Illuminating the arts at the Epos Art Film Festival

The festival will include many events, including workshops and panels with academics who will speak about the films.

By HANNAH BROWN
A scene from Nissan Tal's '8,000 Paperclips.' (photo credit: BARAK BRINKER)
A scene from Nissan Tal's '8,000 Paperclips.'
(photo credit: BARAK BRINKER)
The 11th Epos Festival, the International Art Film Festival, will be held this year from March 11 to 14 at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and will feature more than 50 films, both premieres and classics, from Israel and around the world, that illuminate the arts.
The festival will open with the film The Burnt Orange Heresy, directed by Giuseppe Capotondi. It tells the story of an art dealer who is hired by a collector to steal a painting from one of the most enigmatic artists of all time. The film stars Claes Bang (The Square, The Bridge) and Elizabeth Debicki (The Night Manager, The Great Gatsby). Mick Jagger has won critical acclaim for his performance as the dealer (see below). The movie will be coming to theaters in May.
The festival will include many events, including workshops and panels with academics who will speak about the films.
One of the highlights will be a screening of Agnès Varda: From Here to There, a look at the life and work of an acclaimed French film director who died last year.
There will also be a special program of films at Beit Ariela, including movies about Leonard Cohen and Toni Morrison.
The films in the Israeli Competition section include Nitsan Tal’s 8000 Paperclips (see main story) and TED Fellow, who travels to Uganda to make art with South Sudanese children raised in Israel and deported to Africa, and examines questions about the true value of art.
Other Israeli films include the latest movie by Dan Wolman, The Fringe’s Heart, about fringe theater by Yoav Michaeli in Beersheba; Bruria Pasternak’s Stories from the Barbershop, a documentary about an actress from Russia and her life in Israel as a librarian and photographer, as well as her relationship with a director, who urges her to return to her birthplace; and Efrat Goren Moore’s Life In Light And Shade – Rachel Shavit Bentwich, a portrait of an acclaimed 90-year-old Israeli painter.
Many of the Israeli films will take place in the presence of the filmmakers. There will also be a short film competition and a video art competition and a screening of video artworks by students at Beit Berl College.
The Cinema on Cinema section features movies about Federico Fellini, Milos Forman, Bernardo Bertolucci and Marceline Loridan-Ivens, a French filmmaker and author who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The Poetry & Literature section includes Swordsman: Gabriel Moked, by Shlomit and Raphael Carmeli, about a professor of philosophy and enfant terrible of the world of Israeli literature who discovered many of Israel’s literary talents and continues to publish a literary magazine, Achshav (Now). There will also be films about Irish poet Seamus Heaney and science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin.
The Theater section will show On Broadway, Oren Jacoby’s documentary about the evolution of Broadway and American theater.
In the Music section, Christian Berger tries to understand the universal appeal of “Ode to Joy” in the documentary Beethoven’s Ninth – Symphony for the World. Murray Grigor’s Cellist – The Legacy of Gregor Piatigorsky examines the life of the Ukraine-born Jewish cellist, who was one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century.
Other sections in the festival include Dance, Visual Arts, The Art of Rebellion and Architecture.
Films at Epos feature English and Hebrew titles.
To see the full program, go to the website at https://www.filmart.co.il