The 11th Epos Festival, the International Art Film Festival, couldn’t go on as planned at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in March, but a VOD version will take place online from June 18 to July 11.It will feature dozens of films from Israel and around the world, all of which illuminate the arts. Many of the films will feature opening remarks by the directors and other experts.The films in the Cinema on Cinema section will include the 2018 documentary Life as It Is: Milos Forman on Milos Forman, by Robert Fischer, which is based mainly on an unreleased interview from 2000 with the late Czech director, who made classic films such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus and Loves of a Blonde.The film Marceline. A Woman. A Century., by Cordelia Dvorak, is a portrait of Marceline Loridan-Ivens, a writer and filmmaker who, after surviving the Holocaust, went on to have a trailblaze as a movie director.Bernardo Bertolucci: No End Traveling, by Mario Sesti, is also an interview with one of the late masters of 20th-century cinema, Bertolucci, who made films such as Last Tango in Paris and The Last Emperor.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.Going for the Impossible – The Conductor Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla tells the story of the celebrated conductor, who became the musical director of the Birmingham Symphony when she was only 30.Another one of the offerings in the Music category will be the new film Brassens par Brassens, by Philippe Kohly, a portrait of the iconic French singer Georges Brassens.In the Plastic Arts category, the films include the 2018 documentary Botero, a profile of Fernando Botero, one of the world’s most recognized living artists, by Don Millar.Koulakov’s Supreme Ultimate is a portrait of the abstract expressionist painter Mikhail Koulakov.The Literature section includes films about Irish poet Seamus Heaney and science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin.The Dance section features Ohad Naharin’s Bolero, a look at the artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company and his collaboration with two French dancers.The Euphoria of Being is a film in the Theater section about Eva Fahidi, a concentration camp survivor, who participated in a dance performance based on her life story at the age of 90.The films in the Israeli competition include Nitsan Tal’s 8000 Paperclips, is a documentary about Raffael Lomas, an Israeli artist and TED Fellow, who travels to Uganda to make art with South Sudanese children raised in Israel and deported back to Africa. It examines questions about the true value of art.Also included are 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.To see the full program, go to the website at https://www.filmart.co.il
