Arava Int’l Film Festival announces November program
The festival will feature the best of recent films from Israel and around the world.
By HANNAH BROWNA scene from ‘Dear Comrades,’ being screened at the Arava Film Festival.(photo credit: Courtesy)
The ninth Arava International Film Festival will be held, as scheduled, from November 5-14, in the heart of the Ashush natural reserve, next to the community of Tzukim. Screenings will be held outdoors, under the stars, if that is permitted by the Health Ministry, and will also have an online component.The festival will feature the best of recent films from Israel and around the world, as well as tributes to great directors whose films have been shown at the Arava in past years, as well as Israeli classics.The festival will open with Andrey Konchalovskiy’s Dear Comrades, which won the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Venice International Film Festival. It’s about a strike by workers in a small industrial town after the Communist government raised food prices in 1962 and the massacre that took place when they refused to back down.The festival will also present Konchalovskiy’s previous film, the 2014 The Postman’s White Nights, about life in a town on an isolated Russian island, which won the Silver Bear at Venice.Ukrainian film director Sergey Loznitsa's film Donbass, a black comedy about how people live with government propaganda and manipulation, which won the Un Certain Regard - Directing Prize at Cannes, will be shown.Cristian Mungiu’s breakout film, 4 Months, 3 weeks and 2 Days, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, will be shown.Among Israeli classics at the festival will be Rafi Bukai’s antiwar film, Avanti Popolo, and Ari Folman’s innovative Waltz with Bashir, an animated documentary about the First Lebanon War.For more information, go to the festival website at https://www.aravaff.co.il/The Jerusalem Cinematheque is continuing its online programming with a collaboration with Mosfilm Studios, the legendary Russian film studio.The Mosfilm program will present 10 films and is part of a longtime partnership between the cinematheque and Mosfilm, which is headed by Karen Shakhnazarov. These films will be available online at the cinematheque website (https://jfc.org.il/program/mosfilm/) until the end of 2020. They have both English and Hebrew subtitles and cost NIS 15 per film. The films have been restored and are in high definition.Mosfilm Studios were established in 1924 following the unification and nationalization of two private studios founded before the Russian Revolution. For the past nine decades, Mosfilm has been a leader in Russian filmmaking and was the creative home of several master directors, including Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky.The tribute program includes Eisenstein’s classic films Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. Tarkovsky’s acclaimed 1972 science-fiction film, Solaris, is on the program, as is Elem Klimov’s war story, Come and See (1984), told through the eyes of a 15-year-old boy in Nazi-occupied Belarus.
