Israel Embassy provides each Belarusian with an opportunity to visit Holy L

Another festival of Israeli cinema has started today in the "Centralny" cinema. Diplomats and politicians, cinema critics and bloggers, journalists and just fans of good movies have had an opportunity not only to try "kosher" food and dry wine, but also to see the first movie of the festival - "Deserted Islands" directed by Reshef Levy.







Before the opening of the festival, the guests listened to the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the State of Israel in Belarus Edward Shapiro. The diplomat apologised for the fact that the festival would last only for 3 days this year. However, he promised that lack of time will be compensated by the high artistic level of the movies shown. He called the latest achievements of the Israeli directors another miracle of Israel.

Edward Shapiro: “What is now happening in the Israeli film-making is just another miracle of Israel. There are many miracles in Israel. The very existance of Israel can be called a miracle to a certain extent — as well as the achievements of Israeli cinema. As it is difficult to estimate this splash of creativity which is now happening in the Israeli movie-making, another way. There are no film festivals today which would not give best awards to Israeli movies”.

He reminded that Israeli movies won Oscar prizes 9 times in the nomination "Best foreign film". They have not yet taken the first prize, however, but they have been among the top 5. The Ambassador also thanked everyone who wanted to get acquainted with such an original and interesting phenomenon - Israeli cinema.

Tadeusz Struzhetski : “I hope that the movies presented at the festival - and these are movies of the latest years, movies, noted at the international film festivals - will make us once again take a closer look at such a unique country as Israel, the country each one of us would like to visit once in his life. I hope these movies will help us to learn about this country, to understand it better”.

The director of the movie "Tarab" Boris Maftsir became the special guest of the Israeli cinema festival. The director agreed with the Ambassador that Israel was a mysterious country full of miracles. He said, for example, they still had summer in spite of transferring to winter time. He also told a story, in continuation of the speech of the Deputy Minister of Culture, how much Belarusians liked Israel.

Boris Maftsir: “I flew here today by "Belavia" plane. While the plane was boarding, we had to wait at the take-off runway for an hour as one of the passengers - a Belarusian girl - was late. So the plane was waiting for her, as if a passenger does not arrive it is necessary to unload all the luggage, find his or her bags and then load all the rest back. When she came, everyone asked her "What happened?". She answered she simply wanted to spend one more hour in Israel”.



According to him, Israeli cinema has turned into a whole industry. There are now movies dedicated to all the topics, and people of different nationalities. It is impossible to show all its variety during a 3-days festival.
Boria Maftsir: “It's just a part of the puzzle, which now represents a very complicated but at the same time a very interesting society of Israel. There was a song thirty years ago, the chorus of which when translated sounded like "There's not a single boring minute". This is obviously our destiny, this is what's happening. I hope that during these three days, when you try the extract of what is going on in Israeli cinema, you'll feel you've touched that far away and at the same time close country”.

He invited everyone to his master class on September 14 at the Academy of Arts.
 
The "Centralny" cinema and the Embassy of Israel invite everyone to see 6 outstanding movies of Israeli directors on September 14-16.







 Photo: Zmitser Lukashuk