Reading Group 06.26.02 — Screening + Discussion with Avi Mograbi
Comments Off on Reading Group 06.26.02 — Screening + Discussion with Avi MograbiReading Group 06.26.02 — Screening + Discussion with Avi Mograbi
Contents:
1. About this Wednesday
2. Synopsis for “How I learned ….Sharon”
3. Statement and press for “How…”
4. All you wanted to know about “Happy Bithday…”
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1. About this Wednesday
When: 7pm
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 5th Floor
Who: Open to all
In the last few years, our interest in different political situations have
lead us to invite different guests who offer unique positions and ideas.
This has included a series of talks, screenings, and presentations related
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This week we are pleased to invite Israeil artist Avi Mograbi to screen
a recent work and show some excerpts from some earlier works.
We will be screening “HOW I LEARNED TO OVERCOME
MY FEAR AND LOVE ARIK SHARON” as well as excerpts from
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. MOGRABI”
After the screening, there will be a discussion with the artist.
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2. Synopsis for “How I learned ….Sharon” s
With the 96 election campaign approaching, director Avi Mograbi sets out to make a film about long time infamous and admired political figure, former cabinet minister and legendary army general, Arik Sharon. Having refused, for moral and political reasons, to serve in the 82’ Lebanon war, initiated by minister of defense Arik Sharon, Mograbi has a “personal” attitude towards him. In the making of the film, he comes to see Sharon in a different light than expected. To his surprise he finds Sharon extremely likeable. In the course of the campaign chase Mograbi sets aside his leftist political beliefs, gets surprisingly close to Sharon, only to find himself, at the end, in a bizzare scene, dancing in a right wing rally with orthodox religeous jews and singing in support of Netanyahu.
Mograbi’s wife Tammi is always there, to support him in the beginning, warn him along the way when things go in undesireable directions and eventually leave him when she thinks he has lost his political and moral senses.
In this ironic fictious-documentary Mograbi tells the story of the making of the film about Arik Sharon that turned into a domestic melodrama, threaded with his dreams about Sharon and dialogues with his wife. But the true story told is of the impossible close encounter between left and right in present-day Israel.
Basics:
Director, editor, script & produced by: Avi Mograbi
Camera: Ron Katzenelson, Yoav Gurfinkel, Ran Carmeli, Ronen Schechner
1997, 61 minutes
Screened at:
Berlin Film Festival – International Forum Edinburgh International Film Festival Festival Des Films Du Monde – Montreal Sidney Film Festival
Etats Generaux du Film Documentaire – Lussas Sheffield Documentary Film Festival
7e Semaine Internationale de Video – Geneva Pesaro Film Festival
Festival of New Film and Video – Split Riocine Festival
Fictions du Reel Marseille The Film Center – Chicago
Transmediale Video Fest – Berlin ‘98 Uruguay Intl’ Film Festival ‘98
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival London Jewish Film Festival
The Boston Jewish Film Festival Washington Jewish Film Festival
Cleveland Israeli & Jewish Film Festival Tucson Jewish Film Festival
Portland Jewish Film Festival ‘98 Maine Jewish Film Festival ‘98
San Diego Jewish Film Festival ‘98 Seattle Jewish Film Festival ‘98
Athens (OH) International Film & Video Festival Locarno VideoArt Festival
Le Cinema de Trafic – Jeu de Paume Gallery Paris Videonale – Bonn
Kasseler Dokumentarfilm und Videofest Buenos Aires de Cine Independiente
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3. Statement and press for “How…”
Statement
Not even for a split second have I begun to love Arik Sharon, I certainly never stopped fearing him. If I had to give it a different title I would have called my film “He who forgets Sabra and Shatila – his wife shall leave him”. The character claiming he is me, in the film, looks very much like me, his biography is identical to mine, my wife’s name is Tammi – just like his, yet I never fell for Arik Sharon’s charisma, not for one moment have I forgotten what this man stands for, what he worked for in 50 years of civil service.
How I learned to overcome my fear and love Arik Sharon is just a reminder that leaders should be appreciated by their doings and by their ideals, not by their charisma.
The idea to tell a false story combined with documentary-shot material and in a documentaristic manner evolved along the way, when shooting of the documentary I was making about Arik Sharon was already in progress.
Making a film about Sharon came about from many years of close watch of his politics and morals, not to say an obsession with his doings. I set out to follow him during the election campaign waiting for him to slide, reveal his true self. This never happened. Instead I discovered a chubby bear, likable, sometimes funny and extremely polite. Nothing like what I expected (truthfully, I must say that people who knew him warned me he would not give in easily to the monstrous image I had of him. But I guess I was trapped by my own dogmatic vision of him).
Along the way I started dreaming (not necessarily the dreams that appear in the film) of him and me. And the more I got near him, the more I feared him. A personal kind of fear, physical. The more I got to see how nice and likable he could be, the more terrified I got.
Sometime, about three or so weeks before election day, I realized what my film was about. He was certainly not going to make a change, he is solid, I could not even scratch him. But my character would make the change, give in for the charisma, forget Sabra and Shatila, put the morals aside, lose his wife.
I thought it was a provoking move. Provoking at myself, and others like me. I thought that perhaps the only way to fight manipulation would be by using counter-manipulation. For years I have involuntarily played small bit parts, in the horrible scripts Arik Sharon has been writing producing and directing. For a short instant, one that will probably never recur, I had the opportunity to make him play lead role in one of my own scripts.
But, as expected, this is a two-sided dagger. The irony may be missed and Arik Sharon may get a free ride into the hearts of some who had a monstrous image of him like I did/do.
Avi Mograbi
Reviews
The bad magician and his puppets
by Yoram Bronovsky
Avi Mograbi’s film How I learned to overcome my fear and love Arik Sharon uses a sub-genre of documentay cinema – films recounting a failure to make a film about a certain character, while at the same time such a film is being made about this character, but even more so about the failing director – to make an excelent film, profound and ironic; a film about politics and its protagonists, and most of all about the anti-heroic hero of what is dubbed the The Democratic Process – about the man in the street, about you and me, that is to say about him.
“Him” means Avi Mograbi himself, the director seemingly engaged in an amusing self-analysis or a convincing auto-parody, as if mocking himself, while apparently mocking many others who have undergone similar experiences.
All of us, says this wise film obliquely, are but puppets on strings, and when a magician starts pulling these strings we might fall prey to his evil magic. The magician might start with a simple hearted question: “Who is against terrorism?” and by and by explains in an authoritative voice why he deems it necessary to vote for no other candidate than Bibi Netanyahu as prime-minister, though one may vote for any other party for Knesset… After that rally in an out-of-the-way town you feel that everybody present will obey this magician.
Avi Mograbi shows how this evil power works on different people, but most of all he shows – a little wryly but I believe with serious intent basically – how this magic works on him; how he learns, seemingly, “to love Arik Sharon”. A conscientious objector during the Lebanon War and a declared leftist, he finds himself joining in an inflamed Hassidic dance together with a group of wild-eyed Sharon followers, dancing in ecstasy to the mantra “Let Bibi Rise to Power”.
This complex, refined film with its profound though disguised as simplistic message, is a success first and foremost due to the excellent acting, convincing in its quasi-documentary simplicity, of Avi Mograbi himself , who tells the story while the camera focuses on his innocent face, innocent like the face of the good soldier Shveik, twisting in self-irony. A puppet on its own strings? A somewhat acrobatic film indeed, and a singularly clever one.
Ma’ariv, April 2, 1997
Rocket Sharon
by Meir Shnitzer
Dr. Strangelove Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece that deals with the meaning of the balance of horror at the peak of the cold war, is also called How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. Avi Mograbi, who created the quasi-documentary How I learned to overcome my fear and love Arik Sharon is well-versed in world cinema history and very much aware of the implied meaning of adopting Kubrick’s original title and paraphrasing it transparently.
In Kubrick’s film, Peter Sellers depicts a triple role. He is the U.S. president who’s forced to press the fateful red button; he is a general whose ambitions are thwarted by his superiors; he is a scientist, who has assimilated the Fascist heritage, intent on blowing up the world. That movie speaks of the “strange love” the narrator comes to feel for this triple character. Mograbi, an Israeli, draws Ariel Sharon’s portrait in bold, rather menacing lines, that are close enough to the split personality of stanley Kubrick’s character.
On face-value How I learned to overcome my fear and love Arik Sharon is a documentary in which Mograbi confesses to the camera how he was captured by the personality of Sharon – a magalomanical politician and general. The truth, of course, is quite different. Not just because it only pretends to be a documentary, but also because Sharon is not really its hero. This honored function is reserved to Mograbi himself.
The Minister of Infrastructures is the explicit hero while Mograbi’s wife, dubbed “tammi, my wife” in the movie, is the implicit heroine. Sharon, by the very documenting of his activities, is the moving force behind the dramatic action. Tammi, by being completely absent from the screen, but whose actions ceaselessly recounted by Mograbi the narrator, is a fitting counterpoint. Between the activating power – Sharon, and the reacting power – Tammi, the protagonist Mograbi goes round in circles, pretending to be unsure of his right place in the local political scene.
Mograbi has used a gimmick, and used it well. He presents fiction as if it was reality. Docu-fictious. David Offek used similar things in his excellent short films. Michael Moore, the director of Roger and I played with reality in a similar way. Reality is mere placticine. One can twist it and use it for propaganda, the way Sharon has been doing for many years now. One can treat it as artistic raw material, a sort of Ready Made the way it is used in the visual arts. This is what Mograbi does here.
Mograbi joins Sharon in his recent election campaign, induced him to talk about his opinions concerning matters of state and about raising cattle, all the while mocking him through the recounting of his own fantastic dreams, dreamt while he was producing the film.
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4. All you wanted to know about “Happy Birthday…”
Happy Birthday, Mr. Mograbi
director, editor, script & production by: Avi Mograbi
co-produced by: Serge Lalou – Les Films D’Ici
cast: Daoud Kuttab, Shahar Segal, Ephraim Stan, Gidi Dar, Roni Pisker, Ido Berger
cameramen: Eytan Harris, Ron Katzenelson, Itzik Portal, Yoav Gurfinkel, Oded Kimhi, Yoav Dagan.
1999, 77 minutes, B
Press Clips
…Of this three-fold approach results a script full of humor and seriousness, an heterogeneous composition, built as much of reality as of personal questions which, step by step, find meaning. This has farce, fable and parable, in this region – too – rich in symbols….
Le Monde
The film switches artfully back and forth between the three stories, providing Mograbi with a challenging and entertaining forum in which to address serious issues facing the nation of Israel. The result is a sardonic mosaic sure to offend and delight any audience anywhere near as heterogeneous as The Holy Land… “Likely to provoke spirited discussion on the nature of media, commemorations and, of course, politics…”
Variety
… Best of the lot was an Israeli doc/fiction mix, Avi Mograbi’s Happy Birthday Mr. Mograbi, in which the on-camera director intersperses hilarious monologues about fictitious personal dilemmas with strikingly manipulated visuals relating to Israel’s 50th anniversary festivities.
Time Out – New York
…Mograbi stretches to the utmost this metaphor of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, tracing the parallels between his schizophrenia and the bad conscience of his country….
Liberation
…The hilarious arguments of this mad film-maker with different interlocutors are interwoven with his property disappointments, the official festivities – where Netanyahu is shown to be an incomparable demagogue – and an archeological research of Arab traces in Israel, etc.
The strongest is, of course, the hero/director’s caustic view of the nationalist feast of the Israeli jubilee, what is striking is to verify the ordinary hate climate enveloping his fellow countrymen.
Almost an organic continuation of the aggressive politics of his country, where the similitudes with the present Yugoslav situation are conspicuous. When the last images of the film are seen, those of the blood bath sanctioned by the stones thrown by the Palestinians, you could believe being suddenly transported to Kosovo. Astonishing.
Les Inrockuptibles
… The advantage of the film lies, first and foremost, in the successful attempt of Avi Mograbi who wrote and directed it, to maneuver between the ridiculous and the solemn, between amused mockery of the local mayhem and serious unequivocal criticism of this society, whose so called spiritual side is manifested by Netanyahu’s speeches and Rita’s screeching the lyrics of the national anthem……
Ma’ariv
… A clever and fascinating film….
Ha’aretz
….a wild and crazy film…..
Kol Israel Radio
It is a humorous, yet deeply political film, in which personal relations, politics, religion, and history are interwoven to form harsh critique of the segment of the Israeli establishment who would rather forget that the founding of the Jewish state was heavily paid for by the Palestinians. Avi Mograbi may not look like it, but he certainly is an angry man and Happy Birthday Mr. Mograbi is a totally uncompromising film.
DOX
Mograbi has made a multilayered documentary which seems too perfect to be true.
Helsingin Sanomat
There is no laws restricting making movies but nevertheless this kind of well-wishing experiments are seen far too seldom
Suomen Kuvalehti
Well done Mr. Mograbi
Tagesspiegel
Synopsis
Avi Mograbi, a documentary filmmaker is hired by a TV producer to make a film about the celebrations of Israel’s fiftieth anniversary. The producer is tuned in to the media, and his mood swings accordingly. When the unemployment crisis breaks out, he washes his hands of the anniversary film and seeks to make a penetrating, socially engaged film instead. The deadlock in the peace-process leads the producer to a decision to make a film that will bring peace to the Middle East. During the newly awakened Gulf crisis the producer shuts himself away behind polyethylene sheets, gas-mask on. At this point he is not interested in making any film at all.
In the meantime a Palestinian film-producer from the Palestinian Authority makes contact with Mograbi. The Palestinians, too, mark the fiftieth anniversary – of the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem – the Nakba (catastrophe). He asks Mograbi to help him out in producing a film about the Nakba. He wants him to shoot locations that used to be Palestinian and became Jewish settlements following the 1948 War. He only wants pictures of places, no interviews nor events. Just places, houses, ruins, signs of life lost.
The same filmmaker tells the camera a story about himself, a story involving the purchase of a lot in the outskirts of the city, with the intention of building a small house to improve the quality of living, fulfill the Israeli Dream. This optimistic project turns into a sheer nightmare. Questions of ownership of the lot lead to violence between neighbors. He develops an obsession of self-documentation. Fragments of supposedly unplanned shooting find their way into the film and construct a personal, seemingly documentary, narrative.
During an interview concerning the Fiftieth Anniversary Celebrations, Mograbi discovers that this year his own forty second birthday and the State of Israel’s fiftieth Anniversary – which is celebrated according the Hebrew calendar – coincide.
The material he shoots for the Palestinian project becomes a kind of a disruption of the film. The remains of the destroyed Palestinian villages invade the film as a kind of pirate broadcasts over legitimate channels. Shots of ruined Palestinian houses, of Palestinian homes turned into Jewish homes, of settlements sprouting ruins of former villages – take over the picture while the sound-track tells the history of those places.
In its last third, the film becomes an argument, a strife between its three channels, its three narratives. Each one tries to overcome the others and take over the screen. One story may take control for a minute, then another disrupts and takes over with a kind of “video static”.
The film ends on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day. People are celebrating in the streets. The Palestinians in the Occupied Territories mark the Al Nakba – the catastrophe. Fireworks light up the sky. Palestinian protesters are shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Mograbi sits at home alone and finishes the telling of the three parallel stories.
Statement
In 1997 the date of my birthday was two days before Israel’s Independence Day. I was in New York on a family visit and it so happened that I celebrated my birthday two days later, on Independence Day. This coincidence provoked in me thoughts that eventually bore the nucleus to the film “Happy Birthday, Mr. Mograbi”.
In 1998 Israel celebrated its 50th anniversary and I decided to celebrate my own anniversary on the same date (though it was due only ten days later. The Israeli Independence Day is marked according to the Hebrew calendar, therefore it is not marked on the same date every year).
The raw idea was to tell two parallel stories. The first about the making of a documentary following the jubilee celebrations. The second about the middle age crisis of the filmmaker making this documentary – me – whose birthday coincides with that of the state. These two stories were supposed to run a dialogue, or in fact argue, on the screen.
For several months I have juggled with this idea but something was bothering me, and when I realised what it was it seemed obvious. I realised there was no way to mark these two anniversaries without marking a third – the Nakba – the 50th anniversary of the Palestinian catastrophe.
Now, the third channel of the script began to take shape. In this line of story a Palestinian producer hires the same filmmaker to shoot stuff for a film the Palestinians are making to mark the Nakba.
The material he shoots for the Palestinian project takes the form of a kind of a disruption of the film (the “final” one, the one you watch). Images of remains of destroyed Palestinian villages invade the film like pirate broadcasts invade legitimate channels. Shots of ruined Palestinian houses, ruins of former Palestinian villages – take over the picture without warning reaching the climax of the film on Israel’s Independence Day, the Nakba memorial day and the birthday of the filmmaker of all three films.
I tried to make a film consisting of three different story lines that run in one man’s consciousness, that of the filmmaker of the three films. Only the materials here have greater freedom than usual. They run along the script notes for a while and then take over the script, and create their own order of events. The filmmaker, poor guy, has to cope with the consequences of the new conjunctures created.
Avi Mograbi