Amid the crisis surrounding the education of Aborginal children in Australia, there is a ray of hope. The unlikely source: Israeli teachers. Forgotten Children chronicles a team of Israeli teachers as they travel to the Australian outback to introduce a new method for teaching at-risk kids.
When professor Marcia Langton, head of Indigenous Studies at Melbourne University, heard about Hebrew University’s innovative program of accelerated learning targeting disadvantaged students, she immediately saw its potential for combating the challenges faced by indigenous populations in remote regions of Australia, many of whom were unable to speak or write English.
In 2004 she saw the method applied first hand, to Bedouin children in Israel. Upon her return, Langton established YALP, a three-year educational intervention program aimed at raising the scholastic achievements of indigenous students. The first Israeli team arrived in 2005. Over the next three years, the teachers traveled in pairs-via small airplanes-to remote schools in The Kimberley, Alice Springs and Shepparton to train indigenous teachers.
In the narration that accompanies his film Tel Katzir, David Perlov calls it “a reportage” – a term almost unknown then, in Israel of the pre-TV era. “I wanted to look at native born Israelis without their symbolic and mythological attributes, which was not common at the time”, said Perlov, “I wanted to look at them with simplicity, in a straightforward manner, as they really were”. He chose kibbutz Tel Katzir, on the Northern border of Israel, whose members were from the Scouts movement, free of any particular party ideology. It took the raw curiosity of a newcomer, and a total absence of preconception, to reach this simple artistic insight.
In his straightforward and personal style, Perlov presented one of the first pictures of mourning in the Israeli cinema. The film is a portrait of Biba, whose husband was killed in the Yom Kippur War, of her family and of the village she lives in – Kfar Yehoshua.
An almost daily following of the last stages in the building of the new Opera House in Tel-Aviv, paralleled with the preparations for the premiere of “Boris Godunov”, the opera which inaugurated the house. It’s a year of tension, racing against tight schedule, public scandals and a sweeping opera production.
A French boy, street-smart and charismatic, is left to fend for himself after the Nazi occupation of Paris leaves him motherless. The 69 years that followed were an emotional journey that is only now being truly examined. Layer by layer, the past and present of David Bergman unfold into a dramatic story of longing and strength. From the Paris of his childhood to the kibbutz of his youth, from the national stage to his private studio, Bergman travels with filmmaker Micha Shagrir in this starkly intimate film, showing an unshakable and unforgettable emotional tenderness.
The musical and soul-searching journey of Gabriel Belhassan, musician, former orthodox Jew and recently diagnosed with manic depression. After being released from a mental institution he began working on a solo album. But leaving his family and moving to Tel Aviv frightens him – the urban solitude, pressure, disturbed sleep and totality of the music bring on the disease again. His manic attacks have him standing on the brink of sanity, reaching out to God, just as he did when he was a child. Refusing to give up, he struggles to finish the album and receive the artistic acclaim he so desperately wishes for.
Reuven Levav is an Israeli painter who lives in Holland. In his imagination he creates a magnificent world in which he lives, parallel to the real world we all know. Alongside yearnings for the innocent early days of Israel, Levav’s work is paved with a critical view of Israeli society for the lack of acceptance shown towards him. This is a story of the very beginning of Israel. About a boy from the collective farm of Alony-Aba and an undershirt that arrived one night from Romania. The undershirt taught the boy how to visit the esoteric world and bring new life and power to the collective. Life and power beyond the dream of settlement on soil. It told of something beyond time. Today this boy lives in Holland. The documentary combines 5 animations created by Reuven Levav, which are visions of his imaginary journeys. In this film we have the unique opportunity to see the way he paints, dances, writes and lives….
