Metrotainment: Films for art’s sake

The Epos International Art Film Festival aims to make up for the lack of airtime devoted to arts-based documentaries.

By BARRY DAVIS
‘David Hockney in the Now: In Six Minutes’ (photo credit: COURTESY EPOS 6)
‘David Hockney in the Now: In Six Minutes’
(photo credit: COURTESY EPOS 6)
Micky Laron is not particularly happy with what the media powers- that-be put out there in the various fields of the arts; she feels we are not being offered a fair whack of arts-relevant documentaries.
“Channel 2 no longer engages in the production of documentaries, and Channel 8 has cut back on its production work – so we are left with only Channel 1,” she says. “That is not a good state of affairs.”
Laron’s response to the dwindling media coverage was to found the Epos International Art Film Festival which, as the Epos website notes, is “solely dedicated to the intersections between the arts and cinema.”
As in the previous five years, Epos 6 will take place at the Tel Aviv Museum, from March 11 to 14, and there will be subsequent screenings of various items in the Epos lineup at cinematheques, museums and other cultural institutions around the country.
The reduction in mainstream media airtime devoted to arts-based documentaries is disappointing. It is also surpris ing, given that the local documentary scene is developing in leaps and bounds.
The annual DocAviv Festival, for example, the principal documentary event in Israel, has now been running – very successfully – for 17 years, having spread its wings over the years from its Tel Aviv Cinematheque base. Today, audiences in places like Ma’alot-Tarshiha in the Galilee, and Dimona in the South, host offshoots of the Tel Aviv program.
“I try to bring something new, some fresh angle, each year. For example, this year we have a category we call ‘In a Short Format,’ which features short movies.” The intriguing section, which includes a slew of shorts about street art, recently competed in an international competition as part of an arts movies festival at The Louvre in Paris.
“An Israeli film about the mifletzet [the famous children’s play sculpture in the shape of a monster, in the Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood] in Jerusalem, took first prize in Paris,” Laron notes with more than a hint of pride. “The film was screened in Paris last month, and after our screening it will be shown in all sorts of places around the world.”
In a Short Format also includes documentaries that feed off works by Israeli poets, and a selection of items previously screened at the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, Germany.
Wherever you look in the Epos pro - gram, there are intriguing items across a wide swath of topics and fields. The close to 50 films are divided into a number of categories, including theater, dance, music, the plastic arts and photography. And it is not exactly all light entertainment.
The Cabaret of Death , for instance, by Polish director Andrzej Celinski, tells the harrowing story of Jewish artists who organized performances, cabaret shows and concerts in ghettos and con - centration camps. “The Jews were forced to carry out all kinds of terrible things for Nazi officers, and also to perform for other Jews,” explains Laron. “It was also a kind of exercise to try to fool the Red Cross into believing the Germans treated the Jews well.” That, of course, is reminiscent of the raison d’etre of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. “It is not an easy film to watch.”
The Holocaust is also referenced in The Art That Hitler Hated, a BBC production about works of art decreed to be “degen - erate” by the Nazi chancellor because they were created by Jews or pertained to the German Expressionism school of thought. The film tells the story of an incredible hoard of valuable works of art, valued at some €1 billion, discovered in 2012 at the home of the son of German art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, who dealt in the so-called degenerate art.
Epos also includes a competition category, for works by Israeli filmmakers – one of which is also on a Holocaust-re - lated theme.
Icon Flesh and Blood , by Honi Hame’agel, is the summation of a quar - ter-century-long process in which the director documented the life, identity and work of multidisciplinary artist Smadar Yaaron. “Smadar takes on the character of her grandmother, Zelma Greenwald, who was a Holocaust survivor,” says Laron.
The plot thickens as the film progresses. “Part of the film addresses Smadar’s inner conflict about being a Jew and an Israeli, and living in Acre near her Arab neighbors. By becoming the character of Holocaust survivor Zelma Greenwald, she portrays the Jewish people’s final moments of grace and carries the weight of their suffering on her shoulders. All of Smadar’s work, in some form or other, touches on this conflict.”
Elsewhere in the Epos lineup, the “Written Word” section features a couple of films about leading 20th-century men of letters – American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter and spoken-word performer William S. Burroughs, and Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
Burroughs: The Movie portrays the American artist, warts and all, touching on his propensity for living on the wild side, his substance abuse, the tragic early deaths of both his wife and his son, and his association with the 1950s Beat Generation group of writers. Dylan had a similar tendency to hit the bottle, and Dylan on Dylan also offers a frank view of the poet’s life and work.
One of the most stirring items at Epos 6, especially for survivors of the ’60s, is The Magic Voice of a Rebel , which takes the audience back to the short-lived halcyon days of the 1968 “Prague Spring” – when, just for a moment, it looked as if Czecho - slovakia might succeed in throwing off the shackles of the Soviet occupation.
Marta Kubisova is a Czech singer whose career was beginning to take off back then.
Blessed with alluring looks and an equally captivating voice, she loved American rock music, listened to it on Radio Luxembourg and adapted it for her Czech fans.
But when the Soviet Army crushed the four-month Czech resistance, someone decided to make an example of Kubisova, disseminating fake pornographic images of her that prompted the cancellation of her shows and brought a swift end to her career. The film meets the charismatic artist today as she returns to the stage, and reflects on the time when she was a symbol of resistance against Communist rule.
Other festival standouts include a whistle-stop glimpse into the life and genius of English painter David Hock - ney, in David Hockney in the Now: In Six Minutes , while Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People looks at the role photography has played in shaping the identity, aspirations and social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present day.
Fiftysomething sabras, or anyone who made aliya in the ’70s, should enjoy Hachi Harbeh Ani Ohev Oti (Most of All, I Love Me), about the generation of musicians and songwriters – such as Yehonatan Gefen, Matti Caspi and Yehuda Atlas – who changed the face of Israeli popular music.
Flamenco fans will, no doubt, be delighted with the inclusion of Paco de Lucía: A Journey , about the stellar flamenco guitar - ist who died last year; while street-level art gets some exposure with German director Marco Wilms’s Comrade Couture .
Epos 6 also includes a bunch of non- screen action, such as panel discussions, lectures, pitching sessions and master classes.
“It is important to produce and show arts films,” declares Laron. “Where would we be without art?”
For more information: (03) 607-7020 and www.filmart.co.il