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| Cinema of Israel | |
|---|---|
 | |
| No. ofscreens | 286 (2011)[1] |
| • Per capita | 4.4 per 100,000 (2011)[1] |
| Main distributors | United King Globus Group Forum Cinemas[2] |
| Number of admissions (2011)[4] | |
| Total | 12,462,537 |
| • Per capita | 1.5 (2012)[3] |
| Gross box office (2012)[3] | |
| Total | €94.6 million (₪454.8 million) |
Cinema of Israel (Hebrew:קולנוע ישראלי,romanized: Kolnoa Yisraeli) refers tofilm production inIsrael since its founding in 1948. Most Israeli films are produced inHebrew, but there are productions in other languages such asArabic andEnglish. Israel has been nominated for moreAcademy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film than any other country in theMiddle East.
Movies were made inMandatory Palestine from the beginning of thesilent film era although the development of the local film industry accelerated after the establishment of the state. Early films were mainly documentary or news roundups, shown in cinemas before the movie started.[5] The earliest film shot entirely in Mandatory Palestine was Murray Rosenberg's 1911 documentary,The First Film of Palestine.[6]
In 1933, a children's book byZvi LiebermanOded ha-noded was made into a silent film calledOded the Wanderer, Palestine"s first full-length feature film for children, produced on a shoestring budget with private financing.[7] In 1938, another book by Lieberman,Me’al ha-khoravot was made into a film calledOver the Ruins, which tells the story of children in aSecond Temple Jewish village in theGalilee where all the adults were killed by the Romans. It is 70-minutes with a soundtrack and dialogue. Lieberman wrote the screenplay. Produced by Nathan Axelrod and directed by Alfred Wolf. Production costs came to 1,000Palestine pounds. It failed at the box office but is considered a precursor of Israeli cinema.[8]
One of the precursors of cinema in Israel wasBaruch Agadati.[9][10] Agadati purchased cinematographerYaakov Ben Dov's film archives in 1934 when Ben Dov retired from filmmaking and together with his brother Yitzhak established the AGA Newsreel.[10][11] In 1935, he directed a film entitledThis is the Land (Zot Hi Haaretz).[12][13]
In 1948, Yosef Navon, a soundman, and Abigail Diamond, American producer of the first Hebrew-language film at age 15, Baruch Agadati, found an investor, businessmanMordechai Navon [he] , who invested his own money in film and lab equipment. Agadati used his connections amongHaganah comrades to acquire land for a studio. In 1949 theGeva Films studio was established on the site of an abandoned woodshed inGivatayim.[5]
In 1954, theKnesset passed the Law for the Encouragement of Israeli Films (החוק לעידוד הסרט הישראלי), the following yearHill 24 Doesn't Answer was released as the first Israeli feature film. Leading filmmakers in the 1960s wereMenahem Golan,Ephraim Kishon, andUri Zohar.
The firstBourekas film wasSallah Shabati, produced by Ephraim Kishon in 1964. In 1965, Uri Zohar produced the filmHole in the Moon, influenced byFrench New Wave films.
In the first decade of the 21st century, several Israeli films won awards in film festivals around the world. Prominent films of this period includeLate Marriage (Dover Koshashvili),Broken Wings,Walk on Water andYossi & Jagger (Eytan Fox),Nina's Tragedies,Campfire andBeaufort (Joseph Cedar),Or (My Treasure) (Keren Yedaya),Turn Left at the End of the World (Avi Nesher),The Band's Visit (Eran Kolirin)Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman), andAjami. In 2011,Strangers No More won the Oscar for Best Short Documentary.[14] In 2013 two documentaries were nominated the Oscar for the Best Feature Documentary:The Gatekeepers (Dror Moreh) andFive Broken Cameras, a Palestinian-Israeli-French co-production (Emad Burnat andGuy Davidi). In 2019,Synonyms (Nadav Lapid) won theGolden Bear award at the69th Berlin International Film Festival. In 2021,Ahed's Knee, directed too by Lapid, was selected to compete for thePalme d'Or at the2021 Cannes Film Festival and shared theJury Prize.
Author Julie Gray notes, "Israeli film is certainly not new in Israel, but it is fast gaining attention in the U.S., which is a double-edged sword. American distributors feel that the small American audience interested in Israeli film, are squarely focused on the turbulent and troubled conflict that besets us daily."[15]
In 2014 Israeli-made films sold 1.6 million tickets in Israel, the best in Israel's film history.[16]
Israeli and Zionist documentary films were shot both before and after 1948, often with the purpose of not just informingJews living elsewhere, but also for attracting donations from them and for persuading them toimmigrate. Among the pioneers who were active both as photographers andcinematographers areYa'acov Ben-Dov (1882–1968) andLazar Dünner (most often spelled Dunner; 1912-1994). Dünner first worked as a cinematographer, gradually moving into other film-making tasks. In 1937 he shot the 15-minute film "A Day inDegania", in full colour, giving us a document about the first kibbutz some 27 years after it being established, and with the Nazi threat still "just" as a background threat, not fully mentioned by name.[17] In 1949, after years of war, Dünner would start churning out short documentaries of this type, narrated in English for the benefit of the mainly US public.[18][19]
Bourekas films (סרטי בורקס) were afilmgenre popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Central themes include ethnic tensions between the Ashkenazim and the Mizrahim or Sephardim and the conflict between rich and poor.[20] The term was supposedly coined by the Israelifilm directorBoaz Davidson, the creator of several such films,[21] as a play-on-words, after "spaghetti Western:" just as the Western subgenre was named after a notable dish of its country of filming, so the Israeli genre was named after the notableIsraeli dish,Bourekas, although some[who?]say the term originated from a scene inThe Policeman where the title character is shown giving one of his coworkers a bourekas.[citation needed] Bourekas films are further characterized by accent imitations (particularly ofMoroccan Jews,Polish Jews,Romanian Jews andPersian Jews); a combination ofmelodrama,comedy andslapstick; and alternate identities.[citation needed] Bourekas films were successes at the box office but were often panned by the critics. They included comedy films such asCharlie Ve'hetzi andHagiga B'Snuker and sentimentalmelodramas such asNurit. Prominent filmmakers in this genre during this period includeBoaz Davidson,Ze'ev Revach,Yehuda Barkan andGeorge Ovadiah.[citation needed]
The "New sensitivity films" (סרטי הרגישות החדשה) is a movement which started during the 1960s and lasted until the end of the 1970s. The movement sought to create a cinema in modernist cinema with artistic and esthetic values, in the style of thenew wave films of the French cinema.[citation needed] The "New sensitivity" movement produced social artistic films such asBut Where Is Daniel Wax? byAvraham Heffner.The Policeman Azoulay (Ephraim Kishon),I Love You Rosa andThe House on Chelouche Street byMoshé Mizrahi were candidates for anOscar Award in the foreign film category.[citation needed] One of the most important creators in this genre isUri Zohar, who directedHor B'Levana (Hole In The Moon) andThree Days and a Child.
In the early 1900s, silent movies were screened in sheds, cafes and other temporary structures.[22] In 1905, Cafe Lorenz opened on Jaffa Road in the new Jewish neighborhood ofNeve Tzedek. From 1909, the Lorenz family began screening movies at the cafe. In 1925, the Kessem Cinema was housed there for a short time.[23] Silent films were screened there, accompanied by commentary and piano playing by a member of the Templer community.[24]
In 1953, Cinema Keren, the Negev's first movie theater, opened inBeersheba. It was built by theHistadrut and had seating for 1,200 people.[25]
In 1966, 2.6 million Israelis went to the cinema over 50 million times. In 1968, whentelevision broadcasting began, theaters began to close down, first in the periphery, then in major cities. Three hundred thirty standalone theaters were torn down or redesigned as multiplex theaters.[22]
TheEden Cinema (Kolnoa Eden) was built in 1914. The building, which still stands at the beginning of Lilienblum Street inNeve Tzedek, had two 800-seat halls: a roofed one for winter and an outdoor hall for screenings in the pre-air-conditioning summer heat. Owners Mordechai Abarbanel and Moshe Visser were granted a 13-year exclusive municipal license. When Eden’s monopoly expired in 1927, other cinemas sprang up around Tel Aviv.[26]
During World War I, the theater was shut down by order of the Ottoman government on the pretext that its generator could be used to send messages to enemy submarines offshore. It reopened to the public during theBritish Mandate and became a hub of cultural and social activity. It closed down in 1974.[22]
The Mograbi Cinema (Kolnoa Mograbi) opened in 1930. The cinema was established by Yaakov Mograbi, an affluent Jewish merchant whoimmigrated from Damascus, at the request ofMeir Dizengoff, then mayor of Tel Aviv. The building housed two large halls: on the upper floor a cinema with a sliding roof that could be opened on the hot summer days, and a performance hall that was the venue of the first Hebrew theaters, among them Hamatateh, HaOhel, Habima, and the Cameri.[27] It was designed by architectJoseph Berlin in anart deco style that was popular in cinemas worldwide. People gathered in front of the theater to dance in the streets when the UN General Assembly voted in favor of thePartition Plan in November 1947. After a fire in the summer of 1986 due to an electric short circuit, the building was demolished.[22] In 2011, plans were submitted to rebuild a replica of the original cinema with a luxury high-rise above it.
The Allenby Cinema was designed by Shlomo Gepstein, an Odessa-born architect who immigrated to Palestine in the 1920s. It was a large, imposing building in the International Style. In the 1900s, it housed Allenby 58, a famous nightclub.[28]
In 1931, Moshe Greidinger opened a cinema inHaifa. In 1935 he built a second movie theater, Armon, a largeart-deco building with 1,800 seats that became the heart of Haifa's entertainment district. It was also used as a performance venue by theIsrael Philharmonic Orchestra and theIsraeli Opera.[29]
Theart deco Alhambra cinema, with seating for 1,100, opened in Jaffa in 1937. It was designed by a Lebanese architect, Elias al-Mor, and became a popular venue for concerts ofArab music.Farid al-Atrash andUmm Kulthum appeared there. In 2012, the historic building reopened as aScientology center after two years of renovation.[30]
The Smadar theater was built inJerusalem'sGerman Colony in 1928. It was German-owned and mainly served theBritish Army. In 1935, it opened for commercial screenings as the "Orient Cinema." It was turned over to Jewish management to keep it from being boycotted as a German business, infuriating the head of theNazi Party branch in Jerusalem. After 1948, it was bought by four demobilized soldiers, one of them Arye Chechik, who bought out his partners in 1950.[31] According to a journalist who lived next door, Chechik sold the tickets, ran to collect them at the door and worked as the projectionist. His wife ran the concession stand.[32]
The main internationalfilm festivals in Israel are theJerusalem Film Festival and theHaifa Film Festival.
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