Films depict the unequal treatment of Mizrahi Israelis, Ethiopian Israelis and Arab/Palestinian Israelis, and the poor treatment of foreign workers. Forget the early Zionist ideal of the nobility of Jewish labor in the Promised Land. Discrimination against women, a frequent subject of this festival, was problematic even in the early kibbutz days.
Jewish and Muslim women come together in conversation.
The Finzi-Contini enchanted garden doesn’t even give them the protection of a ghetto. They are rounded up and shipped out along with the lower-class Jews they disdained.
It’s hard to imagine a male filmmaker admitting terror. It seems natural for a woman.
At this year’s festival, remorse and regret seep from the screen.
Decades later, at a Jewish symposium on abortion, a male leader self-righteously intoned, “Abortion is never an easy decision.” He’d obviously never been there.
By now these items are standard fare at a feminist seder – the once transgressive orange on the Seder Plate; Miriam’s cup of clear, life-giving water next to Elijah’s cup… Read more »
Carole Zabar’s founding vision was a film festival showing the “Other Israel” – minorities, women, Palestinians not part of the Zionist dream or Israel propaganda.
A loving friend and filmmaker recorded the last 15 months in the life of mindfulness teacher and rabbi Rachel Cowan.
Approaching an old love after almost 50 years is fraught.
