Most tourists see Israel only through their own eyes. They never consider the in-depth understanding possible with a third lens. That close-up view of Israeli society is available to college students in the summer program, Jerusalem Film Workshop, which uses a videocamera and film screenings to offer a different perspective of the Jewish State.
For three weeks during the summer, a small group of 18-25-year-olds enter the program, which is sponsored by the American Zionist Youth Foundation and the Youth and Hechalutz Department of the World Zionist organization, to jointly produce their own video, and to study Israel through films and research at the Jerusalem Film Center located opposite Mt. Zion.
While knowledge of film-making is an advantage in the program, according to Amy Kronish, director of the summer program at the workshop, about half the 25 participants over the first two summers were not experienced.
‘NOT A JOY TRIP’
“This is not a joy trip,” said Yisrael Math, one of the participants in last summer’s program. “The point is to be involved with production and to make a movie.” Math, a 23-year-old student at Stockton State College in New Jersey, said that students in the program had only nine days–from July 9 to July 18–to shoot, write, edit, dub in narration and music, and collate the entire project. “We were terribly pressured for time to accomplish something good,” he said.
During production, the group worked up to 16 hours a day on the video, with each student in a different role. According to Math, the group established a division of labor–some worked on writing, some on shooting, some with graphics, some with sound and narration, and many cooperated with editing, all dedicated to beat the pending deadline.
Math, who is starting as a part-time video technician for his local Jewish community center in New Jersey, participated in the videotaping of the film. But he and the three other students involved in the video shooting had to surmount technical difficulties throughout the production. The four were very limited because they were confined to using just one videocamera, Math said. A second camera was supposed to come over with the group, he said, “but they didn’t pay the tax for it and it came in a week after the project ended.”
Sometimes the equipment would fail, Math explained, and the students would use the time preparing for interviews and writing the script, staying up as late as three o’clock in the morning.
Not only are the students busy creating their own video, but they must juggle their scarce time with attending numerous seminars and meeting leaders of Israel’s film industry. Last year’s group met with several top directors, including Uri Barbarash, who directed the critically acclaimed film “Beyond the Walls.”
The agenda for this summer’s program includes seminars on the influence of television on society, the problems of censorship, and documentary film-making and changes in that medium over the past almost 40 years in Israel. The agenda also includes workshops on script analysis and screening of feature and short-length films.
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE AWFUL
Looking back at last summer’s project, Math said “it was really very good to be exposed” to all the nuances–the good, the bad and the awful–of film production and movie making. The topic selected for last summer’s film, “The Chosen People-A Conflict Within,” dealt with the differences and similarities between secular and religious Jews, what drew them together and what was keeping them apart.
The group “wanted to get a cross-section of people,” hopefully to balance the religious and secular aspects of the Jewish nation and to present an objective portrayal of the unity and diversity of Jews. A modest objective, but one fraught with unexpected difficulties and complications — comedic and dramatic.
One of the primary interviews featured Chaim Cohen, a former Chief Justice of Israel’s Supreme court. Math recalled that Cohen was supposed to be their intermediary with religious individuals and groups. When the young filmmakers began the actual interview, their plans were forced to change.
“We had planned all religious questions for Chaim,” Math said. “But when we began to interview him, he said, ‘I used to be religious, until after World War II.'” The three students and Kronish had to revise the entire interview. Despite the mishap, Math believes the interview was a success. “He was a fantastic, direct speaker,” he said. “There was not a single thing he could have said or done wrong in our eyes.”
Many of the other interview attempts were not as pleasant, according to Math. On one of the first location shootings, all 11 students in the project went to Mea Shearim, the ultra-Orthodox section of Jerusalem. “We were attacked by five huge Hassidim,” Math recalled. Some of the young women students were spat on and kicked while the young men were pummelled.
Math, who was holding a video camera, can still vividly picture the film being removed from the camera and being cut and wires from the camera dangling in every direction. “We were about to interview a Hassid when all of a sudden, bang, it was so fast, we were attacked from behind,” Math recalled, wincing somewhat as he described the scene.
‘THEY LAUGHED AT US’
A Gush Emunim member consented to an interview, but was not overly cooperative, Math said. “Every question we asked, she thought was slanderous. She thought we were biased toward the secular point of view.” The students called several yeshivas for interviews, “but they laughed at us,” Math said. Only after the video was completed did Math discover that some of the religious youth hostels in the Old City would have granted interviews. As a result of their difficulties, Math said he felt that the film appeared to favor the secular point of view.
In the brief nine days of production, the students edited 30 or 40 hours of footage into a 12-minute and 42-second documentary showing the clash of ideas and mores between the religious and the secular in Israel. Each student was given a copy of the film for their own use.
After the project was complete, the film was screened to about 50 of the people involved in the entire production. “The kids were floored by the tremendous reception,” Kronish said. The video is still evoking respect and approval in Math’s home town.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
