Basterds heads impressive film festival program
THE Melbourne International Film Festival is back for another year and as always, Jewish filmmakers and Jewish-themed films are well represented.
DON PERLGUT AND ADAM KAMIEN
THE Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is back for another year and as always, Jewish filmmakers and Jewish-themed films are well represented.
Easily the most anticipated is Quentin Taraninto’s (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill part one and two) Inglourious Basterds, which made a strong impression at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and is due to be released nationally in August.
Set in occupied France, Inglourious Basterds is a revenge fantasy that follows a hit-squad of Jewish-American soldiers, who put the fear of God into the Third Reich by brutally killing Nazis.
Concurrently, the story of a Jewish girl seeking revenge for the murder of her father by a brutal SS officer known as “the Jew Hunter” unfolds.
The film, which Tarantino describes as “spaghetti-western but with World War II iconography”, earned Christoph Waltz the best actor gong at Cannes.
The cast includes Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Michael Myers and Diane Kruger, as well as Jewish actors Eli Roth and BJ Novak. Both sessions of the film were sold out within minutes of tickets being available.
Certainly the Jewish highlight of MIFF will be $9.99, an astonishing stop-motion clay animation (claymation), which is the first official Australian-Israeli co-production (eligible for subsidies in both countries).
It is directed by American-based Israeli Tatia Rosenthal (in her first feature) and written by Rosenthal and noted Israeli writer Etgar Keret, based on Keret’s short stories. The production crew consists of a true mix of Israelis and Australians, with lead producers Emile Sherman from Australia and Amir Harel from Israel, and an all-star voice cast including Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia, Barry Otto, Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton and Claudia Karvan.
Through the lives of a single dad and his sons, nothing less than “the meaning of life” is tackled in $9.99.
The Nature of Dreams is a documentary about author, activist and intellectual Amos Oz. In the film, Oz reads from his memoirs and speaks with other authors and philosophers such as Paul Auster and Salman Rushdie on the state of Israel and the conflict with the Palestinians.
Defamation is Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir’s answer to being branded anti-Semitic after his last film Flipping Out, which looked at drug use among Israelis who come out of the army. Shamir travels to Auschwitz and Moscow among other places in his examination of the fine line between anti-Semitic vitriol and criticising Israel’s governance.
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee was written and directed by Rebecca Miller, daughter of noted Jewish playwright Arthur Miller, and stars Robin Wright Penn as Pippa, a mother of two grown children who is married to Herb (Alan Arkin), a retired publisher 30 years her senior.
When the Lees move to a retirement village and Pippa meets her new neighbour Chris (Keanu Reeves), she starts to face the ramifications of her life’s choices. Reportedly, Arkin as the ageing Jewish publisher steals every scene he is in.
An Israeli/Germany co-production, Ajami is a tense crime drama from first-time directors Scandar Copti and Yaron Shari. Set in the Israeli city of Jaffa, the film stars amateur actors, who elicit a gritty realism. The film screened at Cannes earlier this year.
Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of legendary Jewish entertainer Serge Gainsbourg, is starring in Antichrist, a controversial horror film from Danish director Lars Von Trier. Charlotte won the best actress award at Cannes for the role.
For more information on the Melbourne International Film Festival go to www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au.