Actress, director Michal Bat Adam to receive Israel Prize
Bat Adam is best known internationally as an actress to for her lead performance in I Love You, Rosa (1972), directed by her late husband, Moshe Mizrahi, with whom she often collaborated.
By HANNAH BROWNActress, director Michal Bat Adam to receive Israel Prize(photo credit: YONI HAMENACHEM)
Acclaimed actress Michal Bat-Adam, who broke barriers to become one of Israeli cinema’s first directors, will receive the Israel Prize this year for film art, Education Minister Yoav Gallant announced on Tuesday. The prize committee was chaired by director Avi Nesher and actress/writer Dana Modan.Bat-Adam is best known internationally as an actress for her lead performance in I Love You, Rosa (1972), directed by her late husband, Moshe Mizrahi, with whom she often collaborated. Her performance in this tale of a young widow in 19th-century Jerusalem who was commanded by religious law to marry her husband’s younger brother made her a star, and the film was nominated for an Oscar. She followed up this triumph in films such as Mizrahi’s The House on Chelouche Street (1973) and Madame Rosa (1977), and played a young widow again in Tzvika Kertzner and Akiva Tevet’s Atalia in 1984. More recently, she appeared in the television series, BeTipul (In Treatment). She has also had an international career, appearing in Costa-Gavras’s political drama, Hanna K., starring Jill Clayburgh.At a time when there were virtually no women behind the cameras, Bat-Adam began directing and has 12 feature films to her credit. Her first feature, Moments (1979), in which she also starred, told the story of a powerful attraction between two women. Moments competed in the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival at a time when it was rare for Israeli movies to be included in international festivals. She also adapted and starred in an adaptation of A.B. Yehoshua’s classic novel The Lover (1985). Recently, she directed the The Road to Where, about Holocaust survivors living in a house in Jaffa, and Maya, the story of a young actress, starring Liron Ben-Shlush.The Israel Prize committee said in a statement, “Michal is a groundbreaking artist in Israeli cinema for five decades... [E]ven in a low-budget reality, and at a time when there were still no government funds that supported filmmaking as is customary today, Bat-Adam has, over the years, created 12 more full-length films that constitute a unique original cinematic space. In addition, the committee noted that her fruitful and meaningful film career is a significant inspiration for creators who dream of working in cinema.”Said Nesher, “Traditionally in Israeli film history, Ephraim Kishon and Uri Zohar are the founding fathers, and Assi Dayan and I are the directors who ignited the current generation of filmmakers. But Michal Bat-Adam made her movies at the same time as myself and Dayan. She was the first woman who was a full-time director in Israel and she inspired the women filmmakers of today, people like Talya Lavie and Ronit Elkabetz. But her presence in Israeli cinema has always been tossed aside. We felt it was time to recognize her contribution. She was a pioneer.”
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