***** Artist's intoxicating film assembles a mosaic of Israeli-Arab struggle
SUZANNE WEISS Bulletin Correspondent . . .
A white marble angel stands in the Palestinian-Christian cemetery in Jaffa. The angel seems to be moving away from the bodies it is guarding into the sea at its back. Across the sea is the West -- the future. The angel is blown back into tomorrow. This is only one of the angelic conundrums in Udi Aloni's highly symbolic, highly artistic film "Local Angel," to be screened as part of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival on July 19 and 26.
The subtitle of "Local Angel" describes the film as being made up of "Theological Political Fragments." And fragmented it is, as the camera jumps from New York to Israel, from the Dome of the Rock to a discotheque.
And the angels of the title are as numerous as the meanings you can attribute to them. There is Walter Benjamin's "Angel of History," which takes off from a painting by Paul Klee. There is the angel who spoke to Abraham and told him not to sacrifice his son (although Aloni suggests that he may have done so anyway.) And there are a couple of genuine "local angels," the filmmaker's mother, famed Israeli peace activist Shulamit Aloni, and her Palestinian counterpart Hanan Ashrawi.
Udi Aloni is a visual artist, and his movie, inspired by the events of Sept. 11, takes him from his successful life in New York back to the land of his birth in an attempt to understand this tragedy in terms of his own upbringing and experience. His on-camera search ranges from discussions with professors from both Israeli and Palestinian universities to an interview with Chairman Yasser Arafat to surreal scenes involving angry Arab rap singers and traditional Hebraic chants.
A black-hooded drummer beats out a mad tattoo. A Latin Stabat Mater is sung against a background of gyrating dancers in a disco. Israeli soldiers check Arab identification cards as a sexy dancer sings a love song. Soon the same girl turns into a mourner at a Jewish funeral. It is all about sameness and contrasts. Its very historical and very personal, the 42-year-old first-time filmmaker's love song to his mother, to Israel and to the peace process. But all is not sweetness and light. The two Alonis do not always agree, but the on-camera scenes with Shulamit Aloni, now in her 70s, and her friend Hanan Ashrawi, are anchors of reality dropped into the symbolic sea of the whole.
Not only is the music -- pop, traditional, rap and Tamir Muskat's original score -- great, but some of the insights really make you sit up and notice. A female professor at Hebrew University explains the concept that Israel will be the site of the Third Temple, therefore justifying evicting non-believers from the premises. Just a concept but, one that provides yet one more rationale for Arab exclusion.
Another academic, the filmmaker's friend Nono, notes that "sending [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon to fight terror is like sending bin Laden to build a building."
The 70-minute film was shown last year at both the Jerusalem and Toronto International Film Festivals. Although there is no actual plot, it is meticulously put together, rather like a mosaic. And just when you think you've got the whole picture figured out, Aloni hits you with a final quote, this one from Franz Kafka, perhaps the most inscrutable Jewish writer of them all: "The messiah will come one day after his arrival." . . .
<http://www.jewishsf.com/bk030711/etff24a.shtml> *****
***** Local Angel
Neil Friedman Menemsha Entertainment 1157 S. Beverly Drive, 2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90035 Tel/ 0 310-712-3720 Fax/ 0 310-277-6602 neilF at menemshafilms.com
<http://www.sfjff.org/sfjff23/movies/sources.php> *****
***** Local Angel LLC 529 W 20th Street New York, NY 10011
Phone: 212.645.5947 Email: localangel at udialoni.com ***** -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>