Israeli director Alma Har’el took top honors at the Tribeca Film Festival in the documentary category. “Bombay Beach,” her feature-length film, follows three down-and-out residents of a ghost town on the Salton Sea, a surrealistic landscape in Southern California filled with losers and dreamers.
When Israel fought its War of Independence, there were no embedded TV cameramen, and even combat newsreel photographers were practically nonexistent. The newly created state had more important matters to worry about. More surprisingly, there have been hardly any movies celebrating the near miraculous victories of 1948-49, and, later, of the Six-Day War in 1967.
Israel documentary director talks about his shoot with Gov. Sarah Palin
Earlier this year, he called the office of the governor of Alaska to ask permission to shoot Sarah Palin for his new film, a documentary about powerful women of the world. Because he had spent a lot of time in Alaska, he\’d heard about the feisty Palin and thought she\’d be a natural.
\”My big idea for the CD was, \’Let\’s give this to our families for Chanukah,\’\” Hyams said. \”I never thought we\’d get a record deal, because I figured \’This is stupid and Jewish and no one cares except us.\’\”
Her chance came when she heard Sauvage say he intended to create financing for a movie as his summer MBA project in 2005. \”You should make your movie about me,\” she told him. Sauvage, who at the time did not know she had been abused, cavalierly replied that unless she had been a child prostitute, he wasn\’t interested.
So what can you say about a 44-year-old comedian who died? That she leaves a certain legacy of laughter, through the efforts of her brother, to those who never heard of her.
Hollywood movies and television have shaped the way most of the world perceives the Final Solution, narrator Gene Hackman observes at the beginning of \”Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust.\” It is a statement that may not sit too well with generations of historians and authors, but the evidence validates the conclusion.
Calendar Girls picks and clicks for March 22-28
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