We invite you to join us tonight at Chicago’s AMC Loews 600 North Michigan for three films that present quite different images of Israel today. This year, along with offering you a chance to enjoy these dramas, we’re also enhancing the experience by offering critical perspective and a Q & A for all three screenings downtown. Please note that after tonight’s last screening, we’re going to be moving to AMC Northbrook Court for the remainder of the Festival (10/24-10/31).
In the meantime, please join us as we present:
Brothers (5:30 PM) A story of two Argentinian Jewish brothers that go separate ways, only to reunite under contentious circumstances in Israel. One brother makes aliyah and lives a peaceful, but secular life on a kibbutz, while the other brother follows Orthodox observance and becomes the head of a yeshiva (as well as an attorney) in New York. After 25 years, they meet again, as the attorney comes to Israel to defend the right of yeshiva students to be exempt from military service.
Rather than a happy reunion, the discourse between the siblings reflects the sometimes stark divide between secular and religious Israelis, with deeper resonance on what it means to live in the Diaspora vs. to live everyday in Israel. In Israeli society, military service is often seen as a gateway to lifelong social and economic opportunities through the close ties that can develop between those that serve. What does it mean to live outside of the boundaries of what’s been referred by some as a “Startup Nation”?
Director Igaal Niddam will appear to discuss his film at this showing. Our screening of Brothers in Northbrook on the following day (10/24 at 5:30 PM) has sold out, but the final screening on 10/26 @ 8:30 PM is still available. Don’t miss the chance to experience a film that has won Audience Choice awards in European film festivals.
Five Hours from Paris (8:30 PM) In contrast to the serious issues presented in Brothers, this film is a light-hearted, but also thought-provoking, look at how a divorced veteran Israeli taxi driver can learn to enjoy relationships again, through his emerging friendship with his son’s music teacher (a recent Russian olah). And he also has to deal with his fear of flying to that son’s Bar Mitzvah in Paris.
Just when it seems that their relationship is moving in a romantic direction – characterized by a poignant moment where they sing a ballad together at a karaoke bar in Russian and Hebrew – her husband returns from abroad. That moment proves a game changer that may take her far more than five hours from Israel, and bring home what it means to have a dream, and how to live it, for all three. Can fulfilling one’s dream mean shutting the door on those of another?
This showing, which will feature Tel Aviv University’s film scholar Pablo Utin for discussion, is sold out. However, encore presentations are taking place in Northbrook on 10/27 at 8:30 PM, and 10/31 at 6 PM. We hope you can join us there.
Eyes Wide Open (10:30 PM) Our final film of the night is the tale of a married Orthodox butcher in Jerusalem. Secure in his standing in his community, he finds that when he hires a homeless youth as an assistant in his shop, his notion of sexuality and personal happiness transforms radically. He must choose between the life he knows and an identity which may be mainstream in a secular Israel (Tel Aviv, a place often seen as a “Bubble”, was just noted as a top world destination for gays in Chicago’s Red Eye), but is the polar opposite of the expectations of those around him.
This film features Zohar Strauss, an Israeli actor with the versatility to go from playing a secular professor in season 1 of Srugim (the first three episodes of season 2 of Srugim will be shown in Northbrook at 10/30 at 8:30 PM) and also, a minor cult figure among the Srugim-obsessed on the Net), to a commander of an Israeli unit in the recently released – and critically acclaimed – film Lebanon.
Allison Cuddy of WBEZ Radio (host of that station’s newsmagazine Eight-Forty-Eight) will discuss this film after the screening. Eyes Wide Open will also appear in Northbrook on 10/30 at 10:30 PM.
Tickets for Brothers and Eyes Wide Open are still available, either at the AMC Loews 600 box office or through Fandango at http://www.fandango.com/amcloews600northmichigan9_aabzu/theaterpage?date=10/23/2010
