When Noa Tishby moved from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles, it was to make it as an actress. Two years later, she\’s now a history-making producer, spearheading the first original Israeli TV drama series to be picked up by an American network.
Of course, this is a gross oversimplification that does an injustice to both Zohar and Millo, but in essence, the remarkable and swift victory of Israeli forces in 1967 tore a veil of insecurity off the standard cinematic discourse around issues of Zionism and personal self-sacrifice and gave the nation\’s filmmakers the right to a certain heroic panache without-guilt. It was a sunny day that lasted only a short while, ended by the storms of the Yom Kippur War a mere six years later, but it was quite real.
As Vidi Bilu recalls it, she and Dalia Hager were working on a series they were hoping to sell to Israeli television, when their conversation turned to their experiences in the military. Even in the Holy Land, it is not typical for women \”to talk about their memories of the army,\” she says. But the chat got them thinking that their experiences might make a good film.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10 — By the end of the day, we got the official news. It\’s hard to describe what 14 soldiers killed means in a country like this. Every soldier killed here is an enormous loss — this is a small country. The news carries stories about him, his family and often, why they made aliyah and from where. Funerals, unless the family requests otherwise, are covered on the news. The hourly news announces the location and time of each funeral across the entire nation — it\’s at moments like those that one feels that living here isn\’t a matter of being a citizen of a certain country, but rather, of being part of an extended family.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10 — By the end of the day, we got the official news. It\’s hard to describe what 14 soldiers killed means in a country like this. Every soldier killed here is an enormous loss — this is a small country. The news carries stories about him, his family and often, why they made aliyah and from where. Funerals, unless the family requests otherwise, are covered on the news. The hourly news announces the location and time of each funeral across the entire nation — it\’s at moments like those that one feels that living here isn\’t a matter of being a citizen of a certain country, but rather, of being part of an extended family.
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