Convicted gun runner, Las Vegas visionary, crusading newspaper publisher, target of the Watergate burglars, hero of Israels War of Independence…these are only some the highlights of Hank Greenspun’s remarkable life. A previously untold story of a genuine American hero. From his early days working for Bugsy Siegel and his secret life in the underground Haganah to his public battles with Senator Joseph McCarthy, bigoted casino owners and the IRS, Hank Greenspun was fearless.
Archives
Aviv B’Eretz Yisrael
On the Move
Ehud Banai tells his amazing story from the beginning. The offspring of the famous arts and music family was’tn a such a big success story at first. He was 32, looking for a path of life, working as a gardener, mail-man, playing his guitar on the streets of London. The movie tells his story, and all about his first band, “The Refugees”, and especially about Yossi Elephant, one of the most aspiring musicians that ever lived in Israel. The story of their friendship, their finest songs – starts with confessions from Banai, and continues with testimonies of Yuval Banai, Berry Sakharof, Hillel Mitelpunkt, and Yoav Kutner, The Radio anchor that played his songs for the first time on national radio.
Hope In A Slingshot
HOPE IN A SLING SHOT is a hard-hitting documentary about the ongoing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It is a film about power and control, exploitation and dispossession, injustice and persecution. Through dynamic maps, statistics, interviews (with lawyers, ex-prisoners, Israeli soldiers, wounded teenagers, farmers and settlers) and the personal experiences of the filmmaker just what is happening to Palestinians and their human rights as their daily lives and opportunities are increasingly restricted by the actions of Israeli soldiers and civilians. The film also explores the way in which the United Nations and other countries are unable – or unwilling – to halt these incursions.
Black to the Promised Land
This documentary follows a group of African-American high school students from Brooklyn who go with their teacher to work on a kibbutz in Israel for a few months. The students also visit Jerusalem for a day.
Kun 65
Filmmaker Tal Haim Yoffe finds an old oil painting on the street. He takes it home and learns that it was painted by a holocaust survivor artist. The next day they meet,Yoffe is fascinated by her colorful personality and her joyful paintings, a total contrast to her life story. Heddy and yoffe search for inspiration in blooming fields. When their relationship tightens they travel to an exciting journey in Budapest.
The Beetle
The Alpha Diaries
In Israel you have to go to the army when you become 18. It’s three years of full, hard service, when you are asked to be a soldier beyond the border lines of Israel, in the midst of the Palestinian territories. After that, when you’re 21, you return to your normal life, leaving it all behind, and you erase your memory of those three years. And then you begin your life. But not so fast… In a country under constant threat, your duty doesn’t end there; it continues with the mandatory Reserves Service. In March 2002 a war started, and I was drafted to the reserve forces. I was greeted into Alpha Company, where I found myself a soldier once again. We left our lives behind, riding on the dusty roads into the inferno. I took my camera with me, and it never left my side for 5 years. In one hand was the M-16, the LAU on my back, and with the other hand, holding on as if my life depended on it, was my Sony DVCam, shooting footage of everything I could. This movie is the story of the people in Alpha Company, whom every year dress and become soldiers. Under the guise of our olive green uniform and lethal weapons, we’re asked to do some of the toughest, most unsettling tasks, in the heart of an urban Palestinian town. This is our contribution to our country, our democracy, it’s a tax we pay for Israel, to be like any other western culture where people can sit at home and watch TV, like in Europe, or like in far away America. This is the story of the burden, the guilt and the sorrow we have to carry with us. It’s the story of the ways we make ourselves forget what we must do every year for 30 days. Forget, and then return to it again. The camera followed us from the moment we dressed in our uniform to the moment we put our casual clothes – our civilian uniform – back on. The camera was with us in the most difficult and dangerous moments, and stayed there when we laughed and entertained ourselves behind the shielded walls of the barracks. Pornography, drugs and alcohol were often our window to the other way of life, when it got hard and unbearable, when we thought we were going to loose it. Attention Alpha Company! is the surreal story of the civilian-soldier, and the inhuman task he carries upon himself, when everybody else wants to forget. This movie is a view into the looking glass, to remind us what is happening in our own back yard, lest we forget.
Territories
Part of Israeli director Amos Gitai’s TERRITORIES series, this set of documentaries examines the territories occupied by the Israeli invasion of… Part of Israeli director Amos Gitai’s TERRITORIES series, this set of documentaries examines the territories occupied by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, as well as the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. While both moving, the first piece (FIELD DIARY) created so much controversy, it caused Gitai to be exiled from his own home for a period of 10 years.
Zion, Auto-Emancipation
Noted Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai directs this documentary about the history of Zionism, focusing particularly on the life and work of Theodor Herzl, who founded the movement in 1897. Gitai features not only standard interviews with a number of historians and journalists, but also more lyrical imagery such as a woman reading the Old Testament over family photographs
