Docaviv, the Tel Aviv International Documentary Festival that runs until June 1 at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and other venues around the city, features the best in recent documentary films and enormous number of special events, panel discussions, tributes and more. Much of the festival this year revolves around movies devoted to the arts and culture.
A special program will be devoted to celebrating the centennial of Bauhaus, the international architectural style that has defined much of Tel Aviv. Bauhaus, That Which Remains features the works of Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, architect Zvi Efrat and filmmakers Maya Klar and Ofir Feldman, and reflect on the question of Bauhaus’s relevance today. Several of the filmmakers will attend.
The 10th anniversary of the Levantine and the Hebrews Project will feature films at the Bialik Complex. There will be a retrospective of The Hebrews project featuring nine of its films, as well as an open-air premiere of Levantine, a new film about Jacqueline Kahanoff directed by Rafael Balulu and produced by Yair Qedar. After the screening, there will be a live performance by Yehuda Keisar and special sets of Levantine music with DJ Ophir Toubul.
The films of The Hebrews series will be screened in the afternoon hours around Beit Ha’Ir Open Museum (the original city hall of Tel Aviv), at Beit Bialik and in other locations. The nine films are about Rachel Bluwstein, Shalom Shabazi, Lea Goldberg, Abraham Suztkever, Zelda, Yona Wallach, Avot Yeshurun, Haim Nachman Bialik and Miriam Yalan-Shteklis.
Ari Davidovich’s Shai K. is a portrait of the acclaimed Israeli actor, Shaike Ophir, for whom the Ophir Awards were named. Ophir is best known for his performance in the film The Policeman and dozens of other classics.
Dalit Kimor’s Mrs. G. tells the story of Lea Gottlieb, the legendary designer, founder and owner of the Gottex swimwear empire.
Music documentaries are always a big part of the Docaviv experience and the series of screenings of music documentaries at the Tel Aviv port draws enthusiastic crowds. On May 27, you can see Amazing Grace, the Aretha Franklin gospel concert film, at this venue.
Other music films that will be screened at the cinematheque include A.J. Eaton’s David Crosby: Remember My Name, which lets the rock legend tell his own story. Crosby’s life and career have been one of the great roller-coaster rides of the music industry, and he dishes about his success with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, his political activism, his musical development, Woodstock, Joni Mitchell and the drug addiction that eventually landed him behind bars.
Woodstock aficionados have most likely seen the concert film that was released the year after the famed rock festival. Now a new documentary by Barak Goodman, Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation, features a new look behind the scenes at the event that could have gone disastrously wrong, with reminiscences by concertgoers who look back on the event 50 years later.
John Lennon’s Imagine is an iconic work, and Michael Epstein’s John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky features new footage of the recording of the album that came out 50 years ago, with interviews that expand the backstory.
There will be a tribute to the 30th anniversary of the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School featuring a remade and extended version of the 1969 short film I Am Ahmad, about an Arab laborer who tries in vain to rent an apartment in Tel Aviv. This new film, The Voice of Ahmad, produced by outgoing Sam Spiegel director, Renen Schorr, and Stav Meron is comprised of new shorts by Jewish and Arab alumni of the film school.
The Day After Peace, a collaboration between the Gesher Multi-Cultural Film Fund and the United States Embassy is a compilation of ultra-short films about interactions and collaborations between Israelis and Palestinians.
For information and to order tickets, go to docaviv.co.il.