The Jerusalem Foundation is celebrating a decade of the Lyons Awards given annually to students from the Jerusalem School of Art and Film for their debut films, including a visit to the Toronto Jewish Film Festival and meetings with the local film industry. The Jack Lyons Foundation was founded in 1962 to promote education and culture in Israel and England through numerous social and artistic projects. The short films screened were produced in Jerusalem based arts and film schools:
School of Visual Theater
Ma’ale School of Film & Arts
Sam Spiegel Film & Television School Jerusalem
Screen-based Arts Department Bezalel
Screening in presence of the filmmakers
And He Saw the Place From Afar (Screen-based Arts Department, Bezalel)
Sounds and visuals from Jerusalem's Old City come together in this essay short film filled with real-life characters commenting on the city’s conflicts and existential experience.
13 min, documentary, experimental
Hebrew, English
Director: Nave Antopolsky
Parsley (Ma’aleh School for Film & Arts)
Newly engaged Rachel is embarrassed to introduce her fiancé to her working class father, who runs a stall in Jerusalem's Machne Yehuda market.
10 min. fiction
Hebrew
Director: Noam Keidar
Geseundelach (Screen-based Arts Department, Bezalel)
19 year-old Yehuda was educated all his life in a devout Hasidic family. After struggling and debating, he decides to take the last step of being secular: cut his peyot. The film follows Yehuda and his friends, who for the first time taste the secular freedom of youth, but find it difficult to free themselves from the grip of their past.
29 min. Documentary
Hebrew, Yiddish
Director: Efrat Berger
Snow in Spring (Ma’aleh School of Film & Arts)
An elderly couple in Jerusalem goes through a turmoil when one of them is experiencing an onset of Alzheimer's disease.
Director: Michal-Pinsky Gross
On the Right Track (Screen-based Arts Department, Bezalel)
The Jerusalem city tram is on its way. A dream to realize. Experimental documentary on Jerusalem’s urban planning and people’s experience of it.
5 min. Documentary, Experimental, Animation
Director: Ada Rimon
Mushkie (Sam Spiegel Film & Television School)
Mushkie and Sari are both religious, new immigrants to Israel, roommates, and the best of friends. When Mushkie experiences an embarrassing medical problem, she must open up to Sari about the double life she has been leading.
13 min. fiction
English, Hebrew
Director: Aleeza Chanowitz
Next Stop (Sam Spiegel Film & Television School)
Ruth's voice is the announcement's voice on the bus, everyone hears her- but no one listens. Following her psychiatrist's advice, she tries to bond with the people around her- with little success. But life has mysterious ways to make her, for a brief moment, into a local star.
12 min. fiction
Hebrew
Director: Einat Gaulan
Parallels (Screen-based Arts Department, Bezalel)
A ship from the future lands at the city center of Jerusalem to deliver an important message.
5 min. fiction, experimental
Hebrew, Russian
Director: Boris Haimov
Ain’t Got No Sauce (Sam Spiegel Film & Television School)
Hamutal and Efrat, two chatty friends, want to eat Falafel. On the seam line between East and West Jerusalem, they cannot decide on which side of the junction they should be- the Jewish or the Arab side. They go back and forth until a suspicious object leaves them stuck in the middle without an answer to their hunger.
12 min. fiction
Hebrew
Director: Na’ama Shmueli