For students that have grown tired of the typical diet of mainstream $2 and sneak-peek movies shown at Ackerman, this week’s film series, Reel Struggles: Four Progressive Israeli Films, should provide a thought-provoking variety. The free event will run Monday through Thursday, each day featuring a new, award-winning film in addition to free refreshments and lots of discussion.
Put on by UCLA’s Kesher Enoshi: Progressives for Activism in Israel, the event’s organizers seek to promote discussion about important social issues facing Israel.
“To us, (progressive) means showcasing things that are going on that typically might go under the radar in mainstream American-Israeli news,” said Edo Konrad, a fourth-year political science student and the founder of the group’s UCLA branch.
The four main films will feature the struggles of immigrant workers (in “Noodle”), feminist members of the Orthodox sect of Judaism (in “The Secrets”), the cultural clash between Israelis and the Bedouins of the Negev Desert (in “Yellow Asphalt”) and the effects of the first Lebanon war on individuals that engaged in combat (in “Waltz With Bashir”).
Through showing four highly regarded films that seem to embody the major social happenings in Israel, followed by an engaging discussion in which students can participate, the members of the student group hope visitors will discuss social issues that not only affect the state of Israel, but their own communities as well.
Mya Sendowski is a third-year anthropology student who also helped form the group.
“I had been hoping to kind of start a group … that was open to talking about Israel in a more alternative-progressive way,” she said. “Especially focusing on issues in Israel that don’t necessarily have to do with politics, or war, or the Israeli-Palestine conflict.”
Less politically savvy students have no need to shy away from the film series.
“We all came up with topics that we thought were relevant and interesting, and then each one of (the administrators) kind of adopted a different movie to lead,” Konrad said. Konrad will be leading the discussion on “Yellow Asphalt,” which won the Cologne Mediterranean Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize in 2001.
According to Konrad, the film is composed of three vignettes involving a forbidden love, a broken intercultural marriage and a child’s death that demonstrate the struggles the Bedouin communities encounter when they intermingle with the Israelis. The Bedouins are the once-nomadic Arab minority living within Israel.
Konrad said that Bedouins do not really interact with the Israelis, but that Israelis live nearby and employ the Bedouins at times that can occasionally result in conflict.
“The Secrets,” which will have discussion led by Sendowski, involves two Jewish women that, while attending a sort of yeshiva for girls, fall in love with each other, pushing the boundaries of the Orthodox community. Sendowski plans to discuss the current status of the feminist movement in Israel and how the film speaks to that status.
Another important social issue confronting Israel is that of immigration ““ an issue that the film “Noodle” addresses. Brett Krichiver is a rabbi on staff and senior educator at Hillel.
“Israel, for the last 60 years … has been engaged in this dialogue about what does it mean to be a democracy in that part of the world,” he said.
In a demonstration of Kesher Enoshi’s goal to relate the social concerns of Israel to Los Angeles and the United States, Sendowski said that “Noodle” asks an important question.
“What responsibility do we have to these people who come in and provide a service to Israelis? They’re taking jobs that no one else is willing to do.”
Yoni Nattiv, a third-year neuroscience student in Kesher Enoshi, will discuss the final film, “Waltz with Bashir.”
The film has garnered much acclaim and won the 2009 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.
The artistically distinctive film, an animated documentary, follows a former Israeli soldier that is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder years after his involvement in the First Lebanon War.
“It’s not really anti-war or pro-war,” Nattiv said. “It’s more about the individual rather than peace and conflict.”
Accordingly, Nattiv will speak about coping with experiences of war through artistic expression.
First and foremost, the members of Kesher Enoshi just want students to enjoy the films. But they hope that people will come to understand how similar social issues in Israel are to those experienced here.
“They’re different in terms of space and particularities,” Konrad said.
“But they’re not different in an essential way that somehow our struggles are different than theirs.”