Julia Gillard Heads G'day Israel 2009 Delegation

You probably haven't met the Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, yet. She's coming over for the biannual AICE G'day Israel. You ought to get clued up … press here for more about G’day Israel 2009.
Lets start with the simple and familiar …In case you’ve forgotten although we told you last edition, this years AICE Australian Film Festival is a part of the AICE G’day Israel 2009.
AICE Australian Film Festival 2009... the choice…
Tackling Peace, The Black Balloon, Disgrace, The Combination, Three Blind Mice, The Square, Miracle Fish, Son of a Lion, Kokoda, Jerrycan, Bitter & Twisted, Rare Chicken Rescue, Men's Group, Salute, The Oasis.
Those are the films showing and this is the schedule and booking info .
Other guests who each on their own merits could claim top billing are…
David Helfgott... more info
Paul Grabowsky... more info
Joe Chindamo... more info
Guillaume and the gala dinner... superstar of the Aussie foodie scene..see Guillaume at Bennelong – Sydney Opera House, Australia
Australia Israel Leadership Forum... see our last piece...

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Australian Wedding

I bought this book on the internet after reading positive reviews about it in the press. It’s a new book out by Nava Semel.
Probably I was expecting something like Bill Bryson’s “Down Under” but in Hebrew. I was disappointed. Semel’s book is about her travels in and around Byron Bay in northern NSW, in her son’s footsteps or should I say, on the scent of his shikse girlfriend, Lucy. (albeit ambiguously)
As my son pointed out the photo of Lucy on the cover bears an uncanny resemblance to Bar Rafaeli. But try as she may Semel doesn’t manage to conceal Jewish mother’s distain. Something in Semel’s attitude to Lucy and the alternative lifestyle, new age community around Byron Bay reveals a certain mixture of bemused condescending observation of the community’s naive, anarchistic, sauvage noblesse independence and a certain anthropological wonder, as if that other more famous and studied Lucy and her prehistoric family of australopithecines had come to life before Semel’s very eyes. Semel’s point of view is fundamentally tzfoni, Israeli bourgeoisie, and though in the book she wrestles hard with her conscience, rationalising her bereavement for her wayward son’s betrayal of the collective ethic against her profound protective desire for his personal happiness, the author does not succeed in settling her conflict nor give us any new perspective.
In Down Under, Bryson travels around by foot, rail, air and car, stays in hotels, rubs shoulders with the populace, drinks middies and eats with them, lampoons them and laughs along with them. Though it’s just a humble travel book the writer charms the reader with a mixture of humour and information, so that from the safety of your favourite armchair you, the reader, can suspend your disbelief and feel that you too are on a voyage of discovery, even if its through the writer’s eyes. You’re reading about the trip you’d have loved to have done yourself.
Unfortunately reading Australian Wedding, besides discovering pieces of Shlomo Artzi’s biography, if anything, I had the sense of confronting the politically correct version of Israeli ethnocentrism and egocentricity and c’est tout. Its all about me, me, me with some patronisingly polite references to aborigines and local left leaning politics, probably stuff Semel read about rather than came face to face with. You can feign European manners but you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. It still comes out as obstinacy. I got the feeling that her voyage to Australia was an excuse to write about herself and her opacified Zionism rather than a voyage of discovery to a new world and a fresh point of view. There is as much text about Semel’s family, herself and her forefathers as there is about Byron Bay.
Reading the book I started toying with a hypothesis that in order to captivate the reader a writer has to go out on a limb and immerse himself/herself totally in the object of his observation, relinquishing his own conventions and parameters for a time at least. Otherwise the book will be lifeless. This assumes that the writer’s identity is either so weak it offers no resistance or else is it is secure enough to let go and plunge in, and consequently either empathise with or disapprove of his subject. But on reading Australian Wedding I’m reminded of the wicked genius of a Hamishia Hakamerit skit lampooning the Israeli need for consensus, at any price.

Australian Wedding is written from deep within the North Tel Aviv consensus. Its almost as if Nava Semel never took a step out.

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G’day Israel

We don’t yet know which members of the Rudd Government will actually be on the guest list of the AICE G’day Israel festival set to open in Jerusalem on 20 June 2009, but apparently several senior members have expressed interest.
The Australia Israel Cultural Exchange, probably best known here for the AICE Australian Film Festival, is pumping their Israeli presence up a notch or three. To quote the chairman of AICE Albert Dadon, G’day Israel is a culmination of what AICE has achieved to date and will exponentially raise Australia’s cultural profile in Israel.
The 6th annual AICE Australian Film Festival will be an integral part of G’day Israel. The film set to open the film festival is a documentary on the Peres Centre AFL Peace Team that competed in the International Cup last August. The film is called Tackling Peace.
On another tack, the piano prodigy David Helfgott, certainly a major league headliner hardly needing any introduction (just in case google Shine, as in Oscar winning film) will be appearing at the Jerusalem Theatre (20 June) and the Enuv Cultural Centre in Tel Aviv (25 June).
If gourmet dinning is your thing Guillaume will be serving up dinner for 350 Israeli and Australian VIP’s. (No doubt I won’t be there, due to prior obligations towards Big Brother) Guillaume is a French born Australian and a foodie icon in those parts.
G’day Israel will also inaugurate the AICE Leadership Forum a symposium gathering hand picked intellectuals to exchange ideas on the Australian Israeli alliance. I guess you could call it a think tank. There are no resolutions, declarations or conclusions. It’s based on a similar dialogue on the Australian American front.
The G’day Israel festival was formally endorsed by the Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, continuing AICE’s ties to official patronage. AICE was launched simultaneously by then foreign ministers Bibi Natanyahu and Alexander Downer.
It’s hoped that G’day Israel will be biennial, with a corresponding festival in the intervening year showcasing all things Israeli in Australia.

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$9.99 An Australian-Israeli Co-production

One reason some of us aussie expats may condescend to watch the Oscars this year is Hugh Jackman, the Australian star of 3 X-men movies and the romantic epic Australia. Jackman will host this year's Oscar ceremony, a departure from the tradition of US comedians hosting Hollywood’s most important night of the year.
Hugh Jackman is an award-winning musical theatre performer and has hosted Broadway's Tony awards three times. He is considered a consummate entertainer. He has style, elegance and a sense of occasion. Oh yeah! Probably the clincher for those who like a cute butt is that People Magazine named him 2008’s sexiest man alive.
Besides that two Israeli animated feature films are competing against each other and the Disney Studios for an Oscar in the field of animation. You've probably already seen Waltz With Bashir. In recent years the Israel animation industry has grown to the stage where hundreds of graduates are absorbed into the field each year creating advertisements, TV productions and shorts. But two animated features, Waltz with Bashir and $9.99, may be signalling a promotion for the local animation industry to the premier league, of animated feature films. The fact that both these Israeli films are on the shortlist for an Oscar in the field of animation, hopefully is a good sign for the local industry.
But its $9.99 that gives us expats an extra reason to follow the outcome of this year’s Oscars. $9.99 is an Israeli-Australian co production, joining a script based on short stories by Edgar Keret, the direction of Tatia Rosenthal an Israeli resident in the US, and the co production of Israeli producer Amir Harel and Sydney based Emile Sherman. (Sherman’s credits include Rabbit Proof Fence, and Harel’s include Meduzot, Walking On Water and Yossi and Jagger) As announced by Film Finance Corporation Australia ,$9.99 is the first co-production between the Israel and Australia under a recently signed Co-Production Treaty.
The film tells a number of stories going on at the same time in an apartment building, with Australian accents. The script was accepted some 6 years ago to the Sundance Lab and won a prize there, and from there Harel and Sherman were brought into the project with a $3 million budget.

The film's plot revolves around Dave an unemployed, soft-spoken twenty-eight-year-old man who shares an apartment with his father. Dave is desperate to discover the meaning of life, so when he comes across a book that claims to contain this knowledge – “all for the low price of $9.99” – he rather understandably makes the purchase.
Inside the book, Dave finds the answers he is looking for and feels compelled to share his new knowledge with everyone he knows. Given the limited scope of his everyday life, that group is primarily made up of his neighbours: a widower with a cranky guardian angel; a retired, down-on-his-luck magician; a captivating woman who has strong preferences where men are concerned; a newly single man who befriends a group of hard-partying, two-inch-tall students; and a quietly rebellious little boy. Their stories are woven together, examining hope, love and spirituality.
Though the Disney studios are heavily tipped to take most of the prizes in a field where there are only 3 categories instead of the regular 5, I’ll be barracking for our vested interest.

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Alternative Oren Ambarchi

Presuming you've had your fill of Australian movies at this years festival, if you’d like to reconnect with cutting edge alternative Australian music Oren Ambarchi is an electronic guitarist and drummer with longstanding interests in transcending conventional instrumental approaches. Ambarchi is giving two live shows this week in Israel : on 3/7/08 at Uganda in Jerusalem and at the Levontin 7 in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.
Oren Ambarchihas been performing live since 1986.This is Ambarachi’s second visit to Israel as a performer; the first time combining excruciatingly high volume levels and incredibly low frequency bass levels and causing almost unbearable joy for those in the audience.
Oren Ambarchi was born in 1969 in Sydney, to a family of Sephardic Jews from Iraq. He spent his teenage years learning to play the drums, favouring free jazz at first. Listening to John and Alice Coltrane and other spiritual jazz allowed for his Jewish roots to catch on to him. He went to New York to study at an orthodox Jewish school in Brooklyn, immersing himself in chabad mysticism by day and experimental music by night. He lived that way for about 3-4 years studying Judaism during the day and listening to jazz and experimental music at night. Eventually, feeling he couldn’t commit to both these lifestyles he chose music. Back in Australia, and strongly influenced by the Japanoise scene, he put together the noise/punk group Phlegm with drummer Robbie Avenaim, and later the Sisters of Menstruation.
Musically Ambarchi started as a free jazz drummer, went through a Japanoise phase, and ended up cutting himself a place under the avant-garde sun as a lowercase guitarist in the early 2000s.
His work focuses mainly on the exploration of the guitar, though he also plays percussion in some of his live performances. Amongst other things he co-organises the What Is Music Festival with Avenaim, starting in 1994 and which quickly turned into an annual festival.
He recorded his first solo LP, Stacte (Jerker Productions, 1998), at home in one take. That, and Stacte.2 (1999), attracted the attention of the British experimental electro label Touch for whom he subsequently recorded Insulation (2000) and Suspension (2001).

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Normie Rowe's Conscription Was Valid

Singer Normie Rowe was led to believe that he was wrongly conscripted into the Army in 1967.
The 60s pop star, whose hits include Shakin' All Over and It's Not Easy, told reporters that his birth date - February 1, 1947 - was not one of the days that was drawn in the conscription ballots that year.
Rowe says he only discovered the mistake when he was booked for speeding by a policeman with the same birth date.
"He said: 'Oh, I was born on the same day as you I see. Why did you get called up and I didn't?' That was quite some years ago," Rowe recalled.
"I haven't really bothered chasing it too much because there's nothing much I can do about it all these years later.
"I mean the damage is done and you get on with your life."
But a military historian has denied claims that 60s pop idol Normie Rowe was wrongly conscripted by the Australian Army in 1967.
Australian War Memorial historian Libby Stewart says supplementary ballots were held for men who were absent from Australia when their age group was first drawn.
She says Rowe's conscription was valid.
"These supplementary ballots were held for every single national service ballot and they were held six months after the original ballot and they were designed to cover 20-year-old men who were out of the country at the time of the original ballot," she said.
"And that was the case with Normie. He was over in London at the time and so when he came back, he registered for national service and he was then, his birth date was then put into that supplementary ballot."

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Desert Jungle

Alison Drury of The Australian Embassy informs us that Australian-Israeli artist Riva Zohar opened an exhibition of her works at the Horace Richter Gallery from 18 January til 8 February.
Thanks Alison for passing on this write up.
Jungle Fever is an amazing exhibition by Artist and Designer Riva Zohar.
Riva has participated in 4 group exhibitions and will now have her first One woman show.
Riva's optimistic and distinct choice of colours and her spontaneous brushstrokes together with her own individual personality, create an expressive, glorious and colourful dream world.
Just looking at her paintings will bring a smile to your face and allow your thoughts to wander through a happier more optimistic world…
This devoted mother of three adds another dimension to her life through creating
with paints & canvas. Her favourite medium is oil paints.
Riva’s work is naive in the style of Henri Rousseau. But she has added her own brand of naivety to her paintings influenced by her wanderings around the world and especially influenced by her two homes, Melbourne, Australia & Tel Aviv, Israel.
The wandering Jew syndrome is often mentioned but we don’t realise how it affects our lives until we look backwards and console ourselves with the history we carry with us all the time as Jews
Riva was born to holocaust survivors Nuisa & Jerzyk Cukier who escaped the worst of the years of the 2nd world war.
They were only a tiny handful of their family who survived; they lost their respective parents, grandparents and numerous siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins.
They had a daughter Yona (Dove) who was killed by the Nazi's at the age of 9 months.
Their arrival to Israel after the war was a liberating chance to start their lives again, collect their shattered lives and rebuild a new family in the Young and newly founded State of Israel.
They were very successful and had 2 children and built up a thriving business, socially they were very successful, and managed to locate many other holocaust survivors who had also managed to escape the Horrors of Europe.
They bought up their children Riva & Uri as optimistic, happy and positive human beings yet aware of their heritage and the burden they carry of the history of their people that has been laid before them.
When the country they love so much was constantly under threat of war the young family felt they needed to again try in a less violent environment for their children's sake. As Jerzyk 's brother and family were living in Australia they decided to reunite their tiny family: In Melbourne ,Australia.
In their newly adopted country the family succeeded enormously, in every way.
Melbourne was a growing cosmopolitan city that invited 'foreigners' with open arms.
With this background Riva's childhood was a happy, friendly and wonderful environment to grow up and develop in any way she wanted.
When Riva was twelve years old, her art teacher in Melbourne, Australia advised her parents to take her out of a regular school and put her in a professional art school, as she had a gift of translating onto canvas, what others put into words.
Her parents advised her to first study something practical and then paint.
Rivas parents having gone through such terrors during the war were not lucky enough to live and see their children grow and mature and meet and enjoy their grandchildren.
Life plays many tricks on us all and the legacy they left Riva & Uri, is not WHAT you go through but HOW you go through it all.
Riva studied Town and regional Planning (Melbourne University Australia) and then acquired her Secondary Teachers certificate –Mathematics and Physics (Melbourne Teachers College, Australia.)
But the Canvas was calling out and so Riva started painting with a prominent Teacher Jacque Weingrow.
Riva Married and had 2 children Rena & Talia,.She always had a great respect both for her adopted country and for her country of birth and history and the 2 places always intertwined entwined and interacted with one another, till this day.
After a very difficult divorce, & with the optimism that her parents imbued in her,
Riva took a very serious step & together with her daughters left for Israel.
In a new life in Israel Riva remarried and with her new Diplomat husband and 2 daughters left for a new adventure, living in Holland, where her son Allon was born, Washington DC (where she studied Interior Design at Montgomery college)& Ottawa Canada ( where she continued her studies at Algonquin College).
Throughout these years her passion & love of painting only grew.
Back in Israel, her great love, Riva finally bought out those final cravings and with the studio of Miquel Tomar, Riva developed her own style.
Today Riva divides her time between Tel Aviv, with her children & grandchildren & Melbourne where she has finally met her soul mate, the ideal connection between painting and her two homes.

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Moriah College Touring Band Dates

If you're a Sydneysider and Moriah College is your alma mater you may be stirred up just a little to know that the Moriah College Touring Band is giving a series of concerts in Israel.
The school's first International Band Tour was in 1999, a three week tour performing for schools and communities across the USA, met with resounding applause at each concert.
2007 sees the band preparing for a fourth international Tour. Their last International Tour saw the group performing at Carnegie Hall in New York sharing the stage with Dudu Fisher.
This year there are 46 students in the Tour Band, ranging in age from 13 – 17 years old. Many of them play in more than one ensemble at the school including Jazz Bands, Orchestras and Concert Bands. The Tour Group consists of 30 boys and 16 girls. They play everything from classical transcriptions, Jewish music to jazz and more popular music. This will be their second tour to Israel. After Israel they will be travelling to Paris to perform at Euro Disney and then on to London to give a series of concerts.
This is their Israel itinerary.

MORIAH COLLEGE BAND TOUR 2007
CONCERTS IN ISRAEL
Wednesday 21st November 8.30pm
Mishkan Le Musika Ve Omanut
Rechov Hapalmach 2a Raanana
Contact: Lyn Bach
Tel: + 972 9 958 5496
Mob: + 972 52 334 0802

Thursday 22nd November 8.30pm
Moshav Masuot Itzchuk
Highway No. 3
Between Kiryat Malachi and Hodayot Junction
Northeast of Ashkelon
Contact: Moshe
Tel: (0) 52 604 8405

Saturday 24th November 8.30pm
Zahal Disabled Veterans
Beit Halochem
Tel Aviv
Contact: Haviva
Tel: +972 3 646 1603
Mobile: (0) 52 422 2823

Sunday 25th November 7.00pm
Matnas Gedera Community Centre
Emek HaNesher
Gedera
Contact: Matty
Tel: +972 8 859 4555

Tuesday 27th November11.30am
Concert for High School:
Kibbutz Ein Charod Meuhad
Gilboa Regional Council
Contact: Ron
Tel: +972 50 526 0155

Tuesday 27th November8.00pm
Community Concert:
Kibbutz Ein Charod Meuhad
Gilboa Regional Council
Contact: Ron
Tel: +972 50 526 0155

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Australian TV Ads

You know when you think about it that much maligned creature the TV advertisement has more cultural clout than you’d give it credit for. Advertisements (or commercials) have been used to sell every product imaginable over the years, from household products to goods and services, to political campaigns. The first television advertisement was broadcast in the US at 14:29 on July 1, 1941, when the Bulova Watch Company paid $9 for a 20-second spot aired before a baseball game. It simply displayed a Bulova watch over a map of the U.S., with a voiceover of the company's slogan "America runs on Bulova time!"

Its common knowledge that the expense invested in these little productions outweighs pound for pound and metre for metre their full length relatives. The effect of television advertisements upon the viewing public has been so successful and so pervasive that it would seem impossible to wage a successful political election campaign without use of television advertising. Many television advertisements feature catchy jingles or catch-phrases that generate sustained appeal, which may remain in the minds of television viewers long after the span of the advertising campaign. Some of these ad jingles or catch-phrases may take on lives of their own, spawning gags or "riffs" that may appear in other forms of media, such as comedy movies or television variety shows, or in written media, such as magazine comics or literature. These long-lasting advertising elements may therefore be said to have taken a place in the no history of the demographic to which they have appeared.
"What a lot of pretentious shite," you are no doubt thinking. But why not test it out on the modest (but lots of growth potential) list of Aussie adverts at Local Counsel-Australian Adverts and see if the theory bears out its contention?

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Forty Thousand Horsemen

Red Gallagher (Grant Taylor) and his best pals Jim (Chips Rafferty) and Larry (Pat Twohill) are bored Australian soldiers in Egypt in 1916, constantly getting up to mischief in Cairo nightclubs. When German-backed Turkish forces attack British outposts in the Sinai desert, the Australians rush to the defence, as mounted troops of the Australian Light Horse regiments.

Read all about it, that is the classic Charles Chauvel production of Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940) staring Chips Rafferty on the afc (Australian screen) site.

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Easy Rieder

There was something so quintessentially Australian sitting in Mike Rieder’s kitchen, in Abu Tor, in Jerusalem. It’s so roomy and breezy and there’s just something about the anarchistic banter bouncing off the walls.
But it’s not like you’d go and stick your thonged feet on the table. For all the mandate period, moyen-oriental charm of the apartment the place is decked out modernly. And Mike is half yekke.
We supped and sipped our beers and shared our experiences as the sons of immigrants to Australia, Mike’s laconic form draped over a chair, cigarette in hand. I like eating artists’ cooking. No matter how simple there’s almost always some special zing to the flavour. Mike fondly showed me the views from the balcony and the kitchen. Mike has the apartment all to himself sitting on the crossroads of Abu Tor, the Sherover Promenade, the Church of Evil Counsel, Derech Hevron and the former Jerusalem railway station. Out on the balcony a stiff breeze nearly blows our hair away. It’s that famous Jerusalem night air, this town’s version of the Fremantle doctor. It's so stiff it could have blown a B52 away.
Mike’s workshop is in one of the rooms in the apartment. There are neighbours in the apartment underneath him and that has an influence on the type of sculptures he’s producing now. They’re relatively light, even though he’s working mainly in steel these days. They’re abstract, steel frames as often as not swathed in steel meshing. Mike says he likes the dual and contrasting aspects of the transparency of the mesh and of form defined by the swaddling. I'm probably reframing and those are not his words, not exactly. But I agree.
In the past Mike’s work as a sculptor was mainly in wood and bronze. But he ran a metalwork business in Melbourne for 17 years too, doing architectural metalwork and small structural work. One of his theories about his present choice of working material is that now that he isn’t doing production work in metal anymore he can sculpt with steel. He smiles bashfully. Lavishing your creative imagination on the stuff you’re running a business around, just seems too contradictory.
In the mid 1970's Michael studied Ceramic Design at Caulfield Institute of Technology in Melbourne, and worked as an apprentice to Danish potter Vagn Nykel. His introduction to steel and wood began when he was enrolled in a Sculpture course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in the late 1970's. In Australia Mike worked in pottery, sculpting and fabricating in stainless steel designing and producing kitchen range hoods, furniture, and balustrades. Since leaving Australia for Israel, Mike decided to concentrate on his art.
It’s an unusual decision. Most of us succumb in the end to the dictates of harsh Middle Eastern reality and go into business of one sort or another. This is the Middle East and there is no fair go, not unless you get out and rustle it up for yourself. But Mike has his own agenda, nonconformist even in a cauldron of conservatism like Jerusalem, eking out his independent lifestyle in the capital’s inverted cosmopolitan bubble. Maybe art isn’t a business but artists want tangible recognition for their efforts too. So Israel isn’t Mike’s only potential market; Mike has an eye on Europe, visiting there from time to time. He has already exhibited in London and sold works in a London gallery. You can have a peek at Mike’s style on his site,http://www.michaelrieder.com/.It lies somewhere on the turf, beyond the tall poppy syndrome but within the bounds of decency.

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The Saints at Pig City

Great news for banana benders!
The Saints, arguably the first punk band of all, and seen briefly by yours truely and Chris whilst straying from the straight and narrow at the Brisbane Carnival (circa 1976?), will play their first concert in nearly 30 years at this weekend's Queensland Music Festival 2007. They headline the Pig City component of the festival with fellow Queensland acts.
The show is on this Saturday at the University of Queensland, where many Brisbane acts, including the Go-Betweens and former Custard lead singer David McCormack, studied. With the exception of the one song the Saints played at their ARIA Hall of Fame induction in Sydney on September 11, 2001, it will be the original line-up's first show since their acrimonious split in the late '70s.
The festival's artistic director, Paul Grabowsky, said if the rehearsals were anything to go by, it would be an entertaining spectacle. "They sounded great, they sounded like the Saints," said Grabowsky, who added that the band had no plans at this stage to play any more shows.
This a unique "one-off" original line up Show! In the City were it all started.. so everybody who can make it to Queensland this weekend, put on your bell-bottoms and corduroy jackets. It's nostalgia time! Find more information here: http://www.queenslandmusicfestival.com.au
In contrast to the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government, which censored artists in the '70s, the state is run by Saints and Go-Betweens fans, says Grabowsky. "The Treasurer and Deputy Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh, is an unabashed fan of (Saints guitarist) Ed Kuepper. It's time to acknowledge what they did. You can almost compare it to welcoming home returned soldiers at an Anzac Day parade." (I gather that’s what my English teacher meant by hyperbole.)

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re: T.A. Opening of Aussie Film Festival

Dear Anonymous , (who sent a comment apropos- AICE Australian film Festival 2007)
Maybe because it was so crowded, we didn't see each other. We were there. It was a great change to visit Tel Aviv from Jerusalem. I was impressed by the number of Tel Aviv’s who's who, gracing the opening; made me feel like Tal Brodi after Maccabi Tel Aviv’s first European Cup win. “We’re on the map!”, as Australians in Israel that is.
Before the film we met with Susan Maslin, the artistic director of the festival and Eloise Oxer who acted in Hunt Angles, one of the festival films. How’s this for a small world? It turns out that Susan is a good friend of my old high school sweetheart, who is a successful film producer these days; and Eloise grew up in Perth (at least for a while), and even spent some of that time living on a street on the other side of my old high school.

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AICE Australian Film Festival 2007

The AICE Australian Film Festival 2007 opens on 25/6/07, in Jerusalem. If you’re like me and pondering why this round of the AFL is taking something like a week and a half to play through, that’s some comforting respite.
The official opening of this years festival will be held in the presence of the Australian Foreign Minister the Hon. Alexander Downer MP and Mr Avi Dichter MK, Israeli Minister for Public Security, on 26/6/07 at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
AICE’s objective is to promote Israeli culture in Australia and Australian culture in Israel and the AICE film festivals are one of the key components in fulfilling that objective.
The festival will run in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. The first film to be screened in the festival will be Jindabyne, a multi award winning film directed by Ray Lawrence. The film schedule runs like this:
25 - 30 June: Jerusalem Cinematheque
2 - 7 July: Tel Aviv Cinematheque
9 - 14 July: Haifa Cinematheque
Press here for full details.
Ray Lawrence is well known for his success with Lantana. Jindabyne is his follow up film. Another well known director having her work screened at the festival is Gillian Armstrong. Unfolding Florence, is a true crime story about a society interior designer who constantly invents her own life story. Her murder remains one of Australia's most notorious unsolved crimes. Press here for the full range of film synopses.
The overriding theme for this year's festival is Telling the Truth and Telling 'Stories', as so many Australian films this year have blurred the edges of fiction and non-fiction storytelling. In her welcoming notes ,Sue Maslin the festival’s Artistic Director, points out that three years ago there were no Australian films in local distribution and this year there will be seven. Since the Festival was launched, there has been a growing audience and appreciation for Australian films has developed in Israel. I hope as many of us as possible will be able to lend our support and enjoy the festival at the same time.

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Dreaming in English-the review

We wanted to get there to the opening but the traffic in Tel Aviv was against us. Anti-Jerusalemites.

We missed the opening but at least we had a peek at the exhibition, and probably all too briefly. I’m referring to the photographic exhibition at The Diaspora Museum by Australian photographer Angela Lynkushka. It’s running til July 31 2007.
The exhibition is a collation of 3 photographic essays and its subject is a portrait of the Melbourne Jewish Community from 1989-2006. Naturally if you’re from Melbourne the draw of nostalgia alone ought to get you along there. But even if you’re not its worth shaking the sand out of your beach towels and having a bo peep.
Rushing through the exhibition as we did, one is likely to underestimate Lynkushka’s talent and mistake her sensitivity towards her subject for sentimentality. Lynkushka’s work, classified as social documentary photography, toes the line between art and documentation. Making her start in the 1970s when social awareness and activism were at their height Lynkushka has stayed true to her form. Over the years her subjects have ranged from artists and dancers to youth culture to aborigines and immigrants. These days her work seems to be running against the grain of fashion, where subjects are posed and photos doctored, touched up and altered. Her somewhat understated work is characterised by empathy for her subject and humility. With that it has been represented in the Australian National Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York, amongst other places.
Lynkushka set out to document Jewish life in Melbourne in 1988. Til then Brunswick, a working class inner suburb where she lived among Greeks, Turks, Italians, Vietnamese, Lebanese and a handful of aging Jews who hung on there after most of their compatriots had moved out, had merely been her home. But the sale of the local shule in Brunswick catalysed her choice to document the Jewish community.
The exhibition in Ramat Aviv combines three parts, touching on migration, settling in and change from a Melbourne Jewish perspective.
The part dealing with change and continuity draws on work from the late 1980s in black and white and a series of colour portraits from 2006. There are the usual crop of artists, actors and professionals alongside the old style delis, grocers, tailors and shoemakers but they are juxtaposed against modern business people, political activists and intellectuals representing an integrated facet of the Jewish community in multicultural Melbourne.
Another essay in the collection is on Felix Tuszynski, holocaust survivor and expressionist artist and miniaturist.
The third essay takes an architectural turn, dealing with the old East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation shule. The congregation dates back to the gold rush days and their synagogue to 1877. By the 1960s most community members had deserted the inner suburbs but the old shule has seen a revival catering to members of the business community, students and tourists as well as a younger generation drawn to the inner suburbs. Lynkushka’s photos here highlight the colonial architecture, fashionable in that epoch and details like numbered pews and memorial boards.
Hope you enjoy it.

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Dreaming in English

Tuesday evening 27/3/07 will see the official opening of the Australian related Exhibition Dreaming in English (Portraits from the Jewish Community in Melbourne, 1989 - 2006). And you too are invited to the exhibition and reception, courtesy of the Australian Embassy in Israel. The event starts at 7 p.m. Press on the shortcut for details on the exhibition and how to send your RSVP to Frank Stein;as well as a gallery talk, in English, with the photographer, Angela Lynkushka.
The exhibition has been developed in cooperation with the Jewish Museum of Australia, Gandel Centre of Judaica and will be held at the Diaspora Museum,(בית התפוצות) in Tel Aviv.

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Burquini @ Cronulla

(This piece is based on an article that Mike Benn was kind enough to send in.)
As a teenager growing up in a Sydney Mecca Laalaa was for the most part unable to engage in that most quintessential of Australian pastimes: swimming at the beach; "Restricted by my clothing," Laalaa explained.
Laalaa is a Muslim and has voluntarily worn the burqa, the traditional head-to- toe covering for Islamic women, since she was 14 years old. For Laalaa and the other women, she explained, the biggest obstacle was what they would wear. It is hard to swim, she said, if your body is swathed in cotton, which is heavy when wet.
Laalaa’s clothing quandary was solved by a novel fashion invention, the burquini. Her redeemer is local fashion entrepreneur, Aheda Zanetti, who designs "dynamic swimwear and sportswear for today's Muslim female." Zanetti, whose label is Ahiida, came up with a two- piece outfit made of spandex, form fitting but fully covering, even the hair, for Surf Life Savers, those volunteer lifeguards.
Judging by the photo, as a fashion statement, the burquini is not too unattractive. Maybe it could be a hit at poolsides for religious women over here? And besides that the burquini looks somewhat reminiscent of those UV screening swimsuits we hypocritically force toddlers to crawl into these days.
Laalaa pulls her hair back into a bun and hides it under a bright red hood that is an extension of the long-sleeved yellow top.
20-year-old Laalaa, is a volunteer Surf Life Saver, lured to the beach by a new outreach program for Australia's Muslims. The outreach program, "On the Same Wave," was started a year ago by the nonprofit group that organizes the volunteers, Surf Life Saving Australia, along with the Federal Ministry of Immigration and the local council.
"On the Same Wave" was intended to promote cultural understanding in Australia, introduce people from minority groups - Chinese, Somalis, Sudanese - to beach culture and safety and, above all, to increase and diversify the membership of Surf Life Saving, said Vanessa Brown, director of membership for Surf Life.
It has also challenged the public perception of a virtually sacred Australian icon- the Surf Life Saver - as someone who is always blonde, blue- eyed and sun-bronzed.
"It's a stereotype that's accurate," said Suzie Stollznow, diversity manager for Surf Life Saving New South Wales.
The outreach was the response to an ugly episode of riots on Cronulla Beach in December 2005. Under the program, 22 young men and women, from 14 to 40 years old and including a woman with three small children, signed up to become Surf Life Savers. And they didn't all believe that they would pass the rigorous eight-week course. But seventeen did.

Based on article by Raymond Bonner

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Sail Shades

Visiting Australia in the last decade or so it’s hard not to notice the changes in architectural fashions. I doubt there’s a federation house left in any of the capital cities that hasn’t been renovated. Then there’s the use of galvanised metals reminiscent of the proverbial shearing shed. At the other end of the scale I was very taken with what they call sail shades. I wonder why they’re not popular in Israel with their KISS technology and their beautiful swooping curves like the arch along the back of a kelpie about to pounce.
In Australia, which has the highest skin-cancer rate in the world, sun protection has become a way of life. Schoolchildren are prohibited from playing outside without hats. And most playgrounds at parks, schools and day-care centres -- along with many commercial outdoor areas, such as parking lots -- are covered with swooping cloth structures that Aussies call "shade sails."
Shade sails differ from conventional, frame-supported awnings in that they harness tension to keep them aloft. They can be anchored to the sides of buildings, can be built with holes in the middle to accommodate trees or other obstacles, and can stretch over an area as small as a backyard patio or as large as a sports stadium.
As for who came up with the idea first the question remains unanswered, but it’s not really important. The Romans used cloth to create shade at places like the colosseum, the ancient Egyptians too. Stranded sailors would have done the same. Think of the survivors of the Batavia. I’ve read about a consortium of Australian investors who even brought Greg Norman in on the deal to construct these structures in Florida. What looks like such a humble idea to some looks like a great business opportunity to others. Maybe someone might see the potential in importing this architectural fashion idea from Australia to Israel, which is blessed with plenty of sunshine too and right up there with the big players when it comes to skin cancer.
Alan Bayman, an American playground-equipment manufacturer for 14 years, switched to the shade industry three years ago. He mainly targets public rather than private markets. Municipalities and federal agencies in the US tend to be savvier about tension structures and more willing to pay for shade, he says. Shade structures can reduce the air temperature by 15 degrees. Other markets are more of an uphill battle. That includes schools, though Bayman expects that to change. He frequently gets calls from "PTA moms," but said tension structures generally are too expensive -- his average sale is $10,000 -- to be funded by bake sales. His business has doubled in size every year and now does "many millions" in sales annually. He said the shade industry has been helped by advances in technology that make the fabrics more durable and the structures more wind-resistant.
Reducing the temperature is one advantage of shade sails says a school director who installed a canopy over a school playground a few years ago. Protecting her students from UV rays is another. But she also likes the structure's appearance. She said it's one of the first things new parents remark on when they tour the school.
"It looks so beautiful. It's very aesthetically pleasing."
Tension structures can make a striking addition to traditional architecture. They work as sculpture in front of a building.
Bill Potter, an American parks-and-recreation manager, is a big proponent of tension structures.
But how they look isn't his top priority. He just wants people to use his parks. When Potter took the reins of the department six years ago, he toured his new domain. And he noticed that parks and play fields with shade were heavily used, while those without shade frequently were as empty as a desert. “You’re only getting half the job done if you put the swing or the teeter-totter out in the blazing sun," Potter said. "They're a little pricey, but to me they're as important as the slide or the climb or whatever." It seems that someone over there thinks that serving your public is not just slapping the names of 3 letter management techniques on pamphlets at policy conferences.
But even at home installing shade sails could be an aesthetic alternative to building a pergola. There’s no problem ordering on the web, and doing it DIY though a bit of technical prowess and consulting wouldn’t go astray. Myself, I’d hire some professional to do the work. One of the interesting facets of the shade sail is the possibility of installing a number of them together, playing with their layout and combining them in a three dimensional geometric pattern to maximise the aesthetic and protective potential.
If I might go out on a limb and make a statement, egoistic as it may be, aesthetically shade sails are at least the equal of the regularly accepted pergola and more so. If beauty has some sort of correlation to the replication of nature around us then paradoxically the synthetic qualities of steel poles and sail cloth somehow match the Israeli environment more than heavy imported wooden beams from trees that can’t grow here. I love the red of jarrah as much as the next bloke but does it match Jerusalem stone?
How’s that for an expression of the state of integration of some jumped up white wog, somewhere along the scale between assimilation and desegregation?

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AICE - Australia Israel Cultural Exchange

AICE - Australia Israel Cultural Exchange

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