Ambassador of film

Film distributor Ruth Diskin selects local films that she believes will engage an international audience and promotes them abroad

By BERNARD DICHEK
Pole, Dancer, Move521 (photo credit: BERNARD DICHEK)
Pole, Dancer, Move521
(photo credit: BERNARD DICHEK)
The starting point for Ruth Diskin’s career as a film distributor came some 18 months after the Knesset passed the Israel Cinema Law in 1999. This law secured for the first time significant funding for local film and TV productions and led to a boom in the industry.
“Suddenly there were all kinds of exciting films being made here that told personal stories often in very daring ways,” Diskin tells The Jerusalem Report, citing early trailblazers such as “Late Marriage,” Dover Kosashvili’s intense film about life in the Georgian community, and “Campfire,” Joseph Cedar’s insider-look at social traumas in the Orthodox Jewish community.
Because both feature and documentary filmmakers were dealing with Israeli experiences in ways that touched upon universal themes, Diskin realized that many of these films would appeal to overseas audiences. “At the time, the role of the film distributor didn’t really exist here,” recalls Diskin, who decided to give up her job as director of marketing and international relations at Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film and Television School and step into the breach.
Setting up a business of her own was a big career shift for Diskin, who had previously studied international relations, public policy and English literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with an eye on a career as a diplomat. “I was looking for a new challenge and the idea of promoting something good for the country appealed to me,” she says.
During the past 12 years she has specialized mainly in the distribution of documentaries, bringing more than 100 Israeli films to overseas audiences. Within the framework of the Cinema Law, explains Diskin, the Israeli cable TV operators, (Yes and Hot) and the Second Channel private TV authority transfer a certain percentage of their earnings to non-profit film foundations that allocate funds to local filmmakers.
Currently, about 130 documentary films and 40 full-length feature films are financed through the foundations and channels every year. However, the allocated funds only cover production costs. As filmmakers generally don’t have the resources or knowhow to market their films overseas, many Israeli films may never get the chance to be shown abroad.
Enter Diskin. Every year, she selects films that she believes will engage an international audience and promotes them to foreign television stations, film festivals and educational institutions. “Marketing documentaries is not an easy task if you consider that studies show that only about 6 or 7 percent of the population regularly watch them,” notes Diskin. “At the same time, TV broadcasters and film festival programmers are very selective in their purchases.”
The role of the film distributor is further complicated by the sheer volume of potential venues. As there are now more than 1,000 film festivals worldwide and about 140 Jewish film festivals, and hundreds of TV broadcasters, identifying buyers who are likely to be interested in any given film is far from simple.
To do so, Diskin attends the major film industry marketing events, many of which accompany popular film festivals. A year in the life of a film distributor, notes Diskin, is not complete without attending at least six or seven of these major events, which include The Berlinale in February, MIPTV in March and MIPCOM in October both in Cannes, and IDFA Docs for Sale Market in November in Amsterdam. In addition, Diskin is often asked to be a member of the prize selection juries at international film festivals such as Dok.fest Munich, Dok Leipzig, Visions du Réel Nyon (Switzerland) and Hamptons, US.
The events are crowded and marketers often only get a brief opportunity to make their pitch. “So, often it comes down to understanding the specific market of each commissioning editor,” says Diskin, who, over the years, has nurtured personal connections with festival directors and TV buyers from around the world.
During the DocAviv Film Festival in Tel Aviv in May, two films that Diskin recently selected for distribution were awarded prizes: “Pole, Dancer, Movie,” directed by Isri Halpern, about the life of pole dancer Neta Lee Levy, won the Best Israeli Film Award, and “Soldier on the Roof,” directed by Esther Hertog, focusing on Jewish families living in Hebron, received the Special Jury Mention Award (see sidebars on pages 43 and 44).
Apart from the prestige that comes with winning a film festival prize, the recognition also helps facilitate future sales, as the jury members, which this year included Caroline Libresco, a senior programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, and Maria Bonsanti, the artistic director of the Cinema du Réel festival (France), come from the ranks of international organizations that reflect the tastes of overseas buyers.
Films distributed by Diskin that have enjoyed strong international success in recent years include “The Flat,” directed by Arnon Goldfinger, about a startling discovery in a Tel Aviv apartment after his grandmother’s death. “The Flat” won more than 20 international film prizes, and has been widely shown on TV stations around the world and released in theaters in North America and in Germany.
Another major hit was Ran Tal’s “Children of the Sun,” a film based entirely on archival material that sheds new light on what growing up on kibbutz was really like during the days of socialist communal living.
Diskin also takes on Israeli dramas, such as Lina and Slava Chaplin’s “In the Prime of Her Life,” an adaptation of a S.Y. Agnon story about a young woman’s quest for love, as well as foreign-made productions, usually those having a Jewish theme. Included here is “David,” Joel Fendelman’s recent drama about relations between Jewish and Muslim children in New York.
She is reluctant, however, to market certain films that may have a sizable commercial market but over-criticize aspects of Israeli society without “showing the context in which they occur,” she says in an understated way.
Diskin mentions “Jenin, Jenin,” a film about Israel Defense Forces operations in the West Bank that faced a libel lawsuit by Israeli soldiers depicted in the film, and Eyal Sivan’s “Jaffa, The Orange's Clockwork” a film about the clichés and symbols that are used in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as examples of films that failed to meet the criteria of providing a context.
In most cases, Diskin only becomes involved in the distribution of a film after it has been completed. However, in recent years, she has also played an active part in the financing stage of some productions as a sales agent. Among them was “Kafka’s Last Story,” Sagi Bornstein’s account of the international struggle waged over ownership of original Franz Kafka manuscripts kept surreptitiously by two Tel Aviv sisters.
The documentary film industry is not a particularly lucrative one, notes Diskin.
Most films are made over a period of several years and many filmmakers subsidize their time by working as lecturers in one of the film schools or by working on TV commercials or in other jobs.
Those films that do manage to get international distribution can make things a bit more financially rewarding, but still mainly cover unexpected production costs.
“Films that do get international distribution can expect to generate around $20,000- $30,000 over the lifetime of the film,” observes Diskin, whose earnings are mainly comprised of a success fee calculated as a percentage of the total revenues. “Some films that do exceptionally well and manage to get a movie theater release can earn as much as $200,000.”
Despite the achievements Israeli filmmakers have made during the past decade, Diskin notes that the industry currently faces a cloudy future.
She points out that cable TV stations have begun to cut back on the amount of funds transferred to the film foundations for local productions because the revenues they receive are in decline. “Many people are disconnecting from cable TV and relying more and more on watching programs over the Internet through streaming,” she observes.
Still, for someone who once dreamed of a career as an international diplomat, Diskin continues to see her work as being more than just financially oriented. “There is the satisfaction in knowing that you are bringing to the world stories about the diversity of Israeli life that people otherwise wouldn’t know about,” she concludes. 