Film: Turn Left At The End of The World by Avi Nesher

              




Avi Nesher's Israeli-blockbuster-film "Sof HaOlam Smola" (2004) (which has also screened in France as "Au Bout Du Monde A Gauche" and is now touring U.S. Jewish Film festivals as "Turn Left At The End of the World" is an extraordinary film.

It is set in a Negev Desert Development Town in 1968, where immigrants from Morocco from the 50s find new immigrants from India arriving to live across the road from them.

The story is full of quirky and comic and neurotic characters, trying to navigate the unplanned-for frustrations, setbacks, temptations, insecurities and culture shock attendant upon the life of immigrants in a remote place, and speaking in Hindi, English, Arabic, French and Hebrew.

There are many interwoven stories in the film, but it pivots around two 17-year-old girls and their parents. One is Sarah, from India, played by Liraz Charchi, who on her first day in town meets Nicole, from a Moroccan family, played in an amazing performance by Neta Gerti. (This was their first feature film for each actress). They are tempermentally and culturely very different, but are drawn to each other. It is their stormy friendship, and their coming of age story, which is the central narrative. Very highly recommended. See Sof HaOlam Smola.

I was fortunate to see this with Director and Co-Writer Nesher discussing the film after it was shown. Nesher has produced and directed in Hollywood and in Israel many times, and spent some of his teenage years as an Israeli immigrant in New York City. While conceptualizing the film, he met with nearly 800 people who had lived in these Negev development towns to research the story, and then shot the film in a very tense 8-week period as the American-led War in Iraq began in March and April 2003, unsure if their set outside the town of Dimona would be the target of Iraqi Scud missiles. His cast of actors came from France and India as well as Israel.

Negotiations are underway with American Distributors and this may get to release to general Art Movie Houses in the future.

Flying lanterns light up skies, make record books

Interesting report from China Daily: Kongming Lantern Festival made it into the Guinness Book of World Records after the weekend of November 22, 2004, when 1,888 flying lanterns were released into the night skies over the city of Wanning in Hainan.

The event, also known as the Sky Lantern Festival is held annually, and dates back to the Three-Kingdoms period (220-280 AD). One of the famous prime ministers of that period, Zhu Geliang, who is called Kong Ming, invented the flying lantern for use in military communications.

Similar to the fire balloon, the lantern remains airborne as long as its
flame continues to burn.

Book: The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Everyday Life by Ralph Keyes

Ralph Keyes has a written a book that goes through many sectors of society: business, politics, literature, academia, entertainmnet... and recounts how often respected and secure participants have lied about their past. Making the case that culture has changed so that people who lie no longer feel that they are violating a moral or social agreement, he argues persuasively that the cost to society, and to those who habitually "spin" with respect to their own self-esteem, is large. An important and disturbing book. See The Post-Truth Era.

Book: The Price of Loyalty: George W Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill

Ron Suskind's book, written with and about former US Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill, provides insight into how President George W. Bush does and does not engage with the issues, does and does not engage with his cabinet members, and does and does not engage with his political team. It is a fascinating insider account, and now very timely because O'Neill, along with Alan Greenspan, were attempting to make the case for some reforms of US Social Security but based on US Government fiscal discipline; a discipline which was totally undermined by irresponsible tax cuts simultaneous to a hugely expensive military engagement in Iraq. See The Price of Loyalty.

Book: Defending Israel by Martin Van Creveld

Martin Van Creveld is a professor of history, focusing on military strategy, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In this 2004 volume (Thomas Dunne Books, ISBN 0-312-32866-4, 188 pages), he makes the case, based on military needs, for Israel to do three things.

First, to construct a barrier wall along the Green Line between pre-1967 Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

Second, for the Israeli military to deploy some forces that need to be at a distance from enemy terroritory at sea, in the Mediteranean.

Third, for Israel to withdraw completely from Gaza and from the West Bank.

The book also discusses Weapons of Mass Destruction and their role in the region, why Israel can survive without water resources from the West Bank, using high-technology sensors and electronics in defense, and numerous other specific concerns.

Film Worth Seeing - What the Bleep Do We Know?

How would you make a film about big topics: What is reality? What is consciousness? How is the mind and body connected? What powers do human's have that most of us are trained, because of the civilization we live in, to ignore? How does memory affect attention and perceiption?

You could have interviews with people (science commentators, philosophers, theologians) who are writing provocative books about these subjects. You could use computer animations to illustrate things (like neurons) at the scale that we normally do not see them. Or you could follow a week in the life of a typical anxiety-ridden American worker!

Or you could blend all three of these in a creative collage/narrative, which is what filmmakers William Arntz, Betsy Chasse and Mark Vincente did, and the result is one of the most unique films of recent years. There isn't a single focused point of view about the big question in these films, but there is a "field" in the set of views that goes "below the surface" of everyday person-to-person and person-to-world interaction. See http://www.whatthebleep.com or watch the trailer, (2 minutes 10 seconds) at
http://www.whatthebleep.com/trailer/alt.trailer.wm.high.html

Folk-Rock Quartet "Eddie from Ohio" - catch them if you can

Emily and I heard Eddie From Ohio give a concert at the Walkabout Clearwater Coffeehouse and I was astounded at the combination of musicianship, vocal talent, harmonies, and lyrics that these 4 musicians are creating. They are in their late 30s and have played together for 14 years, and have a unique style that draws on folk and rock mostly, but with some blues and some pop and some jazz influences too. They are actually from Virginia and have a playful joking style of interacting with the audience.

Books Worth Reading - January 2005

Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up by Norman Fischer (2003, HarperSanFrancisco, ISBN 0-06-050551-6, 198 pages)



Challenged to consider his own sense of maturity while mentoring a group of teenage boys, Fischer shares insights from Jewish tradition, his own thinking, and Zen Buddhist practice that allow cultivation of true maturity.



Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude by Robert Baer (2003, Crown Books)



Baer, a retired CIA case officer, served in Iraq, Dushanbe, Rabat, Beirut, Khartoum and New Delhi, handling agents that infiltrated Hizballah and al Qaeda, among others, and received the Career Intelligence Medal in 1997.

This book reveals how the US government’s cynical relationship with Saudi Arabia (as well as with Qatar), and America’s dependence on Saudi oil make us increasingly vulnerable to economic disaster and put us at risk for further acts of terrorism.

• Baer documents with chilling clarity how our addiction to cheap oil and Saudi petrodollars caused us to ignore the Al Sa’ud’s culture of bribery, its abysmal human rights record, and its financial support of fundamentalist Islamic groups that are directly linked to acts of terror.
  It is the details in the book that make it outstanding.
• The connection between members of the house of Saud and specific members of the political and economic elite in the United States, who receive financial subsidy from individual Saudi foundations and quasi-government agencies.
• The fact that were democracy to come to Saudi Arabia, oil to the West would very like be cut off, or go to $150/barrel; and if it does not come, demographic factors in Saudi Arabia indicate that the regime is unlikely to survive for more than another 10 years.
• The fact that the corrupt royal family members have bought off the Wahabi religious zealots in the country by pouring money into foreign madrassas that train jihadists.

You’ve read or heard the general outline before, but not in as much detail, with names named and details given. The fact that 200 terrorists with the proper plan could cause more than half of all Arabian oil exports to be halted for a full two years.
Very highly recommended.

The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead by David Callahan (2004, Harcourt Books, ISBN 0-15-101018-8, 350 pages

Callahan documents how much cheating is going on throughout society, and thinks this is a reaction against the harsh, unfettered market and unprecedented economic inequality. See The Cheating Culture.

Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy by Lewis H. Lapham (2004, Penguin Press, ISBN 1-59420-017-3, 178 pages)

Harper’s Magazine Editor Lapham explains how voices of protest and dissent are locked out of mainstream conversation in the United States, by simultaneous alignments of a concentrated and profit-driven media with an administration that considers civil liberties as second in importance to prosecuting a "war on terror". He’s opinionated, literate, and he is trying to give us a wake up call: sometimes corporatism, or fascism, evolves gradually over a decade or more, as the hard work of politics is abandoned by citizens busy with their private lives and the infrastructure for sustained and diverse policy debate weakens and becomes less crucial to the governing elite. Democracy in the U.S. is weaker than many think, and now is the time to act.

Films Worth Seeing - January 2005

Uncovered: The War on Iraq - a film by Robert Greenwald - 2004

Time Magazine called this "A sober and devastating critique of Bush's foreign policy."

This chronicle of the Bush Administration's quest to invade Iraq uses video of the key statements, over time, by President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, mixed with context, analysis, and contradicting facts provided by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, Weapons Search Supervisor David Kay, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Chief of Counter-Terrorism Richard Clark and 24 other top-ranking U.S. intelligence professionals, diplomts and former Pentagon officials, including President Bush's Secretary of the Army. http://www.uncoveredthewaroniraq.com



Tom Dowd and the Language of Music - Mark Moorman (Director) - 2003

Tom Dowd, who died in 2002, had a personality and sense of humor, a musical intuition, and technical ingenuity. Through an accident, he never pursued his intention to become a physics researcher. Instead, he quietly and joyous shaped 20th century music recording. Mark Moorman has made a beautiful film about someone who loved what he did, and was deeply appreciated by his colleagues.

Tom Dowd and the Language Of Music profiles the extraordinary life and legendary work of music producer/recording engineer Tom Dowd. Historical footage, vintage photographs and interviews with a who's who list of musical giants from the worlds of jazz, soul and classic rock shine a spotlight on the brilliance of Tom Dowd, whose creative spirit and passion for innovative technology helped shape the course of modern music.

A long-time engineer and producer for Atlantic Record, Tom Dowd was responsible for some of the most important R&B, rock, and jazz records ever made. In his own words, Tom Dowd relates how he went from working on the Manhattan Project, while still high school age, to recording some of the greatest music ever made over the last half of the 20th Century.

In the film, Tom introduces the audience to many of his closest friends, who happen to be some of the most talented recording artists and executives the music industry has ever known. Interviews with these recording industry icons tell the story of this humble genius, and recount the recording sessions and technical achievements that altered the course of contemporary music forever. - Very highly recommended. http://thelanguageofmusic.com



Hotel Rwanda - Terry George (Director) - 2004

Highly recommended. Based on the true story of Paul Rusesabigina, who created a safe zone at the Hotel he managed as Rwanda suddenly degenerated into the most violent and fastest-evolving genocidal tragedy in modern history. Don Cheadle plays Rusesabagina.
http://www.mgm.com/ua/hotelrwanda/intro.html



Sister Rose’s Passion - Oren Jacoby (Director) - 2004

This documentary of Sister Rose Thering, the Seton University instructor who worked tirelessly for decades to alter the Roman Catholic Church’s views about blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus, is very highly recommended. http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/42904/ltrose.html



A Very Long Engagement - Un Long Dimache de Fiancialles - Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Director) - 2004

From the director and star of "Amelie" (Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Audrey Tautou) comes a very different love story, "A Very Long Engagement" based on the acclaimed novel by Sebastien Japrisot. The film is set in France near the end of World War I in the deadly trenches of the Somme, in the gilded Parisian halls of power, and in the modest home of an indomitable provincial girl. It tells the story of this young woman's relentless, moving and sometimes comic search for her fiancé who has disappeared. He is one of five French soldiers believed to have been court-martialed under mysterious circumstances and pushed out of an allied trench into an almost-certain death in no-man's land. What follows is an investigation into the arbitrary nature of secrecy, the absurdity of war, and the enduring passion, intuition and tenacity of the human heart.
The twists and turns of the plot, the colorful characters, the acting, the music and the cinematography make this comparable to other love stories set against the backdrop of war, such as "Gone With The Wind". Not to be missed.