Saturday, April 23, 2011

Cinema of Israel

(Israel Twitter)Nine Israeli films have been final nominees for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards since the establishment of Israel. The 2009 movie Ajami was the third consecutive nomination of an Israeli film.

Continuing the strong theatrical traditions of the Yiddish theater in Eastern Europe, Israel maintains a vibrant theatre scene. Founded in 1918, Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv is Israel's oldest repertory theater company and national theater.

Palestinian Israeli filmmakers have made a number of films, some of them very controversial, dealing with the Arab-Israel conflict and the status of Palestinians within Israel. Mohammed Bakri's 2002 film Jenin, Jenin, about an Israeli military action in the West Bank town of Jenin, won the Best Film award at the Carthage International film festival, but was widely criticized within Israel for distorting the story of the battle. Ajami, a 2009 film about violence and discrimination in a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood in south Tel Aviv-Jaffa, was written and directed jointly by Palestinain Scandar Copti and Jewish Israeli Yaron Shani. It won an honorable mention in the Cannes Film Festival. The Syrian Bride, about a Druze wedding between families on opposite sides of the Israel-Syrian ceasefire line in the Golan Heights, was directed by a Jewish Israeli (Eran Riklis), but had an almost completely Druze cast.

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