Margaret Atwood – You Have Been Warned!

EPOS like one long weekend in Tel Aviv: the best art films from all over the world

EPOS, The International Art Film Festival, is Israel’s only film art festival, dedicated to encounters between the arts and cinema, taking place every March. The EPOS Festival is based at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and will feature about 50 films, from Israel and around the world, as well as workshops, master-classes, lectures, exhibitions, and interactions with film-makers from around the world. For those of you who love a good movie, EPOS International Art Film Festival is one festival you shouldn’t miss.

                                   EPOS 9 – SELECTED FILMS

                                                VISUAL ARTS

                                 Bill Viola: The Road to St. Paul’s

     Director: Gerald Fox | UK, 2016 | 91 min | English, Hebrew Subtitles

This film follows Bill Viola, arguably the greatest video artist alive today, over 12 years, as he works on a special project for St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Known for its efforts to encourage contemporary religious art, the cathedral hired Viola to create two video installations to be put on permanent display at the church. It’s fascinating to watch Viola as he plans and shoots the two works —“Mary” and “Martyrs” — with clear determination. Less clear are Viola’s views on religion and faith, but he certainly understands the significance of having his art presented in the glorious cathedral. Each of the four saints he creates confronts one of four elements — earth, wind, water, and fire — while the facial expression of his Mary, who holds her dead son, combines the earthly and transcendental. These two powerful works, offer a glimpse into the mind of an artistic legend.
Q&A with the director

                                Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World

  Director: Barry Avrich | Canada, 2017 | 80 min | English, Hebrew subtitles

Money makes the world go round, especially the art world, where works are bought and sold in a seemingly endless cycle that creates wealth based on unknown criteria. This film tries to crack the mystery of that complex mechanism. In 10 chapters, the film presents all the players in the commercial art world: collectors, auction houses, art fairs, gallerists and artists. It asks questions like, how is an art work’s price determined? Whose interests are being served? Who is trying to cover up their intentions and who is trying to expose them? A fascinating array of art-world personalities at every level offer their takes on this well-oiled money machine. Those who survive in this world are generally those who know how to play its game – so it’s no wonder that artists Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst and dealer Larry Gagosian feature prominently here.

                           Leonora Carrington: The Lost Surrealist

      Director: Teresa Griffiths | UK, 2017 | 52 min | English, Hebrew Subtitles

The painter Leonora Carrington was an important figure in the Surrealist movement during its heyday in Paris in the 1930s. Despite this, she is almost unknown, even in her native England, and this film tries to correct a historical injustice and introduce the world to her magical work. Carrington grew up in a well-to-do British family, and was expected to be disciplined and polite, but at a very young age she proved to be a non-conformist and was expelled from two schools. From then on, she continued to make bold decisions, partly because of her artistic inclinations and partly because of romantic entanglements. She wandered around the world, and after a mental breakdown and hospitalization at a psychiatric facility, she settled in Mexico, where she found her home. In addition to making art, Carrington was also an influential figure in the Mexican women’s liberation movement.
Opening lecture by Noa Rosenberg, Curator of Modern Art, Tel Aviv Museum

                              
                                              ARCHITECTURE

                                                   Whose City?

Director: Hans Christian Post | Switzerland, Germany 2017 | 54 min | German & English, Hebrew Subtitles

Berlin is a complicated city with a complicated past. Large parts of it were destroyed during World War II. In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a bitter debate began about the city’s image and its development. This film presents a number of architects and urban planners describing the process of building the city, a process that continues to this day. They discuss pressing questions that have come up time and again: Should the past be preserved? Should we ignore not only the Second World War but the entire 20th century? Should you create innovative and new structures or try to re-create the splendor of the past? These questions prompt even more questions; the resulting dialogue, which is brought to life by the camera’s “trips” around Berlin, is fascinating and relevant to anyone who loves this city. 
estivals: Architecture Festival, Rotterdam 
Opening lecture by Hagit Naali-Joseph and Yinon Geva

                        And the alley she whitewashed in light blue

Director: Nili Portugali | Israel, 2018 | 72 min | Hebrew, English Subtitles

Architect Nili Portugali takes us on a deeply intimate journey through her childhood memories, embedded in the historic stones of the Galilean city of Safed, where she attempts to answer eternal questions such as: What is the secret of timeless places where man feels at home? What is the “one pure art of making” that leads to their creation? Portugali introduces viewers to her holistic, Buddhist, scientific point of view, which she uses to uncover profound universal insights. 
Festivals: India MIFF 2018

                                                       DANCE

                                              Rebels on Pointe

Director: Robbie Hart, Catherine Legault | Canada, 2016 | 60 min | English, Spanish & Japanesse, Hebrew Subtitles

This film tells the thrilling and unique story of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, the all-male dance troupe founded in New York after the Stonewall riots. At first it wasn’t clear if they were a joke: Men in tutus and tights dancing on pointe and performing classical ballet pieces – especially those who didn’t shave their chests or beards – certainly seemed like a parody of something. However, the dancers’ incredible professionalism quickly turned them into icons in the global LGBT community. Now, more than 40 years after its establishment, the troupe still travels the world, and this moving film offers an intimate portrait of the dancers, their families, and the blood, sweat, and tears that go into their work. Their courage and the enormous pleasure they derive from dancing comes across in this dramatic, funny, absurd, and very human picture.

                                           No Maps on my Taps

Director: George Nierenberg | USA, 2017 | 58 min | English, Hebrew Subtitles

Three veteran dancers present the amazing art of tap dancing in this beautiful and recently restored documentary film from 1979. Chuck Green, Bunny Briggs, and Howard “Sandman” Sims, the protagonists of the film, illustrate how tap dance is an expressive art form and depends on the dancer's ability to improvise and seize the moment, just like jazz musicians. Tap’s Golden Age was during the first half of the 20th century, and its glory days are re-created here by director George Nierenberg. While the dancers get their due respect, the question of whether this is a dying art form looms over the film. The particularly poignant plot twist is that the film – rather than serving as an elegy – helped usher in a tap revival. In the 1980s, a new generation of dancers took up the form, and it’s alive and kicking today.

                                                    Garden

Director: Louise Narboni | Holland, 2016 | 73 min | French & Dutch, Hebrew Subtitles

This beautiful film traces the work Medhi Walerski, a choreographer for the Nederlands Dans Theater who had performed with that company for many years, and even won the Netherlands’ most prestigious dance award in 2013. Walerski, a Frenchman, choreographed a work called “Garden” to the music of Camille Saint-Saëns, which he said was a “huge challenge.” Here he comes across as a gentle, thoughtful man, who dances in rehearsals in order to better understand how to guide his dancers’ movements. His work combines classical and modern dance elements, and deals with the individual and the collective and how they interact. This is a portrait of a calm yet determined man who doesn’t have a shred of an inflated ego. The film is composed largely of footage from the rehearsals and the performance, which will provide dance-lovers with an aesthetic treat.

                                         
                                         THE WRITTEN WORD

             Where is Elle-Kari and what happened to Noriko-san?

Director: Tal Rabiner, Shimon Spector | Isarel, 2014 | 50 min | Hebrew & English, Hebrew subtitles

A nostalgic, fascinating and heart-breaking journey into the core of the series books, "children of the world", a very popular photographed children books in black & white from the mid of the 20th century. The books, which are still printed in Israel were created by the Jewish-Swedish photographer, Anna Riwkin-Brick (1908-1970). Nine of them were written by Asrtrid Lindgren. This is an unbelievable detective story, which follows the missing heroes of the books: Elle-Kari the girl from Lapland, Noriko-San the girl from Japan, Dirk the boy from Holland, and some Israeli heroes. Were there real children? Where are they now?

                             Margaret Atwood: You Have Been Warned!

                Director: | UK, 2017 | 60 min | English, Hebrew Subtitles

For years Margaret Atwood has appeared on lists of writers whose time has come to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. While she hasn’t clinched that award, Atwood has achieved something extraordinary: A book she wrote more than 30 years ago recently became a best-seller. Sure, the hit TV adaptation of her chilling dystopian book “The Handmaid’s Tale” is what propelled it to the top of the best-seller list. In this portrait, the 79-year-old Atwood describes her Canadian roots, her close connection to land and nature, and the unique home that allowed her to think independently and creatively. Despite facing struggles along the way, Atwood has continued to write novels, short stories, and poems. This film, in which she is presented as a prolific and charismatic artist, is a testament to her unique worldview, which she instills into everything she does.

                                             Brodsky is not a poet

   Director: Ilya Belov | Russia, 2015 | 100 min | Russian, Hebrew Subtitles

After winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987, Joseph Brodsky answered a question about his identity by replying that he was a Jew, a Russian poet, an English essayist, and an American citizen. He won the prestigious prize 15 years after leaving his homeland and moving to the West, following “encouragement” from the Soviet regime. When he was invited to return to the Soviet Union, Brodsky chose to remain in America, where he found a home—not to mention love and admiration as a poet and university teacher. This film follows Brodsky’s path as an émigré and focuses on his multifaceted identity. Using never-seen archival footage and interviews with people who knew him, the film traces the life story of this important Russian poet, who defied convention and the Soviet regime, despite the great personal cost: losing his homeland and family.

                                                     THEATER

                                                  Robert Wilson

 Director: Pauline de Grunne | USA, 2016 | 90 min | English, Hebrew Subtitles

 Robert Wilson is a force of nature, and like the elements of nature, he is unpredictable, capricious, mysterious, inaccessible, and in his own way, he has changed the world. Born in Waco, Texas, Wilson became one of the most respected experimental stage directors and playwrights in the world. His works always combine different disciplines, including painting and sculpture, scenery and lighting, sound, movement and text. In 1986, Wilson discovered a crumbling old building on the edge of Long Island, and decided to build an arts center there to cater to other groundbreaking artists. Yet even before its completion, the center, heavily in debt, is at risk of going under. This film follows the nerve-wracking effort to open the center and hold a gala event, while also telling the story of its charismatic creator, who won’t let anything get in the way of realizing his vision. 
Q&A with the director 
Festivals: FIFA            

                                                     Spettacolo

Director: Jeff Malmberg & Chris Shellen | USA, 2017 | 91 min | Italian, Hebrew Subtitles

For more than 50 years, residents of the Tuscan village of Monticchiello have gathered to produce a play about the place they call home. Like many tourists, this film’s directors, journeyed throughout beautiful Tuscany. When they arrived in Monticchiello and heard its story, they were convinced it should be documented. The resulting film reminds us how often reality is hidden in plain sight. It uncovers the extraordinary way that one community resolved to preserve itself and retell its story through theater. It shows how residents deal with the collective trauma of one day during World War II, when the entire town was ordered to gather in the square, and was saved from extermination thanks to one brave woman. The film presents a story that reaches beyond Tuscany’s breathtaking landscapes, and delves into the existential dilemmas of a community whose days may be numbered.

                                                        Ashcan

Director: Willy Perelsztejn | Belgium, 2018 | 90 min | German & English, Hebrew Subtitles

This fascinating film tells the little-known story of an Allied camp, which was more like a secret prison, where top Nazi generals and officials were detained prior to their trial in Nuremberg. Between May and August 1945, senior members of the Nazi regime were held in the elegant Palace Hotel in Luxembourg, where they were interrogated by American officials trying to get information about the Third Reich. The Nazis, who were accustomed to being respected members of the elite, get caught off-guard by the prison-style beds and food – and their part in a genocidal regime also hasn’t quite dawned on them. The film, based on a play about the secret center, reconstructs the dramatic tension between the American interrogators and their German subjects. With archival footage and interviews, it also re-creates the historical reality that gave rise to these charged encounters. 
Q&A with the director 
Festivals: FIPA, Biarritz

                                                        MUSIC

                                   Alma Deutscher: Finding Cinderella

       Director: Morag Tinto | UK, 2017 | 60 min | English, Hebrew Subtitles

Alma Deutscher was 11 years old during the filming of this documentary. She read notes before letters, and during the making of this film, she was busy with rehearsals for the first opera she composed. It’s an adaptation of the Cinderella story, but the heroine doesn’t lose a shoe – instead, she’s looking for a prince to help her complete her composition. The film follows Alma and her family from their home in England to Vienna, where Alma is involved in every step of the production process and talks freely with the conductor and veteran musicians. Her father, the Israeli linguist Guy Deutscher, and her mother, Jane, a literary scholar, homeschool Alma and her sister and document the development of the prodigy known as “little Mozart” in the press. This is a fascinating and thought-provoking profile of a truly special young girl.

              Maestras – The Long Journey of Women to the Podium

Director: Gunter Atteln | Germany, 2016 | 53 min | German & English, Hebrew Subtitles

Has the glass ceiling been shattered for women conductors? That is the central question of this film, in which leading women who stand at the podium and conduct orchestras describe their journey to that coveted spot. All of the conductors featured here attended the Lucerne Festival in 2016, which was dedicated to women in the field. The film shares their thoughts on being women in a largely male-dominated world, and also traces the life of a pioneer in the field, Sylvia Caduff, who was the first female assistant to Leonard Bernstein and conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in 1978 when she filled in for Herbert von Karajan. The women here speak lovingly about their profession, which requires talent and determination – and they even hint at the fact that the world of classical music is slightly more open than in the past. 
Opening lecture by Adv. Michal Gera-Margaliot, Director, Israel Women's Network

                               Jonas Kaufmann, Tenor for the Ages

   Director: John Bridcut | UK, 2016 | 91 min | English, Hebrew Subtitles

This is an intimate look at of one of the greatest tenors of our time, as seen through his eyes and those of friends and associates. Jonas Kaufmann, the admired and supremely talented German singer, has faced challenges and experienced triumphs, which he discusses here along with sharing his refreshingly straightforward worldview. At the same time as it tells Kaufmann's story, the film asks bigger questions about balancing art and life and about what risks and precautions singers, especially opera singers, must take to succeed. Kaufmann is a perfectionist but not a diva — as evidenced by a scene in which he forgets his sword in the dressing room minutes before going onstage to perform the role of Othello and goes to fetch it himself. His sheer talent, great intelligence, and overall pleasant demeanor come together in this portrait of this artist. 
Festivals: FIPA, Biarritz

                    Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary

Director: John Scheinfeld | USA, 2017 | 99 min | English, Hebrew Subtitles

John Coltrane knew by age 12 that the saxophone was his instrument – and that music would serve as an anchor for him during difficult times. At 13, his father died and his mother moved to New Jersey, leaving him alone and to fend for himself. Yet at every stage of his hard life, which ended at age 41, Coltrane’s unique musical abilities developed and ultimately propelled him to greatness in the United States and around the world. Even after soaring to success, Coltrane never stopped searching for musical breakthroughs, for ways to push boundaries, even if audiences sometimes found that challenging. An impressive roster of jazz legends and other notable personalities (Wynton Marsalis, Wayne Shorter, Sonny Rollins, Carlos Santana, Bill Clinton, Cornell West) reflect on Coltrane’s talent and importance, which remain undiminished despite the brevity of his career.

                                         CINEMA IN CINEMA    

                                                   Notfilm

 Director: Ross Lipman | USA, 2015 | 128 min | English, Hebrew Subtitles

Ross Lipman is a filmmaker and expert restorationist who has brought lost cinematic works back to life. While researching “Film”, the only picture ever made by avant-garde playwright Samuel Beckett, Lipman became mesmerized and spent seven years investigating how it was created. He met Barney Rosset, the founder of Grove Press, who brought important European art works to the United States in the 1960s, and was also Beckett’s American publisher. Rosset produced “Film”, and it turns out that he secretly recorded production meetings, the tapes of which Lipman discovered at his home. “Notfilm” describes the entire creation process of “Film”, including the connection that developed between Beckett and the film’s star, Buster Keaton. This documentary, which is four times as long as Beckett’s short, re-creates a remarkable moment in the history of the avant-garde.

                                              EPOS CLASSICS                     

                                                     The Trout

               Director: Christopher Nupen | Producer: Allegro Films

The film of a performance of Schubert’s Trout quintet by Jacqueline du Pré, Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Zubin Mehta on August 30, 1969 at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, became a benchmark of classical music broadcasting. His close friendships with many of his subjects enabled him to communicate the spirit of the artists' work.
The reason for making the film in the words of its director, Christopher Nupen: "It was clear to us that the concert might well become legendary in time and so we decided to make a film about it. The intention was twofold: to film the concert itself live on stage, exactly as it happened, with five of the newly invented, silent 16mm film cameras and to make an introduction to it during the preceding week, documenting the preparations and, in particular, the spirit behind the event. The artists had all been intimate friends for many years, but, more importantly, they had a great deal in common musically and, in addition, they shared an exuberance in their talents which was as appealing as it was filmable. The introduction takes the television viewer into areas of music-making that are not normally accessible even to the committed concert-going public and the first part of the film ends with the final seven minutes of back-stage preparation before the concert. They are minutes which contain scenes that have passed into musical and television history. The film then continues with the complete performance shot during the concert, just as it happened, with not a note re-taken."

                     March 14-17, 2018 – The Tel Aviv Museum of Art                                                         Here’s the complete list of movies