this year’s Jerusalem Film Festival.

By HANNAH BROWN
'Putin's Kiss' 521 (photo credit: Courtesy Jerusalem Cinematheque)
'Putin's Kiss' 521
(photo credit: Courtesy Jerusalem Cinematheque)
It’s the morning after vandals, presumably ultra- Orthodox extremists, defaced posters advertising the 29th Jerusalem Film Festival, which begins on July 5 and runs until July 14. At the Jerusalem Cinematheque, the home of the festival, Lia van Leer, the Cinematheque founder and president, and Alesia Weston, the newly arrived executive director of the Jerusalem Film Center, are discussing the vandalism.
“They sprayed white paint on the image of the woman riding a bicycle,” says Weston, who spent many years at the Sundance Institute, developing movies with international filmmakers. While she is new to the Jerusalem Film Center, the body that oversees both the cinematheque and the festival, she lived in Israel for six years as a child, and so is not shocked.
But she is disturbed.
“This goes against my understanding of what Judaism is,” Weston says. “It’s not ‘do unto others,’ meaning go ahead and impose your beliefs. It’s ‘do not do unto others what is hateful to you.’” Describing a warm relationship she has with haredi cousins who live in another part of the city, who have been “so lovely, so embracing,” she says, referring to the vandalism, “That is not the dialogue I want to have.”
Van Leer, who has been in Israel for more than six decades, and who was the most vocal warrior in the fight to make it possible to show movies in Jerusalem on Shabbat, has a story to tell, as she often does.
“The first time we had a problem with the haredim was when Wim [van Leer, her late husband] and I were going to get married. And we were near Mea She’arim and I was wearing a dress, you know, ” she gestures to indicate a low-cut sundress, “and they spat at me. And Wim said to them, ‘We even have separate hotel rooms, we are really behaving very well.’” She laughs.
“When we built the [Jerusalem] Cinematheque, some of these [ultra-Orthodox] rabbis came and said we need to build a revolving door, to keep out the spirit of the dead.”
She rolls her eyes; there is no revolving door at the Cinematheque.
The truth is that because of van Leer, and her passion for movies, there is a vibrant spirit of the living throughout the Cinematheque. Its most dynamic expression is the very ambitious annual film festival, which features about 200 films from dozens of countries in 10 days, everything from an Antonioni retrospective to Kol Nidre, a Yiddish classic. It’s simply the best of international contemporary cinema, including nine new and eagerly anticipated Israeli feature films.
I meet every year with van Leer to get her personal recommendations from the 260-page festival catalogue.
This year, the fact that we are joined by Weston for this sit-down indicates not that van Leer is passing the torch, but that she is inviting this enthusiastic newcomer to hold it with her. And Weston is clearly up to the task.
She had an eclectic upbringing, growing up in the US, Britain, Switzerland and Israel, with parents who were lawyers by profession but were really “mavericks.”
Although she considered studying law herself, instead she joined the Sundance Institute and shepherded a wide range of films by new filmmakers to the screen.
Describing her own taste as running “from arthouse films to ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’” she explains her film aesthetic as being “patient with new directors whose work tends to be raw, but impatient with laziness and entitlement.”
This year, she and van Leer are especially proud of the new program in the festival called “Friends and Neighbors,” which features films from this part of the world, including the Egyptian documentary 1/2 Revolution, about the recent political upheaval there.
“We have always shown Egyptian films, Iranian films, Algerian films,” notes van Leer. “We have always had good relations with filmmakers in Arab countries.”
This year, there is an Iranian film in this category, Mourning, directed by Morteza Farshbaf, about a child who is with relatives when his parents are killed in a car crash. “I see on Facebook that my Israeli and Iranian friends are writing notes to each other,” says Weston. “So if people see Mourning and look at the Iranians not as warmongers but can see this grieving family, I think it furthers the dialogue.”
Although Weston doesn’t want to appear to be a self-promoter, she can’t help but mention some of the films she worked on at Sundance that are in the festival, including Sally el-Hosaini’s My Brother, the Devil, about a young Egyptian immigrant in London who finds himself falling in love.
She also mentions Rama Burshtein’s Fill the Void, the complex story of a haredi bride-to-be, made by a director who has become Orthodox herself. “It’s beautiful, nuanced and complex,” she says.
“There are so many wonderful movies this year,” says van Leer. “We’re showing Voyage to Cythera, as a tribute to [Theo] Angelopoulos,” a Greek filmmaker who died this year and who was a frequent guest of the Jerusalem Film Festival. And Indignados, by Tony Gatlif, about migrant workers. There is wonderful animation, see Don Hertzfeldt. [With Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit], come see Putin’s Kiss [a documentary]. There is really something for everyone to see.” •
For more information and to order tickets, go to the festival website at www.jff.org.il