My Rehovot ( ISSN 1817-101X )

Source: Springtime gaming in Israel. Itamar Weisberg, Hamis'hakia, Ed Healy

Rehovot, Israel: As April blew into Israel, pronouncing the end for the rain and the beginning of spring’s hot, dry spells, it also marked the beginning of convention season. Passover holiday means that kids get a three week break from school and working adults enjoy a few days of rest and recreation. What better time, then, to play games with like-minded people?

Israel's largest roleplaying convention, Bigor, celebrated its 9th annual event in early April (3rd to 5th), its second year in a Tel Aviv high school. Because of the holiday, each group session was given a class room of all its own. Games ranged in theme and subject matter, and while Dungeons & Dragons dominated sessions based on published rules systems, most sessions were more free-form, as is the norm in the Israeli RP community.

In addition to tabletop role playing, one could find an arena where mighty warriors clashed wielding rubber weapons, activities for young kids, a dissection of the newly-translated Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition Player's Handbook, and a big sleepover party. From talking to the event’s manager, Maya Esh'har, it’s clear the attendees were both well-behaved and enjoyed themselves.

The following week (April 11th to 13th) was Olamot 2009. Literally meaning “worlds”, this is a mid- holiday annual festival for sci-fi and fantasy fans, with this year's theme being “The End of the World.” Unlike Bigor, it was mostly comprised of panels, lectures and movie screenings, but game selling stands were there in force and games were seen being played on the sidelines. Luckily, the world did not end as the third day closed with a musical based on the show Angel.

To listen to Episode 56 of Hamis'hakia, the Hebrew gaming podcast, for more information about Bigor and Olamot (audio is in Hebrew)> please follow this link.

The National Monopoly Championship was held as April came to an end (30th). Not only did I learn that there was, in fact, such a thing as tournament Monopoly, but also that the game played is a speedy variant of the original rules, which also allows for more strategic thinking. The championship winner won a paid trip to the World Championship, which will take place in Las Vegas on October 20th to 22nd.

Source: examiner.com

Labels: Rehovot Arts and Culture, Rehovot Youth

"Rehovot hosted a competition for amateur dance troupes performing ethnic folk dances from around the world, followed by a line-up of diverse folk music acts.

Headlining the professional aspect of the festival is the Tapuah b'Dvash group with the sounds of Eastern Europe, replete with sensuous klezmer clarinet. The band's leader, Anatoly Geiko, plays a number of authentic Eastern European instruments, including the Ukranian darbuka-drum and the Russian balalaika, a triangular-shaped string instrument.

Representing a completely different style of music will be the Latin-American Folk Ensemble. The group, which has played in Argentina as well as Israel, was chosen to back up the great Argentine folk soloist Mercedes Sosa for her appearance here.The ensemble is particularly known for its rendition of the Misa Criolla, a mass for tenor and chorus which draws largely on traditional South American styles such as the Chacarera.

The Israeli Ethnic Ensemble has a more local flavor, largely focused on the sounds of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Vitaly Podolsky's accordion gives an authentic flavor to the band's repertoire of Balkan, Ladino and Gypsy music.

And last among the professional performers is Tam-Tam-Ma, performing the rhythmic song and dance of the West African Mandika people. Dressed in African-style clothing, the ensemble drummers and dancers perform replicas of African religious and medicinal ritual dances, accompanied by explanations of Mandika culture..."

Source: JJ Levine. Folk Festival: Ethnic dance floor. JPost.com [FullText]

Labels: Rehovot Arts and Culture

It is our great honor and pleasure to announce The Israeli Folk music Festival "Folklore without boards".

This forthcoming event will be held at the Wix Concert Hall (The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot), 29th of November, 2007.

The festival program will include great festival concert and contest of Israeli youth folk-dance group which will present tradition culture from different Diasporas and from all over the world.

The programme includes:

16:00 - 18:15- Folk-dance content
18:30 - Rewarding of winners
20:00 - 21:45 - Concert of Festival witch includes outstanding Israeli

Folk music group :

Israeli Ethnic Ensemble - Balcanian folk-music
Tam-Tam - African Rhythm Center - various colors of African music

Latin Music Orchestra - music form South America

Tapuach beDvash Folk music band - Klezmer music, Ukrainian and Russian folk music

We look forward to seeing you at this bright cultural event!

Additional details are available via phone: (054)548-6434

Organizing Committee

Labels: Rehovot Arts and Culture

Israeli and international filmmakers and interested guests discussed today the way Desire is portrayed in women's cinema. The event held at packed Hall 1 of Rehovot's Cinema Hen, 11:00-13:30, Saturday, September 8.

The panel discussion commenced upon the screening of a 60 minute long film "Filming Desire". The following questions were addressed:

What is desire for women and what are its cinematic expressions?
Do women enjoy watching scenes of sexual passion in cinema?
How do men whom women long for look?
How is lesbian desire represented without falling into the stereotypical male fantasy?
Is it possible to direct and to play-act the desire of women in cinematic ways that differ from those already familiar to us?
How do movie directors and actresses deal with these questions?

The panelists were:

Evgenia Dodina, Actress (Circus Palestina, Dear Mr. Waldman, Love & Dance);
Dr. Amalia Ziv, Lecturer in the Literature Department and the Women and Gender Studies Program of Tel Aviv University (Writer of the essay Desire in Women's Cinema); and
Hagar Ben Asher, Director (her short film Pathways is screened at the Festival).

The active discussion by the audience was moderated by Michal Aviad, Filmmaker, Lecturer at Tel Aviv University's Film and Television Department, and Artistic Consultant to the Rehovot's Film Festival.

The soundtrack of the discussion (held in Hebrew), the soundtrack of the multilingual "Filnimg Desire", as well as the pictures of the event are available from MyRehovot via email, certain limitations of usage apply.

For additional information on "Women in the Picture" International Women's Film Festival please visit the festival web site iwff.net .



In a reality of visual images controlled by men, and a film industry made up, even today, of mostly male directors, conventional representations of the female body and of desire have been created, obviously, from the perspective of male experience. In a rare series of interviews with leading female directors, combined with segments of their films, a fascinating dialogue commences about the possibility of creating an alternative cinematic language, a new representation of the female body and of female desire. Mandy has created a challenging cinematic mass which explores the connection between gender politics and cinematic choice, connections between body, sexuality, power, and passion.

Fiction Video 60 Minutes Color French & English, Hebrew & English subtitles
Director: Marie Mandy Cinematography: Dominique Smersu, Virginie Saint-Martin Editing: Dominique Lefever Production: Paul Fonteyn, Franck Eskenazi, Barbara Hurel
Festivals: Montreal, Creteil, SeoulSource: Saga Film, Belgium

Labels: Rehovot Arts and Culture

by Michal Aviad

Sex scenes are one of the temptations that movies have to offer. I imagine that we all share the attraction of watching sexual desire on film. And yet, over the years, a large part of the movies in which I've seen sex scenes, have stimulated in me disappointment, and even insult and a sense of humiliation.

Occasionally, my identification with the intentions and actions of the male protagonist, are frustrated when he realizes his sexual passion. Obeying the laws of cinematic drama, his partner is a secondary character, awarded little attention. Her desire is awarded attention since her dramatic role is merely to serve the central figure (see James Bond movies, Indiana Jones, and many others.)

Often scenes of passion are filmed to meet the market rule that "sex sells tickets." Naked Women, including nudity which derive neither from the story nor from the cinematic language of the film, sell more tickets. But why are breasts, and in recent years female genitalia (for example in Avi Nesher's The Secrets, Israel 2007) exhibited in cinema, while male genitals fail to appear? Why are male sex organs, erected or flaccid, absent from the majority of films – certainly those directed by men? Apparently, in conjunction with those laws of the market, even in the age of "sexual freedom," social conventions preserve for men the role of observers of female organs, and not the roles of those who expose or, God forbid, observe male genitals.

And does the sexual pleasure of women exist in cinema in its own right, as the pleasurable achievement of a goal, as does the sexual pleasure of men? Or is the sexual gratification of women nothing other than one more decoration awarded to the male hero for his victory as a lover? And in what way do sex scenes actually display the director's ability and power to subjugate the actresses to act in accordance with fantasies not their own?

There are films in which the heroines are women. A portion of them allow and celebrate the sexual delight of the heroines (such as Pedro Almodóvar's Live Flesh, Spain 1997, and Frédéric Fonteyne's A Pornographic Affair, France 1999). This said, observing films directed by female directors grants a refreshing and complex view of women's passion and the ways in which female directors choose to express it in their cinema.

Female, as well as male, directors use their authority to fashion both heroes and heroines as they wish. They also take on the role, through the lens of the camera, of the observer, and also possess the power to subject the actors to their own fantasies. What is, however, that world that they ask to describe? And in their films are we able to see female protagonists whose sexual desire we find easier to identify with? Does the range of possibility for sexual desire in their films offer realms never before given expression in cinema?

Watching numerous scenes of passion in films directed by women illuminates various aspects of the representation of sex scenes: the treatment of female and male nudity, what is seen and what is concealed in the filming of sexual intercourse, among others. I would like to point out a matter which the viewing of these films illuminated for me. Various directors, in films dealing with diverse subject matters, address love making sequences in which the strating point of "I want and desire" is broken and turns into "I don't want it any more". In these scenes, passion and pleasure at the starting point of a sexual relationship, carry the danger of being transformed into rape if the male partner does not respond to his female partner's wishes.

In Simone van Dusseldorp's Deep, the heroine yearns for the kiss and touch of a French boy at summer camp, but his attempt to extend sexual contact beyond kissing intimidates her. She becomes confused at the magnitude of her aversion from him, and retreats. With this scene Van Dusseldorp emphasizes that the aversion has nothing to do with the desire that preceded it. Both potently exist, one after the other.

Hilary Brougher's Stephanie Daley also depicts a girl's first sexual experience. Stephanie encourages and awaits the unknown boy's advance. But in the midst of making out with him she recovers her composure and is startled at the possibility that this could lead to intercourse. The boy does not let go.. Here Brougher chooses to cut off. We know that Stephanie did not want the sexual act. In fact, here was a kissing and caressing born of desire but it probably led to rape.

In Adrienne Shelly's Waitress, Shelly sets the heroine's passion for her gynecologist in opposition to the repulsion she feels towards her husband. We witness scenes ripe with fervor in which the protagonist initiates sex with the doctor. As viewers we are filled with satisfaction at seeing our heroine realize her pleasure, since we despise her husband along with her. Other scenes portray her husband sleeping with her while she waits, with eyes empty and open, for the disgusting sex with him to be over. The heroine fears her husband, diligently obeying and lying to him; she cannot refuse his sexual advances. He longs for her and also feels it is his right as her husband to lay her. The sex scenes with her husband waver on the fine line, so familiar to so many women, between disagreeable sex and rape.

The heroine of Carine Adler's Under the Skin desires a man she meets at a movie theatre and with whom she enjoys wild sex in an alleyway. After that she engages in other sexual encounters with strange men. One of these encounters starts with realizing that passion, but when the lover surprises our protagonist with sexual acts not of her choosing, the passion vanishes and the sex becomes revolting.

In her short film, Pathways, Hagar Ben Asher deals precisely with the relationship between passion and rape. Ben Asher amplifies the scope of possibilities for female desire. She depicts a heroine who tempts men and has sex with them, a sex that is casual and different from most cinematic scenes describing female passion. The fact that Ben Asher's protagonist is lonely; that she is, perhaps, attempting to fill other voids with sex, does not undermine her passion. But between sex, even random and partial, and rape, Ben Asher tells us, is an unequivocal difference.

Another short Israeli film, Stain, deals with the distance between the heroine's budding desire for one boy, and the "initiation rite" of rape that is administered by other boys.

In Sex is Comedy Catherine Breillat draws a contrast between the sex illustrated by the actors in the cinematic scene and the sex the actors actually have. In this respect, Breillat creates an additional broken line between passion and rape. What occurs behind the scenes between a man and a woman who are actors, and what we see on the screen as they adorn the forms of their characters. These films stimulate a fascinating cinematic discourse, raising questions of the pleasure and danger of sexual relations. They visually and verbally mark the distinction between passion and rape, and define both with enlightening clarity.

Michal Aviad - Filmmaker, Lecturer at Tel Aviv University's Film and Television Department, and Artistic Consultant to the "Women in the Picture" International Women's Film Festival. Source: iwff.net

Labels: Rehovot Arts and Culture, Rehovot International Women Film Festival

By Nirit Anderman, Haaretz.com

Pictures at length of this publication are from Opening Gala of the festival preceeding premiere screening of the Adrienne Shelly's film Waitress. Opening Gala VIPs included Mr.Galeb Majadle, Israel Minister of Science, Culture and Sport (to the right, also )see the bottom picture and Rehovot Mayor Shuki Forer.

All presented images are original photography and copyright by www.MyRehovot.info. Image usage is allowed in case a working hyperlink http://www.myrehovot.info/eng is provided. To request high resolution images contact us by email. All available pictures thumbnails are available here

Film directing is, unfortunately, still a male-dominated field, apparently one of the last artistic endeavors in which gender inequality is still clearly visible.

The number of women directors is on the rise, but is still amazingly small. Out of 13,400 members of the Directors Guild of America, only 1,000 were women - about 7 percent, according to figures reported last month by The Associated Press. Women are believed to constitute less than 5 percent of all directors active in the world today.

Pictures at length of this publication are original photography and copyright by www.MyRehovot.info. To request high resolution images contact us by email.

Male control is obvious in that most prestigious bastion of American filmmaking, the Academy Awards. No woman has so far won an Oscar for direction; over the years only three women directors have been nominated (Lena Wertmuller for "Seven Beauties" in 1975; Jane Campion for "The Piano" in 1993; and Sofia Coppola for "Lost in Translation" in 2003), but none has yet taken home the gilded, muscle-bound, male figurine.

"Out of 30 films made in Israel each year, only one or two are directed by women," director Michal Aviad says. "I believe this is a nefarious combination: Women have a harder time getting into this industry, as they do in other money-rich fields, and this is demanding work that requires women to give up what they are not always prepared to give up.

In the Tel Aviv University film department, where I teach, for example, there are more or less an equal number of male and female students. But after a few years, you see the women drop out of the field, probably because of family life and the need for a secure income. Students ask me and themselves, 'films or love?'"

Cinema theoreticians have been talking for years about the way the director looks at his or her characters and at the world in which they operate.

In the five-day International Women's Film Festival opening today in Rehovot, the spotlight will focus on the cinematic representation of passion and sexuality in films created by women, with an examination of the works of women directors and how they offer a different look at passion than the one we are accustomed to seeing in mainstream, mainly male-directed, films.

"Since so few women are making films, you almost never see in films how they view the world. This is particularly so when it comes to passion and sexuality, because the leading characters are men, and all the supporting roles are supposed to serve them.

And so in mainstream films, the question of women's pleasure is shunted to the margins," says Aviad, who is the festival's artistic adviser. "In the films we have chosen to present, the pleasure principle is not marginalized," she says, adding that questions arise as to how pleasure is achieved, what means are used, who is hunting whom, what pleasure is and when does it become suffering.

Many films to be shown in the festival address love, sex and intimacy, and allow the feminine view of these issues to be scrutinized. The difference between the feminine and masculine experience of passion, and the original and independent cinematic tools of woman filmmakers, rather than those borrowed from the male cinematic world, result in an original, different examination of passion and sexuality.

Marie Mandy's "Filming Desire" (France 2002), which will be screened at the festival, attempts to examine how women directors from various countries are dealing with this challenge. Mandy speaks with the filmmakers and presents scenes from their films as illustration. "I believe that men cut the female body much more, showing more erogenous zones - buttocks and breasts, and in porno films - the rectum," says French director Agnes Varda. "In contrast, when women film women, they show them whole, the pieces are bigger, there is a tendency to show the woman's whole body."

To explain how she prefers to show female sexuality, Varda presents an example from her film "Documenteur" (1981). In one scene, the heroine is shown undressing in her boss' bedroom and stretching out nude on the bed. After some time she turns to the side and sees her reflection in a mirror on the wall.

Throughout the scene, her whole body is seen in the frame, not only parts of it. "In men's films, nudity is usually the end of the process, of voyeurism or exposure leading to the situation in which the woman is nude, usually ahead of a sex scene," Varda says. "In this scene, I wanted to show the woman alone, naked, without it leading to something else."

Also appearing in "Filming Desire" is Catherine Breillat ("Anatomy of Hell"), Sally Potter ("Orlando"), Deepa Mehta ("Water"), and Jane Campion ("The Piano") and other directors. They talk inter alia about the relative ease of filming sex scenes, about the challenge in illustrating internal events cinematically and feelings of love and sacrifice. They mention the unchallenged dominance of female nudity in mainstream films and the almost total absence of male nudity and they wonder about the lack of the penis on the big screen.

"Filming Desire" presents scenes from the films of women directors to illustrate the cinematic language they have developed to deal with love and passion. They move with the camera over the woman's body as if it were a landscape, showing close-ups of various body parts of female and male nude bodies, not hesitating to show the penis, undressing men as much as women, letting one character describe a sex scene in a voice-over without showing the act itself, etc.

When a woman describes sexuality in cinema in a new language, it often incurs angry opposition. For example, the Italian director Liliana Cavani recalls how she was told to cut sex scenes in which a woman was shown on top of a man. The Indian-Canadian director Deepa Mehta was showered with curses at mass demonstrations outside movie theaters in India when her film "Fire" was screened. And here in Israel, director Catherine Breillat's "Anatomy of Hell" was censored for its sexual content.

"Filming Desire" will be shown on Saturday at 11 A.M. at the Chen movie theater in Rehovot. A subsequent panel discussion will include Aviad, Gesher Theater actress Yevgenia Dodina, director Hagar Ben-Asher and Dr. Amalia Ziv, who teaches literature at Tel Aviv University.

The panel will try, together with the audience, to delve into such questions as what passion is for women and how it is expressed cinematically, how men whom women desire appear in films and how female passion can be represented in cinematic language that differs from that of the mainstream.

"We could have all turned into men; that is a possibility," director and actress Paula Baillargeon ("I've Heard the Mermaids Singing") says in "Filming Desire." "We could all have become young, white, American men, but it's very important to us to tell our story, to our daughters, our sons, to everyone. It's a different view of the world."

The Gala was for invited guests only (see pictures above and below).

Source: Nirit Anderman. Sexuality as she sees it. Haaretz.com (5 September 2007) [FullText]

Labels: Little Orange News, Rehovot Arts and Culture

"The lives of women in Israel and Europe go under the lens at the fourth annual International Women's Film Festival, a four-day event kicking off Wednesday in Rehovot. The festival, with screenings of more than 60 movies at the city's Cinema Chen and Weizmann Institute of Science, gets underway with the Israeli premiere of Waitress, the final film by Adrienne Shelly, the writer, actress and director murdered last November in her Manhattan office.

The film, with TV star Keri Russell as an unhappily pregnant restaurant worker, differs from nearly all the other festival offerings in its setting - a small, unnamed town in the American South. The majority of the festival's films arrive with an Israeli or European pedigree, though one of the festival's guests, documentary maker Sarah Moon Howe, spends part of her film in the US as well.

Moon Howe's project, the suggestively titled Don't Tell My Mother, fits nicely with the festival's theme for the year - passion and its depictions on screen. Moon Howe's 26-minute production, completed in 2003, follows the director's own career as an exotic dancer, as well as her reasons for quitting the profession. Like a number of other films at the festival, Moon Howe's project analyzes not only the female search for male approval, but how that search can affect relationships between women.

Taking a lighter look at similar issues is Sex is Comedy, a 2002 French production screened at Cannes and the Toronto International Film Festival. The film stars Anne Parillaud (who worked with Israeli director Amos Gitai in 2004's Promised Land) as a perfectionist director trying to stage a sex scene between male and female stars who can barely conceal their loathing of one another. Though intended as farce, the film asks an interesting question about the function of the sex scene: when not staged purely for comic or voyeuristic appeal, what narrative purpose can such scenes serve?

Joining Moon Howe among the festival's foreign guests is Polish filmmaker Dorota Kedzierzawska, an internationally acclaimed writer and director known for her lyrical, minimalist screenplays. Three of Kedzierzawska's feature-length movies will be screened in Rehovot, as will two of her short films.

Only a small minority of the Israeli offerings are feature-length efforts; best known among the Israeli submissions is Three Mothers, Dina Zvi-Riklis' warmly received 2006 drama about female triplets born to Jewish parents in Egypt and brought to Israel as teenagers. Nominated for a slew of prizes at last year's Ophirs (the Israeli version of the Academy Awards), the film took two prizes at the 2006 Jerusalem Film Festival, and serves as an acting workshop by performers like Gila Almagor, Tali Sharon and newcomer Miri Mesika.

Israel's other offerings include documentaries looking at a variety of contemporary issues, among them adoption (I, the forementioned Infant), the impact of IDF service on women (Seeds of Summer) and the modern Orthodox singles scene in Jerusalem (The Modern Ones). Three Times Divorced examines the aftermath of a break-up between a Gaza Palestinian and her Israeli Arab husband, while the three-minute Dana Lynn follows a young woman's decision to have her breasts enlarged.

Of renewed interest since May's Cannes Film Festival is The Womb, an animated 2000 adaptation of a short story by Etgar Keret. The Israeli writer and filmmaker shared the Golden Camera prize at this year's French festival with his wife, who wrote and co-directed the Cannes audience favorite Jellyfish.

Awards for best film and documentary will be handed out at the conclusion of the festival, as will "promising director" and "director promotion" prizes. Films screened will be accompanied by subtitles in Hebrew and English.

A full program and information about purchasing tickets can be found at the festival Web site.

Source: Nathan Burstein. Film Festival: Women in the picture (30 August 2007) JPost.com [FullText]

Labels: Little Orange News, Rehovot Arts and Culture

Big Orange Officials Open Orange Festival at the Spot of Citrus Plantation of early 1900s.

100 statues of oranges designed by Israel artists, celebrities and public personalities, are placed around the city that symbolizes the birth of citrus growing in Israel. The “Touching an Orange” exhibition was initiated by the city of Rehovot, and takes place at Minkov Pardesanut Museum. The video below presents the fragment of the official opening ceremony that took place Thursday, July 26, at about 7 pm.

This is Rehovot Orange Festival Opening Ceremony Fragment

The festival to be open daily 5 pm to 11 pm till September 1st, and is a true "Must See" scene. Its' lovely atmosphere well reminds the spirit of a Disney (Six Flags or other) Theme Park corner somewhere across Atlantic. Admission is free. Light refreshments are served. The soundtrack of an invitation by Rehovot mayor Shuki Forer is available at this link.

To view daylight pictures of Orange statues, follow this link. However, please make a note that at night and colorfull illumination statues look different. Come and see it yourself!

Labels: MyRehovot TV, Rehovot Arts and Culture

"We've had penguins, dolphins, cattle, horses and now it's time for oranges. Rehovot will host 100 statues of oranges decorated by artists, sculptors, VIPs, celebrities, and many youth organizations, and pithily placed among the trees of the Minkov Orchards on Ahinoam Nahmani St."

Source: Helen Kaye, Miriam A. Shaviv. JPost.com Arts section (25 June 2007) [FullText]

Labels: Rehovot Arts and Culture

Israel is currently hosting the 2nd International Festival of Russian Book, with over three thousand editions and about twenty venerable Russian language writers from both the countries brought together.

The first event of the festival program was the opening of Russia's exhibition stand, which overshadowed stands of the majority of other participants with its size and bright design.

However, the organizers, headed by the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications, are not going to limit themselves to the book fair only.

During four days famous Russian language writers, including Tatyana Ustinova, Mikhail Veller, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Maria Arbatova, Dmitry Bykov, and Dina Rubina will have meetings with readers, public discussions, and will read their works not only in the exhibition halls of Jerusalem, but in Tel Aviv and Haifa, Ramat Gan and Rehovot as well.

The First International Festival of Russian Book was held in Baku in September 2006.

Rehovot resident reported a problem understanding the present day mentality of Russian people, book fair presenters.

Source: International Festival of Russian Book Held in Israel (21 Feb 2007) pravda.ru [FullText]

Labels: Rehovot Arts and Culture