Speaker 1: Oh g is folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie. When they
Speaker 2: go out to a theater.
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Speaker 7: Is welcome to the projection booth.
Speaker 5: I'm your host.
Speaker 4: Mike White joined me once again. Is mister yi Adelstein.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, Hello.
Speaker 4: Also joining us as professor will humans Hello there. On
Speaker 4: this special episode, we are looking at the nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: six film from writer director Raffi Bouque Avanti Popolo. Set
Speaker 4: at the end of the Six Day War, the film
Speaker 4: tells the tale of a handful of Egyptian soldiers as
Speaker 4: they travel through the Sinai Desert on their way to
Speaker 4: the Suez Canal along the way they are thrown into
Speaker 4: some very precarious situations. We will be spoiling the film
Speaker 4: as we go along, So if you do want anything Ruin,
Speaker 4: please turn off the podcast and come back after you
Speaker 4: have seen it.
Speaker 3: It is out there.
Speaker 4: Not the easiest film in the world to see, but
Speaker 4: I guarantee you can find it. Yeah, Niv, this was
Speaker 4: a suggestion from you, and I am wondering when did
Speaker 4: you first see this film and why did you want
Speaker 4: to talk about it today?
Speaker 2: That came out when I was still a kid, so
Speaker 2: I can't say that I was too young to watch
Speaker 2: it in real time. You know the story. I came
Speaker 2: on this podcast first to talk about some really awful films,
Speaker 2: and I'm on a quest of redemption to let people
Speaker 2: know about a few actually good films that they can watch,
Speaker 2: and this is one of them. Of Antipopolal came out
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six, when I was eight and Israel barely
Speaker 2: had a cinema industry, and to everybody's surprise, became a
Speaker 2: sort of an art house success and for many years
Speaker 2: was remembered as the one good Israeli film. In the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, Israel was basically making unwatchable films, and this
Speaker 2: movie was surprised because it was made by a film
Speaker 2: student like an unknown guy as his student film and
Speaker 2: later was turned into a feature length film. I'm happy
Speaker 2: I got both of you guys to watch it. Will
Speaker 2: Have you seen it before? Did you watch it now?
Speaker 3: This was the first I've seen it, and I never
Speaker 3: heard of it as a film. It was in a
Speaker 3: way riveting. It just had this mix of the farctcle
Speaker 3: and the realists and all that in the genre of
Speaker 3: the road sort of film where people are lost, and
Speaker 3: I had some of the cliches, but was just utterly
Speaker 3: original in so many ways. So it was really fascinating
Speaker 3: watch if on. The pacing and everything just great, and
Speaker 3: the characters, even the characters who have minimal dialogue, that
Speaker 3: you still felt for. So it really worked as a
Speaker 3: film for me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it did for me as well. And I like
Speaker 4: what you said about the road movie aspect to it.
Speaker 4: It does have that feel to it. Characters drop off,
Speaker 4: new characters come in. We get to meet all of
Speaker 4: these different people from different prospects of their lives, and
Speaker 4: there's always that question of who am I meeting? Is
Speaker 4: it going to be an enemy or Is it going
Speaker 4: to be a friend or is it going to be
Speaker 4: an enemy that I can turn into a friend as
Speaker 4: we see in one part? Or is it just going
Speaker 4: to be an obnoxious television crew? What's it going to be?
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of levels to this film. There's
Speaker 4: that it is coming out in nineteen eighty six, and
Speaker 4: if you're talking about the way that the Israeli film
Speaker 4: industry is in nineteen eighty six, But then it's also
Speaker 4: looking back at nineteen sixty eight when the Six Day
Speaker 4: War happened. Sixty seven it's okay, so looking back at
Speaker 4: sixty seven with that present gaze from eighty six, and
Speaker 4: of course now we're talking about it in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: I don't know that much about the Six Day War.
Speaker 4: It was a conflict between Israel and Egypt, but why
Speaker 4: and obviously it was a quick one.
Speaker 2: No how mash Officially the movie takes place in the
Speaker 2: Korean War, but for all intents and purposes, it's Vietnam.
Speaker 2: It's not really about the sixty seven war. Apparently, Offie
Speaker 2: Boukery had some memories personal experiences from the Lebanon War
Speaker 2: in eighty two, just four years before, and spilled all
Speaker 2: of his thoughts and things into the script when he
Speaker 2: went to film school, I guess after And it's such
Speaker 2: a huge, deep topic that I'd really rather not get
Speaker 2: into it. That's when the occupation starts sixty seven, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So it's a huge, great, big issue. But I do
Speaker 2: want to bring it up in a different aspect, not
Speaker 2: of the war itself, but the fact that how should
Speaker 2: I put this? Okay? Is everything else with Israel Palestine
Speaker 2: is okay? Do I go back to sixty seven or
Speaker 2: go back to forty eight?
Speaker 8: Blah blah blah. But let me say this.
Speaker 2: The reason that I wanted to do this, besides the
Speaker 2: fact it was a good film that a few people remember,
Speaker 2: it's just I came upon an interesting article by this
Speaker 2: professor called Anton Shamas talking about the wider sort of
Speaker 2: topic of the portrayal of Arabs and Israeli films, which
Speaker 2: is focusing on anti popular of the film, and I
Speaker 2: might actually translate it properly, and now I sent you
Speaker 2: Google translaate link translate the relevant fortunate properly. Because this
Speaker 2: is a film about Egyptians that all the main characters
Speaker 2: are Egyptian show soldiers being played by Palestinians by Israeli Palestinians.
Speaker 2: And a very interesting aspect of all this that's lost
Speaker 2: on my ears and on many people's ears, is the
Speaker 2: fact that they don't make any effort to sound Egyptian.
Speaker 2: They just talk like Palestinians. They speak in Arabic Palestinian
Speaker 2: and to Arab ears while listening watching this film, they
Speaker 2: know it right away. It's because it's a neighboring dialect,
Speaker 2: but it's a different dialect. And that's one of the
Speaker 2: interesting things is that it's like a backdoor way to
Speaker 2: let actual Palestinians have center Stagian an Israeli film by
Speaker 2: not having them be Palestinian. Also all these other things,
Speaker 2: they're Palestinians playing Egyptians. The Salem Dao character ends up
Speaker 2: being known as the Jew when he says, I'm being
Speaker 2: called the Jew. I don't want to be a Jew.
Speaker 2: I want to die here as a Jew. And they
Speaker 2: have encounters with Israelis. They have encounters with a un guy,
Speaker 2: except he's dead, but that's an encounter still. As you said,
Speaker 2: they haven't encounters with a foreign TV crew. In terms
Speaker 2: of yeah, it's less about a particular war and more
Speaker 2: because I think you guys will agree with me. It's
Speaker 2: like a humanistic film. It's a slightly surreal film. It's
Speaker 2: not all out surrealistic, but it's just like a series
Speaker 2: of weird encounters that happen that it's a little bit surreal.
Speaker 2: Its powers in how universal, and it ends up being
Speaker 2: specific in the service of the universal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely plays with the universal, but I think ultimately
Speaker 3: it's not going to lay all the chips on the
Speaker 3: universalist sort of bed, because it ends up. The way
Speaker 3: the film actually had develops is that it's fairly pessimistic
Speaker 3: in the prospects of universalism, even going from the scene
Speaker 3: where they're marching to the song of anti Popolo, the
Speaker 3: leftist anthem of the Italian labor movement, and that was
Speaker 3: the moment where you thought, oh, these soldiers, people who
Speaker 3: don't want to be in this war basically are coming together.
Speaker 3: There was some water shared, there's some bonding, there's some jokes.
Speaker 3: There's obviously the key moment with the Merchant of Venice
Speaker 3: line and you think, oh, they're coming together. There's some
Speaker 3: sort of basis for universalism her and then the next
Speaker 3: morning the Israeli soldiers sneak away because these Egyptian soldiers
Speaker 3: are actually a burden for them to care for. It
Speaker 3: does give a nod back to universalism when the Israeli
Speaker 3: soldiers meet their fate going into a minefield, whereas if
Speaker 3: they would have kept the Egyptian soldiers with them, they
Speaker 3: could have avoided that fate. The soldiers get killed because
Speaker 3: of the minefield. But I wanted to go back to
Speaker 3: the accent thing, which to me it was really interesting.
Speaker 3: I'm not fluent in Arabic, but I know enough Arabic
Speaker 3: to know when I hear an Egyptian accent versus a
Speaker 3: Palestinian accent, like the j sound, an Egyptian is more
Speaker 3: like a hard get, so you immediately can recognize that
Speaker 3: it's not an Egyptian accent. But I had a friend
Speaker 3: of mine watch it who's a Pelsian's origin, and we
Speaker 3: got into a debate as to whether this was an
Speaker 3: intentional act by the director, because certainly any serious Palestinian
Speaker 3: actor would know how to at least fake an Egyptian accent,
Speaker 3: just from like access to Egyptian movies, which were very
Speaker 3: common at the time. So I felt like there was
Speaker 3: a symbolic importance to this, and I think that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think I agree with Anton Schamas's take that this
Speaker 3: was a way to launder a Palestinian presence into the
Speaker 3: film through the camouflage disguise of egyptianists, because there was
Speaker 3: also seven years after Camp David, Right, so Egyptis are
Speaker 3: officially at peace. There's like tourism between the countries or
Speaker 3: the opening of relations. So it did seem like a
Speaker 3: way of sneaking it in. But my friend had no,
Speaker 3: there's no way that it's intended. It was just like
Speaker 3: a production simplicity that these that's how the actors they
Speaker 3: had spoke, So we had even the people who could
Speaker 3: recognize that there was a difference in the accent read
Speaker 3: it very differently. But I saw every scene is having
Speaker 3: political metaphor.
Speaker 2: By the way, I'll let you know something I don't
Speaker 2: know that when I was growing up, there was an
Speaker 2: Egyptian film every Friday evening on Israeli TV.
Speaker 8: There's one TV channel.
Speaker 2: There's a few hours of programming in Arabic every evening
Speaker 2: and every Friday an Egyptian film. Somebody told me once,
Speaker 2: a friend who was Mexican said that they were just
Speaker 2: like Mexican films. Egypt has a huge movie industry, and
Speaker 2: I think in the eighties it was like the third
Speaker 2: the biggest in the world after Hollywood and Bollywood. Very popular,
Speaker 2: huge singer, lots of famous film stars, and those Egyptian
Speaker 2: films were super popular in Israel TV. A lot of
Speaker 2: people in Israel Arab, Arabic speakers, Arabs and Jews. It
Speaker 2: was very popular.
Speaker 3: Yes, Egyptian of cinema runs the gammy. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of like slapstick comedy, but there's also very serious, almost
Speaker 3: classic cinematic films. I'm thinking of like the director of
Speaker 3: use of Shaheen for example. But yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of silly nos and Egyptians, but I think that would
Speaker 3: not capture there's a serious literary tradition to my foods
Speaker 3: for example comes to mind, and a lot of books
Speaker 3: are made into films, also international films too, like Midak
Speaker 3: midak Ali. I thinks this made into movie with Selma Hayek.
Speaker 3: But that's an interesting cross cultural exposure. And so my
Speaker 3: question for you and the it would be like how
Speaker 3: much do you read like this is like cultural differences
Speaker 3: that play out between the two groups of soldiers r actually
Speaker 3: versus like a politics of it because each of the
Speaker 3: three Israeli soldiers are very different in their dispositions. Danny
Speaker 3: comes off as more curious about this other and relates
Speaker 3: to them more pop Pousner is obviously antagonistic. He starts
Speaker 3: off by shooting at them from the distance for his entertainment.
Speaker 3: It's just hard to watch, and like some of those
Speaker 3: clips I'm seeing of Israeli soldiers now and God's like
Speaker 3: shooting at anything that moves. But then there's the third
Speaker 3: guy who gets mocked for having the Romanian accent, heirsh
Speaker 3: who Kladid tries to bond with over them both being actors,
Speaker 3: and then so it tries to entertain him, but then
Speaker 3: he takes it as an insult and puts his gun
Speaker 3: in Kadid's face and basically rejects the attempt at bonding
Speaker 3: and that maybe felt like he was being humiliated by Fadid,
Speaker 3: and so like, to what extent do you see these
Speaker 3: as like petical metaphor versus just like cultural clash or
Speaker 3: cultural distance playing out?
Speaker 2: First of all, I don't see the Israeli characters as
Speaker 2: significantly Israeli characters, like the characters for you to identify
Speaker 2: with the two main characters, the two protagonists, and that's
Speaker 2: in a way, that's the central subversive thing that he does.
Speaker 2: He wants to make an Israeli audience identify with Arab protagonists.
Speaker 3: That's revolutionary. As an American, I was like, how many
Speaker 3: movies have I ever seen where there's Arab soldiers are
Speaker 3: the protagonists. I couldn't even think of one. And this
Speaker 3: is the context of like Rambo Delta Force. I mean,
Speaker 3: the terrorist genres in the US is at its height,
Speaker 3: so I see there's also subversive in the American context.
Speaker 2: Look, it's just an outsider movie.
Speaker 8: Again.
Speaker 2: It's a movie made for no money by a film student.
Speaker 2: Everybody was acting pro ball and it was supposed to
Speaker 2: be a student film. And then Selim Daho I read
Speaker 2: an interview with him just saying how he got the script,
Speaker 2: and he said, there's something great here, I'll do it,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. A lot of people gave
Speaker 2: of their time and everything. It's all filmed in sand
Speaker 2: dunes all around Israel, again for no money, and it's
Speaker 2: the kind of outlook that could only have happened from
Speaker 2: an outsider voice. As it turns out, Offi Bouquet he
Speaker 2: died super young, he made this film in one other film.
Speaker 8: Which I don't know.
Speaker 2: I've found it pretty unwatchable and never found an audience.
Speaker 2: He died of cancer in two thousand and three.
Speaker 8: It would have been cool to talk to him.
Speaker 2: Today and ask him a bit about how he came
Speaker 2: up with this concept of this slightly surreal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and is it a true story? Because at the
Speaker 3: end there's this text card that's so detailed, so specific
Speaker 3: that I was like, wait, hold on a second, is
Speaker 3: this ripped from my headline?
Speaker 2: I don't know about the titles at the end. They
Speaker 2: make no sense to me. My gut feeling is that
Speaker 2: the producer insisted that they attack it on That's my
Speaker 2: gut feeling. You don't have those titles if it's not
Speaker 2: based on a real story, But somehow they decided to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm stumped by that one.
Speaker 4: What's interesting that the movie has a Italian name. So
Speaker 4: when you sent me of Anti Popolo, I was like,
Speaker 4: what I thought you said this was an Israeli film, Like,
Speaker 4: what is it called a anti Popolo for? This is
Speaker 4: absolutely bizarre named after, like you said, a Italian labor song. Okay,
Speaker 4: the opening, because there's an opening title card as well,
Speaker 4: if memory serves, that's in English, and then the end
Speaker 4: title card is in English. And then for me, as
Speaker 4: a native English speaker, anytime they say anything in English,
Speaker 4: it just rings a bell for me. And I like
Speaker 4: the English becomes their universal language at one point, because
Speaker 4: we talked about the language barrier, and it's especially with
Speaker 4: that minefield, where had they been able to read the language,
Speaker 4: it would have been okay. And just the communication that
Speaker 4: happens throughout this entire film, so much of it is
Speaker 4: I don't understand what you're saying. Can we try to
Speaker 4: come to some sort of understanding. When they speak English?
Speaker 4: I will say probably eighty ninety percent of the English
Speaker 4: that they speak is quoting Shakespeare as opposed to having
Speaker 4: a conversation. They still go back and forth in their
Speaker 4: own languages when they're trying to converse with each other.
Speaker 4: So I find all of this stuff fascinating, and especially
Speaker 4: you think about there is a native English speaker, an
Speaker 4: actual person from England who comes in and then he
Speaker 4: doesn't understand what his translator is saying, and the translators
Speaker 4: fighting with the other guy, and the translators super angry,
Speaker 4: but will not show that face to the English person,
Speaker 4: which I was just like, wow, there's so many things
Speaker 4: happening with this.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the things uniting all the
Speaker 2: characters is hating the English guy.
Speaker 8: And from what I heard.
Speaker 2: It was a big laugh and applause sort of thing
Speaker 2: when they find out that he vomited on him. Everybody's
Speaker 2: very happy about that. And the British, especially in the
Speaker 2: region or basically all over the world.
Speaker 5: Shirt.
Speaker 3: Yes, everyone hates the media equally. Yeah, and his T
Speaker 3: shirt was like great, it's a great brom Like this
Speaker 3: is a little on the nose, I know, but he
Speaker 3: had the way he came in with a story that
Speaker 3: he wanted to tell about the war and looking for
Speaker 3: the visuals, Like it was just so clearly a sort
Speaker 3: of media critique. But I read the translator as also
Speaker 3: a government minder as well, because he was wearing fatigues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were all ideas to Yeah, people like.
Speaker 3: The media liais and sort of person and trying to
Speaker 3: provide the media with the image that they need, even
Speaker 3: going so far as to like connect to Egyptian soldiers
Speaker 3: or trying to at least get their visuals. The fact
Speaker 3: that there was a U when the officer who was
Speaker 3: killed and was Swedish. I was trying to understand that
Speaker 3: was there a UN peacekeeping force made up with the
Speaker 3: Swedish contingent and the Sinai during the war.
Speaker 2: I mean, in all the conflicts, there's always a UN
Speaker 2: force and they're always from all sorts of European countries.
Speaker 2: And as you read it the titles at the beginning,
Speaker 2: it's like a UN imposed ceasefire. It's going to show
Speaker 2: you how much it changed in sixty years that people
Speaker 2: gave a shit about the UN and I tried to
Speaker 2: abide by some kind of international law.
Speaker 4: The UN owes to so much money. We're going to
Speaker 4: get out of the UN. They have to pay themselves.
Speaker 4: Oh god, yeah, that used to be a big thing.
Speaker 8: We should say that.
Speaker 2: We're recording this minutes after Biden pulled out of the race,
Speaker 2: So the possibility.
Speaker 4: Of big yeah, four more orange years and his last
Speaker 4: big press conference us all about the UN and supporting
Speaker 4: the UN, which is funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was also that league that he wasn't going
Speaker 3: to do it until afternight and yow who came to
Speaker 3: speak at Congress this week. I don't know if that
Speaker 3: was the true league or that wasn't genuine or at
Speaker 3: all that. Who knows the backstory there speak. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: speaking of backstories, we don't know much about the backstory
Speaker 3: of making other than this was a student film and
Speaker 3: any of you speculated it was personalized with the story
Speaker 3: of the Lebanon invasion.
Speaker 8: We'll have more background.
Speaker 2: When I talked to Zola, the editor, who, of course
Speaker 2: it was brought in to be the second editor after
Speaker 2: somebody did that first draft that the director wasn't happy with.
Speaker 2: He had a personal relationship with the director, and I
Speaker 2: think he can have a lot of insight about Who're
Speaker 2: going to have a talk with him pretty soon and
Speaker 2: pick his brain about all that stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm always curious, especially when it comes to it
Speaker 4: sounds like this was a student film first and then
Speaker 4: a feature film. How long was this student film?
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't finished as a student film. You went
Speaker 2: out on a shoot as a student film and sat
Speaker 2: for a year editing it, and finally they just went
Speaker 2: and did some additional scenes. There's no shorter version that
Speaker 2: ever came out. But as a feature film, it's a good,
Speaker 2: like eighty six minute film.
Speaker 4: Then just the level of acting that they have in here,
Speaker 4: I would say that if anything betrays it was a
Speaker 4: student film at all. It's probably the soundtrack, which just
Speaker 4: sounds a little cheap to me. It might have just
Speaker 4: been because of the time, because I'm sure if I
Speaker 4: go back and I listened to action films, especially in
Speaker 4: the nineteen sixties, the music always sounds a little cheesy.
Speaker 4: But this or a oh first score, I was like, ah,
Speaker 4: this kind of reminds me of like when you're a
Speaker 4: young filmmaker and here's a guy who's I can do
Speaker 4: the music for you, and it just sounded a little teeny.
Speaker 4: I'm not trying to put the guy down or anything,
Speaker 4: but I was just like, this sounds like a student film,
Speaker 4: or this sounds like a lower budget.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was very dated, overly sympthesized.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: But yeah. One thing that was also but I don't
Speaker 3: know if you noticed, is maybe because obviously it's not
Speaker 3: shot in four K, but the actors are never sweating.
Speaker 3: Did you guys notice this?
Speaker 4: I just noticed how big something does. Hair keeps getting
Speaker 4: through them, it keeps standing up more and more. He
Speaker 4: is fucking fantastic. I really like him.
Speaker 2: Did you ever remember seeing him in anything we played?
Speaker 8: Do Defy?
Speaker 2: It's Dad in the Crown now on Netflix.
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't see that.
Speaker 2: I mean neither, because I don't like movies about monarchs.
Speaker 3: But so he specializes in playing Egyptians.
Speaker 2: I suppose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I can't think of any other. He looks familiar, though.
Speaker 4: It looks very familiar, and this was one of his
Speaker 4: earliest roles. I think he only had one credited role
Speaker 4: before this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were other Polician actors that could have went
Speaker 3: with assuming they would have been willing. So it's interesting
Speaker 3: that they picked new actors and talent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of the points that Anton Chamas makes
Speaker 2: about not giving the roles to very familiar Palestinian faces
Speaker 2: because it helps. Again, he probably couldn't have gotten the
Speaker 2: big names anyway, but it's again one of those perfect
Speaker 2: things that helps you identify with them, not having any
Speaker 2: kind of baggages people view in other roles.
Speaker 3: Apparently he was in Faudo too.
Speaker 9: I want to talk a little bit about the relationship
Speaker 9: between the soldiers too, because when we start off, I
Speaker 9: said a handful of soldiers and the intro, and that
Speaker 9: was only because it is two of them for the
Speaker 9: majority two people that were following, But we start off
Speaker 9: with four one of them get killed almost.
Speaker 4: Immediately or dies immediately Isam I think his name is.
Speaker 4: And then there's their group leader. I don't know if
Speaker 4: he's their surgeon or what his position is, but he
Speaker 4: gets fragged by one of his own men justly so,
Speaker 4: I think, because they're in a very losing situation and
Speaker 4: this guy does not want to say let's go to
Speaker 4: the two as actually get away from this conflict.
Speaker 3: He wasn't recognizing the ceasefire personally. But it also reminds
Speaker 3: me is it nineteen seventeen that the felt the World
Speaker 3: War One film where it's the war's going to end
Speaker 3: in an hour? What should we do? Keep fighting? So
Speaker 3: I had that same similar kind of pretense. But yeah,
Speaker 3: the fact that this commander wanted to try to ambush
Speaker 3: the Israeli soldiers that the last note was really interesting.
Speaker 3: I'm wondering if you read that is these protagonists have
Speaker 3: to be likable, and the fact that they wouldn't attack
Speaker 3: Israeli soldiers when they had a moment of advantage, does
Speaker 3: that make them more relatable to an Israeli audience. That's
Speaker 3: the thing that might redeem them and get the audience say, okay,
Speaker 3: we can now follow this journey of these Egyptian soldiers
Speaker 3: because they refuse to kill these Israeli soldiers.
Speaker 2: This movie wasn't like very popular, Like it's an art
Speaker 2: house hit that not a lot of people saw. So
Speaker 2: the audience for this film is cinophiles, is people who
Speaker 2: are going to come in with an open mind. And
Speaker 2: if we take a step back, look it's twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: Like Israel is basically so completely pacistic now and so
Speaker 2: incredibly racist that anything Arabic is a non starter completely,
Speaker 2: anything that you look at from the nineteen eighties, it's
Speaker 2: a time capsule to a time where at least racism
Speaker 2: wasn't mainstream. Seeing Arabs as subhuman wasn't mainstream. And yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like a little peak into a parallel universe by Israel.
Speaker 2: It's like the darkest time right now for Israel. I.
Speaker 2: Hope it starts getting better soon, but it's by far
Speaker 2: the darkest it's been.
Speaker 4: Now that racism against Arabs might have been gone from
Speaker 4: Israel or hidden in Israel, but it was alive and
Speaker 4: well here in the United States, Well it.
Speaker 8: Wasn't hidden in Israel.
Speaker 2: It wasn't, but I'm just saying I was translating a
Speaker 2: documentary being made right now about hostages, the history of hostages,
Speaker 2: hostage taking between Israelis and Palestinians, and the terrible things
Speaker 2: that happened throughout the years. But if you see something
Speaker 2: from the nineteen eighties, there were actual negotiations. Like they
Speaker 2: hated each other, they were enemies, they fought each other,
Speaker 2: they kidnapped each other and killed each other. But when
Speaker 2: they had hostages, they would do exchanges, which sounds like
Speaker 2: such a simple thing. Yes, there's a hostage, you do
Speaker 2: in exchange. You have some of their prisoners in your prison,
Speaker 2: and you do in exchange. That's what you think that
Speaker 2: humanity does. But apparently you can get so twisted in
Speaker 2: dark and evil that you won't talk to them if
Speaker 2: your whole thing is based on them not being human.
Speaker 2: Even though that was a dark time in itself, at
Speaker 2: least they communicated through emissaries, They had negotiations, and in
Speaker 2: this dark timeline when we're on even talking to the
Speaker 2: other side is like science fiction. So it's hard for
Speaker 2: me to put myself in the nineteen eighties and how
Speaker 2: an audience react to it and the film.
Speaker 3: I like, whethery're like we could be POW's we can't
Speaker 3: get treated properly, you know, with an old school motion.
Speaker 3: And then the command when they call them the commander,
Speaker 3: what do we do about these drunk conscriptions? Soldiers we found?
Speaker 3: He says they're drunk. Shoot them, And it's I thought
Speaker 3: at this point, obviously the film can't end this way.
Speaker 3: But it was like they just took it like as
Speaker 3: a grain of s all, like they didn't think it
Speaker 3: as a literal command. So that's the kind of realist
Speaker 3: portrayal of these situations. The soldiers were just standing around
Speaker 3: or occupying a position because they're supposed to and they're
Speaker 3: It does harken back to this era of different humanity
Speaker 3: to conflict.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in a realistic sort of way. Because another thing
Speaker 2: it does is it doesn't go far in this other
Speaker 2: touchy feely direction of oh, we're all human, let's drink
Speaker 2: a cup of whiskey together and I'll be friends. It
Speaker 2: doesn't do that. And as you said, there's Reddy guy
Speaker 2: when Selin dau goes a little bit too far with
Speaker 2: this cute routine and he pulls a gun on him.
Speaker 8: He's not having it.
Speaker 2: Every single scene in this movie really keeps you on
Speaker 2: your toes. Nothing ever happens the way you think it
Speaker 2: might happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The other fascinating scene is when they end up
Speaker 3: at that kind of Egyptian base and the three soldiers
Speaker 3: pull up and one of them goes to defecate in
Speaker 3: the middle of the trailer and uses the newspaper, and
Speaker 3: they have the whole argument about why he used such
Speaker 3: a historically important newspaper because it had the headline about
Speaker 3: them winning the war, and then there was all this
Speaker 3: like the big poster of not them.
Speaker 2: By the way, I looked at the because the subtitle
Speaker 2: only said about the war ending, but actually it also
Speaker 2: says about all Jerusalem was liberated, the Sina Peninsula was conquered,
Speaker 2: and Robbin is mentioned there as the commander in chief
Speaker 2: of the Israeli Army. So yeah, a lot of today
Speaker 2: that is sixty seven Today's that the occupation is starting.
Speaker 3: But you can see the statement on it. This is
Speaker 3: all bullshit, as we're going to use the toilet paper.
Speaker 3: And then the way that the soldiers decide to commemorate
Speaker 3: their victory of this historical moment is just like posing
Speaker 3: while shooting the gun. And I think that's a statement
Speaker 3: on the militarism, the militaristic culture. But what I don't know,
Speaker 3: if you're down to talk about this, you need one
Speaker 3: other reading. You've got into the sort of culture of
Speaker 3: asking questions and Jewishness, and it makes me think about
Speaker 3: Zionist masculinity and the sort of remaking of the Jewish warrior.
Speaker 3: I thought that was an interesting analysis, and one of
Speaker 3: the readings that we shared.
Speaker 2: I'm the last person to ask, as a person who
Speaker 2: didn't serve in the idea and always thought.
Speaker 8: It was all bullshit.
Speaker 2: Anyway, this is background that I need to give when
Speaker 2: we talked about The Big Dig, because that's also a movie,
Speaker 2: an Israeli movie that really pokes fun at all the
Speaker 2: Zionist propaganda that you're inundated with. And again, this movie
Speaker 2: doesn't like very actively except for that thing you said
Speaker 2: with a newspaper and bits and pieces. Growing up in
Speaker 2: Israel is growing up with this incessant much brainwashing, but
Speaker 2: this incessant ideology of guess.
Speaker 8: It makes me sick to even try to dredge it up.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the new jew and then this is our
Speaker 2: country and we'll build it and blah blah blah. And
Speaker 2: this movie is less interested in satirizing it as it
Speaker 2: is just about not giving two shits about it, just
Speaker 2: like it didn't become very touchy feely in a humanistic way.
Speaker 2: One of the advantages of a movie with a tiny
Speaker 2: crew and one writer director who does what he wants.
Speaker 8: They don't give you all the answers.
Speaker 2: You can take it in many different discussions from the
Speaker 2: basis of this film.
Speaker 3: Because related to what I was saying, I also thought
Speaker 3: of when Ahadad says I'm the Jew, I get called
Speaker 3: the Jew. It made me think of what Edward Sayid said,
Speaker 3: is that they he's the last Jew, and it's like
Speaker 3: a statement of being cosmopolitan and diaspora, being dispossessed, not
Speaker 3: having a homeland versus the perspective an outlook of people
Speaker 3: who have a state or have a place and the
Speaker 3: things that they can take for grants is including power
Speaker 3: military power to solidify and compatize that kind of rule.
Speaker 3: So this, I think came out a few years after
Speaker 3: Edward Sayida even said that, but it made me think
Speaker 3: about those role reversals. Sinai is this ancient place and
Speaker 3: Jewish history of obviously some theological importance, and now we're
Speaker 3: watching the film in the setting, it's in Israel's hands,
Speaker 3: and the Egyptians played by the Palestinians are now the
Speaker 3: wandering people, wandering in the desert and experiencing exile, and
Speaker 3: so I thought that role in version.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit of the myth of Jewish people
Speaker 2: being expelled from Egypt and doing the exact same pilgrimage
Speaker 2: in the other direction. They're trying to go back to Egypt.
Speaker 2: And yeah, make it as far as the water in
Speaker 2: the Bible, Moses makes it is far enough that you
Speaker 2: can see the land of Israel. And he dies there
Speaker 2: on the mountain, so it's flipped on its head in
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 3: Yes, I fail it can see Egypt when he dies,
Speaker 3: or what suddenly became the edge of Egypt, and then
Speaker 3: the fact that I had to rewind to watch it again.
Speaker 3: But at the end, when he shot on both sides,
Speaker 3: the Egyptians shoot him as well. And that's why I
Speaker 3: struggled with is this like an affirmation of sort of universals.
Speaker 3: There's a pessimistic about the prospects of universal but when
Speaker 3: I see the soldiers shooting him on both sides, just
Speaker 3: have a recognition about being these sort of like pawns
Speaker 3: of power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also have actually the answer for that. I
Speaker 2: heard this being said in interviews that historically, apparently it
Speaker 2: was historically correct that Egyptian soldiers in that situation were
Speaker 2: seen as deserters and they were instructed to shoot them
Speaker 2: if they tried to come back. Actually, a very interesting
Speaker 2: detail I heard from an interview is that again from
Speaker 2: the Salem Dao interview and arts that I read, he
Speaker 2: says that originally in the script on How It Comes Back,
Speaker 2: he yelled out to the soldiers, don't shoot, I'm an Egyptian.
Speaker 2: And he says that he convinced Alfi Buka to change
Speaker 2: it and to not include that in the film. And
Speaker 2: later Salim tells a beautiful story of attending a screening
Speaker 2: in hearing this very intense scene at the end when
Speaker 2: he reaches the Suez Canal and he heard one woman
Speaker 2: shout out, go you can do it, and he was
Speaker 2: impressed by how a Jewish woman watching this is identifying
Speaker 2: with this character to such a degree, and that if
Speaker 2: he had said I'm an Egyptian, don't shoot, it would
Speaker 2: have been a completely different effect. It would have othered
Speaker 2: him to the viewer. And Salim Dao says that he
Speaker 2: told him when he objected to saying it, he told him,
Speaker 2: but that's historically accurate, and he said, I don't give
Speaker 2: a shit if historically accurate, but dramatically it's bad. Let's
Speaker 2: not do it, and you convinced them not to do it.
Speaker 4: You mentioned this whole idea of the Israeli super soldier
Speaker 4: type of character, and I'm curious where this is coming from.
Speaker 4: Is that a campaign to say Israel is strong? Because
Speaker 4: I know, like y'all got Kraft Maga, you know, when
Speaker 4: I see movies and there's an Israeli soldier or former
Speaker 4: Israeli soldier like Ziva David n Cis or the woman
Speaker 4: that gets her hand cut off, I think it is
Speaker 4: in World War Z, it's always, oh yeah, it Israeli
Speaker 4: super tough and super soldiers.
Speaker 2: By the way, there was supposed to be a Sabra,
Speaker 2: the Israeli superhero entering them, see you, and they're just
Speaker 2: changing it now because this will becomes so toxic that
Speaker 2: apparently they're still doing it. She was supposed to have
Speaker 2: a star of David on her chest and everything, and
Speaker 2: so that's not going to be happening.
Speaker 3: Mike, you forgot. You don't mess with The Zohan starring
Speaker 3: Adam Seldler.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, he can even do all those flips and craziness.
Speaker 2: That historically accurate film. Yeah, has there ever been a
Speaker 2: more worthy representation of the dispossession of the Palestinian people
Speaker 2: than Rob Schneider crying about his dead goat?
Speaker 4: That you have seen that movie makes me very impressed.
Speaker 4: I never tuned in for that one.
Speaker 2: I saw The Zohan in the movie theater in Tel Aviv,
Speaker 2: and when the movie starts, there's a flyby of the
Speaker 2: tel Aviv coastline of the exact theater I was sitting
Speaker 2: in as part of the skyline.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty biglorre.
Speaker 2: Oh lord, yeah, yeah, but that seems stark with you,
Speaker 2: at least no a lot of it. Again, it was
Speaker 2: very bizarre as an Israeli to see that very specific,
Speaker 2: very weird representation.
Speaker 8: Oh lord.
Speaker 4: We talk about Salim Daub being called the Jew, and
Speaker 4: that's the whole reference I was making to Shakespeare earlier,
Speaker 4: is that he does the Shylock speech twice pretty much
Speaker 4: all the way through. But then it's interesting later on
Speaker 4: or in the middle of the film. I think it
Speaker 4: is when they are by that dead peacekeeper, and to me,
Speaker 4: the dead peacekeepers. Look at how effective the peacekeepers are.
Speaker 4: They're dead. And there's the one guy who's left in
Speaker 4: the carries in the back seat. So I think there
Speaker 4: are other peacekeepers that got away or you know, fucked
Speaker 4: off somewhere, but this guy just sitting in the car
Speaker 4: roasting basically. And though like you said, we don't see
Speaker 4: a lot of sweat on these on anybody. But you know,
Speaker 4: that's when daw does the whole to be or not
Speaker 4: to be speech as well, So we've got a little
Speaker 4: bit of to be or not to be. But it's
Speaker 4: interesting that of all the things to reference, says Shakespeare
Speaker 4: and other Englishman, but then also the idea of Shylock,
Speaker 4: who's obviously very distasteful character. Now when you look to
Speaker 4: see the way that Jews were portrayed in these plays,
Speaker 4: or barely portrayed, he's a pretty not nice character. He's
Speaker 4: no Fagin or something. But it could be portrayed a
Speaker 4: little bit better.
Speaker 8: By the way.
Speaker 2: I have to correct you on one point because he
Speaker 2: said all the way through, and interestingly it's not all
Speaker 2: the way through. He says, if you particular us, do
Speaker 2: we not laugh? If you poison us?
Speaker 8: Do we not die?
Speaker 2: This is the part that is not said. And if
Speaker 2: you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Speaker 4: Now, that's sorry. He doesn't say that part in front
Speaker 4: of the Israeli soldiers. He says that in front of
Speaker 4: his own.
Speaker 2: Men, and the director didn't want the character to say
Speaker 2: in this context stop short of the revenge part, just
Speaker 2: the human stuff. I just wanted to point out one thing,
Speaker 2: which is this ironic use of this IDF march which
Speaker 2: plays on the soundtrack when they turn on the radio
Speaker 2: when they get the jeep going, and of course it's
Speaker 2: already ironic when they drive the jeep. Then the jeep
Speaker 2: gets stuck in the sand, and it still keeps playing.
Speaker 2: It's actually the same march that plays at the end
Speaker 2: of the big dig of the Bloodmouth Canal, where what's
Speaker 2: this big ridiculous victory at the end where they unveil
Speaker 2: the canal that by mistake was and the orchestra plays
Speaker 2: the same two and so it's actually quite lovely. Before
Speaker 2: they do the Bandiera Rossa song, there's this other very
Speaker 2: ironic one as well with this IDF march.
Speaker 4: Yes, sand is really begin to me in this movie
Speaker 4: more than even the soldiers sometimes just to see when
Speaker 4: they're trying to bury is and just digging, digging, digging in.
Speaker 4: They're not getting anywhere doing this, constantly swarting them. I
Speaker 4: found it interesting that they bury themselves in it when
Speaker 4: they're trying to go to sleep, because they'll keep them warm.
Speaker 4: I never knew that that was fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: But yeah, because the desert is super hot in the
Speaker 2: day and super cold in the night. So in the night,
Speaker 2: because there's no trees, there's no anything to stop the cold.
Speaker 8: So at night, all of a sudden, you do want
Speaker 8: to be warm.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And then yeah, that jeep getting stuck in there.
Speaker 4: It's I don't know how they got stuck in there,
Speaker 4: but they sure do get stuck pretty darn good. It's
Speaker 4: interesting that they have them drinking, which I think is
Speaker 4: probably against their religion, drinking this booze.
Speaker 2: That's the reason they're drinking for the first time in
Speaker 2: their lives, because the non Muslim would have had a
Speaker 2: drink by now.
Speaker 4: And then that they find that parasol and it makes
Speaker 4: them look a little ridiculous, but it's hilarious to see.
Speaker 4: It's a great visual, But I really think it helps
Speaker 4: undermine those characters as being badass soldiers walking around with
Speaker 4: this parasol in the desert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently he got that idea from The Good, the Bad,
Speaker 2: and the Ugly.
Speaker 4: All Right, We're going to take a break and play
Speaker 4: an interview that you and Neve did with Vante Popolo's editor, Zoharsella,
Speaker 4: and we'll be back with that right after these brief messages.
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Speaker 2: Welcome zol Sela to the Projection Booth podcast. So we're
Speaker 2: talking in days of lots of action. Tel Aviva is
Speaker 2: under bombardment.
Speaker 5: So there was just one missile so far, nothing maj
Speaker 5: well here, yeah, it's a bigness.
Speaker 2: Let's see if we can, on a day like today
Speaker 2: go back a little bit to nineteen eighty eight and
Speaker 2: talk about this film of Anti Popolo that you are
Speaker 2: the editor for. If that's entirely possible, a time where
Speaker 2: in Israeli public discourse you could show the point of
Speaker 2: view of an Arab god forbid a different time.
Speaker 5: In eighty six it was there the same you made
Speaker 5: a film that talking about the enemies, showed them like
Speaker 5: a human being. It was a big shock.
Speaker 2: And if you book, he started this project, as we said,
Speaker 2: as his final project for his film studies in Televiv University.
Speaker 2: And the first cut was shorter than the one we
Speaker 2: see today.
Speaker 5: The first cut was like forty six minutes of fifty
Speaker 5: six minutes. I think. I had a call from the
Speaker 5: producer and he asked me if I can help this guy.
Speaker 5: The young guy is older than I am, but we
Speaker 5: were really young. I was twenty five, I think, and
Speaker 5: I was twenty eight or twenty nine. I worked with
Speaker 5: the producer Mikashagriv before. He asked me to look at
Speaker 5: that and tell him what I think about it, and
Speaker 5: if we can make it as a feature instead of
Speaker 5: a short film and add some new scene. And I
Speaker 5: look at the cart and I knew Luffee and I
Speaker 5: liked Traffi, and they say, yes, let's do it. And
Speaker 5: they shot all the night scenes.
Speaker 2: So did you use any of the original cut that
Speaker 2: was done by another editor or did you start from scratch?
Speaker 5: No, I start from scratch. I always do it. I
Speaker 5: usually do it when I am second editor. I made
Speaker 5: like twelve features as a second editor, and I always
Speaker 5: would it again, and I don't do it like the
Speaker 5: assistant make it. It was film. It was sixteen millimeter
Speaker 5: sixteen plus millimeter, so she put it in the reel
Speaker 5: again and I started from scratch. We worked in them
Speaker 5: a gun. It was fun.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that the original screenplay was pretty basic and
Speaker 2: basically more like a declaration of intent than a real
Speaker 2: shooting script. Can you tell us something about that.
Speaker 5: The original script was between twenty four to twenty seven pages,
Speaker 5: and they took their time at the set and a
Speaker 5: lot of it because the dialogue, because Raffi is not
Speaker 5: speaking Arabic, so do I. The actors are selling down
Speaker 5: in fun or a sudden it's the name of the actor.
Speaker 5: I don't remember. It's the name of the character. And
Speaker 5: I don't remember now the name of the actor. And
Speaker 5: they do a lot of work the dialogue point of view.
Speaker 5: It was a short film. It was supposed to be
Speaker 5: a short film, and the script was according to that,
Speaker 5: there's a in the atmosphere. Short became a bit long,
Speaker 5: so we all decide to make it.
Speaker 2: And you said that the later scenes that were filmed
Speaker 2: were only the night scenes or other scenes as well.
Speaker 5: If I remember correctly, it was just the night scenes,
Speaker 5: the rabbit scene, and then they took next to the
Speaker 5: fire there. I think that was the only scenes that
Speaker 5: the issues, if I remember correctly.
Speaker 2: You do a lot of ironic use of music in
Speaker 2: the film, for instance, the march that's the IDF March
Speaker 2: and also the pop music coming in from radio Monte
Speaker 2: Carlo over the radio. Did you try different songs or
Speaker 2: did the director choose the music he wanted to hear
Speaker 2: in the film.
Speaker 5: As far as I remember, after you choose this music
Speaker 5: from the beginning.
Speaker 2: The song itself of Anti Popolo Bandera Rosa, the Italian
Speaker 2: Communist anthem. Was the film called anti popolo from the
Speaker 2: beginning or is the late Yes.
Speaker 5: This thing called avanti pop from the beginning. Raffi was
Speaker 5: in the shamers a year youth movement. I was in
Speaker 5: that two, so we knew the song. We used to
Speaker 5: to sing it the melody. We used to sing it
Speaker 5: in the Hebrew word in a way and the Italian words.
Speaker 5: We knew the song, and yeah, it was when I
Speaker 5: got the cart it was there.
Speaker 2: Maybe well, I never even knew that it existed with
Speaker 2: Hebrew lyrics. Now I have to go find it and we.
Speaker 5: It's I don't think it really exists. I think it's
Speaker 5: we used to to put words for it andat in camping,
Speaker 5: and we used to improvise about this boy. But we
Speaker 5: but we used to do all this nonsense about it.
Speaker 5: I don't think that maybe there are EBow lyrics. But
Speaker 5: we used to like, we used to like like just
Speaker 5: bullshit around it.
Speaker 2: As origins in a folk song. So it makes sense people,
Speaker 2: that's what you do. You make up the lyrics. It's
Speaker 2: a folk song.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a big thing in Italy, in the
Speaker 5: freshiest Italy. I think it wasn't like it was Mussolini,
Speaker 5: but it was.
Speaker 2: It's a song about communism, it's about the red.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, yeah, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: So tell us a little bit about Affie book. He
Speaker 2: died young, only made two feature films.
Speaker 5: He made only two feature films, but he made another
Speaker 5: feature for TV I think ninety two minutes that I
Speaker 5: had the honor to edit too. Yeah, it was really all.
Speaker 5: He was sick when I knew he was sick. He
Speaker 5: wasn't sick. He was sick before he had cancer when
Speaker 5: he was a student, and he made it. He didn't
Speaker 5: die that young, but it was always there.
Speaker 2: And what kind of guy was you? What was it
Speaker 2: like to work with them?
Speaker 5: Raffi was a fun god. He didn't usually smile a lot,
Speaker 5: but when he was smiling, it was like amazing happening.
Speaker 5: And the thing with Raffi that from really as he
Speaker 5: was really young, that when he has a theater in
Speaker 5: kiyot Gat where he was born and lived, so he
Speaker 5: knew everything about films. He knew everything about the end
Speaker 5: of the film. He like understand the audience in a way,
Speaker 5: and you think he knew the orients anyway. And Popolo
Speaker 5: was like in a way a tribute to the good,
Speaker 5: the bad, and the ugly, because Ruffy really loved his
Speaker 5: film as a young guy and used to put it
Speaker 5: in their family theater once in the year. And the
Speaker 5: thing with the umbrella is like really a tribute to
Speaker 5: the good, the bed, and the ugly. So he knew
Speaker 5: about film, especially producing and distribute. And he was a
Speaker 5: smart guy. And he was a guy that deal with
Speaker 5: life really early, being sick and all this stuff, and
Speaker 5: he like he has something to say and he choose
Speaker 5: to do it with humor in Anti Popolo, and he
Speaker 5: liked to shock people. That's a Anti Popolo was a
Speaker 5: big shock and Israel that time because as I said,
Speaker 5: it showed the enemy, the two Egyptian soldiers as a
Speaker 5: human beings. And when you say I am a Jew
Speaker 5: from Shylock, it was a big shock. Take a part
Speaker 5: of the Jew guy and put it to the Egyptian
Speaker 5: guy and it was a shock and it was a
Speaker 5: fun and that's what I think make up a Palti
Speaker 5: popolo big as he is, because you got all this
Speaker 5: humor and people really laugh in the movie, really laugh
Speaker 5: and really cry. And this is amazing. I mean, like
Speaker 5: people sit in the theater and laugh like hell and cry.
Speaker 2: And also even with an international audience as we know,
Speaker 2: at one in the world in Locarno.
Speaker 5: Can yes, I've been in screaming it wins in the
Speaker 5: Festival of in French what it's called, Oh I forget
Speaker 5: it in the north of French where the Frusaders went
Speaker 5: to it to Israel in those days. And that gave you,
Speaker 5: Raffy the idea to make the second big feature of
Speaker 5: the big flow error. Yeah it was a flow because
Speaker 5: it didn't have even one joke. Nothing was fun there.
Speaker 5: It was so serious. It wasn't but it was I
Speaker 5: think what we got the idea there and people really
Speaker 5: like it in French and Italy and Straits. It was
Speaker 5: a big success, not big as a money thing, but
Speaker 5: people really like it and create one and it still
Speaker 5: worked today. That's what really great about the film.
Speaker 2: The film could easily have been much more surrealistic, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't a book, and I guess you made a
Speaker 2: choice to leave it just realistic enough that you can
Speaker 2: basically believe it as a straight telling of wartime. But
Speaker 2: just between the lines. The fourth wall is not broken.
Speaker 2: The fourth wall is still there, but you get that
Speaker 2: is slightly magical and also not a crowd pleaser. It
Speaker 2: also could have been a crowd pleaser and it's not.
Speaker 2: It always surprises the viewer.
Speaker 5: Yes, and it was like one of the things that
Speaker 5: inspired Rafi to do all these things, because the Egyptian
Speaker 5: army that wore on Six Day War, they should the
Speaker 5: Egyptian soldier that ran away from the Yes, so that
Speaker 5: in the end when you see those guys died, the
Speaker 5: main actor has been shot from both sides. We have
Speaker 5: a problem in the Egyptian side because it was shut
Speaker 5: not in focus, and so I could not edit as
Speaker 5: I wanted. I used not many shots as I could
Speaker 5: use if I have shots that was really in focus
Speaker 5: and the shot not feeling focus. But it's okay. A
Speaker 5: lot of people think what's happening here because they think
Speaker 5: just Israeli killed him because it's fairly shut him from
Speaker 5: the back and the Egyptian shuting from his face stomach,
Speaker 5: so you can show it by you can show it
Speaker 5: the way he'd been shot. But it's hard to understand
Speaker 5: that there's the Egyptian killed him and Israel because you
Speaker 5: think the Egyptian shot and the guns against israelis.
Speaker 2: I think in the final film it's clear to see
Speaker 2: that he's shot from both sides.
Speaker 5: That's good because not always it's been understand like that
Speaker 5: down as a story.
Speaker 2: He says that in the original script, his character was
Speaker 2: supposed to yell out to the Egyptians, don't shoot me,
Speaker 2: I'm an Arab. Selimda says that he insisted on the
Speaker 2: change to not have that in the film, that it
Speaker 2: would change everything and make it too literal and also
Speaker 2: maybe make him not sympathetic for Jewish audience.
Speaker 5: First time I hear it, but it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough. There's a tiny thing I have to
Speaker 2: ask you about. I don't know if at the beginning
Speaker 2: the title says TTG Productions. I have an idea what
Speaker 2: TTG means, but I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 5: If I remember correctly, it's kiss my tool.
Speaker 2: That's what I thought. Yes, I think, yeah, because I
Speaker 2: know the old joke that TTG stands fortisic cheftin. That's
Speaker 2: a joke just for Ibro and Eidish speakers. TTG Productions.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's a joke between and all of us. But
Speaker 5: it was like an inside joke.
Speaker 10: Will be the first person to get that joke outside
Speaker 10: of you. Yes, I don't think it's beautiful, but it's
Speaker 10: like the inside jokes. It's like when we made the
Speaker 10: second big film. I was really not pleased. I was
Speaker 10: told Raffi, this is not gonna work, it's not a
Speaker 10: good film. Where to work on it, and blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: And Raffi as a joke put on my name, put
Speaker 5: M like not Joe Seller m Siler because he said,
Speaker 5: you think it's not gonna work. But I give you
Speaker 5: the m. It's my original name, Zoe Tiao Seila, but
Speaker 5: I never use it. And I told Raffy once that's
Speaker 5: my name in English, they say the second name. In
Speaker 5: bre usually you don't have, so Raffy put my second
Speaker 5: name inside the credits. So like in a joke, you
Speaker 5: like those in a joke as any in the jokes
Speaker 5: in the film that you have to watch with me.
Speaker 5: So I can tell you about Rev. R. Raffy really
Speaker 5: had this thing with humor. Father was some Syria and
Speaker 5: his mother was from Romania. So we have this thing
Speaker 5: between Arabi Reidish Israeli Jewish. Yeah, this mikes with him.
Speaker 2: When I first reached out to you for the interview,
Speaker 2: the first thing you wanted to know is, I just
Speaker 2: want to know that this podcast has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with the right wing media, which I write away in
Speaker 2: you I liked you and excellent, And of course it doesn't.
Speaker 2: You're sitting up in Batiam in Israel, where the right
Speaker 2: wing has gone completely in control. She's I don't know.
Speaker 2: You think we can say something not depressing about the
Speaker 2: changes in Israel since the nineteen eighties and you see
Speaker 2: change coming soon or not so much.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of change, but Nott will change. We
Speaker 5: were not a real democratic country already then in eighty
Speaker 5: six and now it's all came out. And I always
Speaker 5: ask if it's not connect to the fascist parties in
Speaker 5: Israel or right wings, if you want to call it
Speaker 5: that way. But it's all makes you like the Bigger
Speaker 5: producer and these Velly Cinema. Mister dri is one of
Speaker 5: the friends of mister big Crime minister, so it's people
Speaker 5: work with him, but people don't work with Karen Shamon.
Speaker 5: I don't see the difference.
Speaker 2: One is a film fund that only supports cenema created
Speaker 2: in the occupied territories by people who live there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but not for the Arabs or the jew No.
Speaker 2: Of course, the Jews only only on fun so we.
Speaker 5: Don't work with them. Okay. I did work with them before.
Speaker 5: I did a film called The Kraft to be guy
Speaker 5: there a rabbi Na. He's a really liberal guy, but
Speaker 5: he's like living in Lala Land, and we talked really
Speaker 5: about it. But I really don't see a different working
Speaker 5: with Motor Sivalgi and that's my point of view. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's really bad time. It's really good time for everyone,
Speaker 5: and I hope we can make it.
Speaker 2: Me too, my friend me too. Of course I left
Speaker 2: you so far staid. Everybody's figuring out how to continue.
Speaker 5: Everybody think how to get the fuck out of.
Speaker 2: Him unless you're Indaza and you can't even go visit
Speaker 2: your relatives.
Speaker 5: If you're as ell or is really har or you
Speaker 5: got the money and you don't have little kids. It's
Speaker 5: a big it's a big thing now and it didn't
Speaker 5: start now I'm in the street for more than thirty
Speaker 5: five years before even they killed Robin, before bib was
Speaker 5: the big chief of killing Rabbi Rabin.
Speaker 2: In protesting against protesting.
Speaker 5: I'm not just protesting as a lem. I'm taking pictures
Speaker 5: and filming all of it for almost thirty five years.
Speaker 5: I have lots of tons of stuff, and it's never stopped.
Speaker 5: I got the beginning, I got a lot of middle
Speaker 5: and I got no end for it. So I don't
Speaker 5: I never go to edit, and I always wanted to end.
Speaker 5: I want happy end. And then so in a way,
Speaker 5: nothing changed since Rubbing died. And I used to put
Speaker 5: protest against Robbin for many years because Rabbin was not
Speaker 5: a good guy, and then they killed Rubbing and it's
Speaker 5: it's it's a mess from there. But even we were
Speaker 5: never really a democratic country. It's not like it started now.
Speaker 2: He was hoping for some kind of good ending and
Speaker 2: then then to the occupation, some justice for Palestine and
Speaker 2: as well, yeah, in our lifetime later.
Speaker 5: In Australia and in Russia, and so everybody, we're talking
Speaker 5: to you, hey, nice talking to you too, And I
Speaker 5: help people gonna see a anti popolo and enjoyed life.
Speaker 11: Kadi Mahamer Love, and it's Kadi mahas Summer, Kadi Mahasom Lovodo,
Speaker 11: It's an Hasa Kavemaisma, Kadi masomehas Kadi Masoma.
Speaker 4: All right, we're back and we were talking about avanti
Speaker 4: Popolo And obviously you guys probably know way more about
Speaker 4: this than I do. Were there any films that were
Speaker 4: like this in the mid eighties? Is this just a
Speaker 4: singular thing or were there other films coming out around
Speaker 4: this time or around the world that are similar to
Speaker 4: Anti Popolo?
Speaker 3: Nothing comes to mind, but many wrote about it in
Speaker 3: relationship to They called the tour with the Egyptian band
Speaker 3: that was touring and the band's visit which has also
Speaker 3: been remade in the theater, and it's this Egyptian police
Speaker 3: orchestra has lined up to do some shows in Israel.
Speaker 3: And it's not an answer to the film in any
Speaker 3: kind of way. I don't think it's in conversation with
Speaker 3: the film, but there's certain similarities in this sort of
Speaker 3: cultural disconnect that happens. But maybe there was more political
Speaker 3: metaphor there than I remember seeing. It didn't strike me
Speaker 3: as a political film, as a anti popolois. But the
Speaker 3: idea of this Egyptian is really sort of encounter and
Speaker 3: being lost and having this sort of Egyptian or superficially
Speaker 3: Egyptian protagonists. The similarities that really struck me.
Speaker 2: A very personal association for me is just I don't
Speaker 2: know even why, because they's a very different movie. But
Speaker 2: Arizona Dream America Sturitza's movie just in this sense of,
Speaker 2: without being too sentimental, having some people who are super
Speaker 2: different and have conflict share like a dinner together kind
Speaker 2: of thing that if I go to that mood, We've
Speaker 2: had those moments in life of having a dinner that
Speaker 2: you know is a very special one with people who
Speaker 2: are completely different we'll never see again, but everything works
Speaker 2: and everybody manages to be super friendly just for one moment.
Speaker 2: So if I think of that mood, I think Arizona Dream.
Speaker 2: It's just a movie that's just a little, just a
Speaker 2: tiny little miracle that there's everything for some reason really worked.
Speaker 2: It's such a weird notion that this even this thing
Speaker 2: even works as a movie, and it really does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's something about the landscape being the desert. Each
Speaker 3: sort of event that happens becomes such a memorable scene
Speaker 3: because it's different than the desert landscape that is always
Speaker 3: there in the background, and so I highly recommend people
Speaker 3: watch it. But just there's a beauty to each thing
Speaker 3: that happens, even if it's not always clear what the
Speaker 3: meaning is.
Speaker 4: How easy or difficult is it for people to watch
Speaker 4: this movie? I know that I found it in some
Speaker 4: unusual places, let's put it, maybe not legal places. But
Speaker 4: is it out there on DVD or Blu ray?
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's available online legally at the Israeli Film Archive.
Speaker 2: I think it is, and maybe you can share a link.
Speaker 2: It's like a paywall for the pay per view kind
Speaker 2: of thing. I'll send you a link. I think it's worldwide,
Speaker 2: and I think it has English subtitles, and it's probably
Speaker 2: a couple of bucks.
Speaker 3: To watch it. There is a Hebrew version I saw
Speaker 3: on Vimeo. It's googleable, but that's just for a particular audience.
Speaker 3: So obviously or Arabic speakers will get You won't to
Speaker 3: be able to understand the Hebrew, possibly unless you're unpunched
Speaker 3: a mass but you yes, So there are ways of
Speaker 3: watching it without paying. On the Israeli orcud. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: really enjoyed it, and I want to thank you for
Speaker 3: bringing it to my attention, and I'm glad you enjoy
Speaker 3: the opportunity to see it. I would take further recommendations
Speaker 3: from you all one too. One other film that came
Speaker 3: to mind a little bit was Divine Intervention, Elias Layman's film.
Speaker 3: Different historical setting, different topic, but playing with political metaphor
Speaker 3: through surrealist representations. It has less of a clear plot. Also,
Speaker 3: there's longtipobolos, but it's certain things brought that to mind
Speaker 3: as I was watching this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we did something a bit extreme and
Speaker 2: subversive by even talking about Israel in twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: at all, excepts to denounce it completely. I've been Israeli
Speaker 2: all my life and I've left and we're starting a
Speaker 2: new new life in Spain now. The people we reached
Speaker 2: out to didn't want to do it, and they didn't
Speaker 2: say why, But it wouldn't be completely crazy to assume
Speaker 2: that just because it's so toxic to do anything that
Speaker 2: has a relation to is world right now. So even yeah,
Speaker 2: just to remember about a particular movie that was made
Speaker 2: for no money by one guy basically and his crew,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't have big forces behind it. It's not propaganda,
Speaker 2: it's not something that a committee sat and decided what's
Speaker 2: going to be in it. It's just a little piece
Speaker 2: of art that we can enjoy.
Speaker 3: And sadly, you couldn't make that kind of film today,
Speaker 3: not by a long shot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it works.
Speaker 8: It somehow works like it's not a time capsule.
Speaker 2: It's a movie that works and keeps working, and I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: the shittier and crazier real life becomes, it'll only work more, probably,
Speaker 2: m I want.
Speaker 4: To thank both of you guys for coming on here
Speaker 4: and talking about this. So you need other than moving
Speaker 4: to Spain. What's been up with you, sir?
Speaker 2: Raising my daughter in hopefully a saner environment, and translating
Speaker 2: mostly for Netflix. So if you watch with hebrew'suptitles on Netflix,
Speaker 2: maybe you'll see my name there.
Speaker 3: And well, what about you, what are you up to
Speaker 3: these days? I'm wrapping up a documentary that you might
Speaker 3: be interested in. Also, when he said it's very hard
Speaker 3: to talk about anything related to Israel, my documentary relates
Speaker 3: and we are seeing on the industry side some reluctance
Speaker 3: to go there. But the film is about Alex Hawda,
Speaker 3: who was a Palestinian American activist who has killed in
Speaker 3: Orange County, California in nineteen eighty five. So it looks
Speaker 3: like it's true crime genre, but really it's also a
Speaker 3: political story, and we follow an Israeli Canadian freelance journalist
Speaker 3: who's trying to uncover what happened with the suspects, why
Speaker 3: were they never caught And essentially it's a story about
Speaker 3: the denial of justice and the role of US sort
Speaker 3: of Israeli relations and setting back the criminal justice system
Speaker 3: of the US. And it's gonna be the fortieth anniversary
Speaker 3: next year of the assassination, so we're hoping to have
Speaker 3: it in circulation and be watchable by then. The title
Speaker 3: right now is who Killed Alex Valade will probably change that.
Speaker 4: Do you have a site or is there a good
Speaker 4: place for people to cape up with the film and
Speaker 4: with you.
Speaker 3: We have some social media accounts if you look up
Speaker 3: who Killed Alex Sawada you could follow those on where
Speaker 3: I think we have Facebook and Instagram. We don't have
Speaker 3: a website yet though, unfortunately we thought we were done
Speaker 3: on October sixth. Yeah, we actually showed it to the
Speaker 3: family of Alex and they loved it and thought it
Speaker 3: was powerful. And then October seventh, I like, let's wait
Speaker 3: and see what happens with the industry because of the politics.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it didn't really change a story fundamentally, other
Speaker 3: than one of the suspects was involved in trying to
Speaker 3: deny humanitarian aid to Gaza, was an organizer in that
Speaker 3: of the suspects, and Alex Murder Zupen Josef Big in
Speaker 3: the Temple rebuilding, the Temple movement, which is a whole
Speaker 3: other potcast, but he's still politically pertinent. And that's part
Speaker 3: of the power of the story is that it's about
Speaker 3: impunity and what impunity can bring about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we got to protect Israel because otherwise the apocalypse
Speaker 4: won't happen in those right wing conservatives won't have anything
Speaker 4: to look forward to.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, if it's a zombie apocalypse, you have to have
Speaker 2: israelis Oh you need that tenth man there to build
Speaker 2: them that wall.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know where I was.
Speaker 2: On October sixth I went to London for a week
Speaker 2: for the London Film.
Speaker 8: Festival, and then I just didn't go back.
Speaker 4: You don't have any of your stuff that you had
Speaker 4: at your house.
Speaker 8: No, I got rid of I went. At some point
Speaker 8: I went back for a week and stashed.
Speaker 2: Wow, whatever, and yeah, we're starting in your life.
Speaker 8: We were gonna leave.
Speaker 2: We were planning, like a vague general plan to maybe leave.
Speaker 2: But it was just like so insane how it happened
Speaker 2: that we just took it as a sign and moved on.
Speaker 4: It's a big move to make, but it sounds like
Speaker 4: the right thing for you.
Speaker 2: But there's a lesson there.
Speaker 8: Go to film festivals.
Speaker 4: I was at a film festival when nine to eleven happened,
Speaker 4: and then he couldn't get it back home. I luckily
Speaker 4: I drove that year, which film was Toronto, across the border.
Speaker 4: I even brought a couple of people from Baltimore with
Speaker 4: me because they were stuck. They couldn't get back any place.
Speaker 4: I was smuggling Baltimorean's across the border.
Speaker 3: At Parks Well write about all the smuggling was a
Speaker 3: human trafficker.
Speaker 4: Yeah, our borders are just open here, and that's really
Speaker 4: one of the problems.
Speaker 2: You gotta do a caveat there. People don't see her
Speaker 2: smile when.
Speaker 8: You say that.
Speaker 4: I know they probably they think that I'm like close
Speaker 4: the mourners. Yeah, hopefully if they've listened to this show,
Speaker 4: before they know, and and if they don't, they'll just
Speaker 4: write horrible comments about me in the on iTunes.
Speaker 3: I look forward to it. We'll balance them all Wis
Speaker 3: and pauls those comments. Thanks.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much guys for being on the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
Speaker 4: more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
Speaker 4: of the other shows that I work on. They are
Speaker 4: all available at weirdinglymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our
Speaker 4: Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
Speaker 4: patreon dot com. Slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get
Speaker 4: helps the projection Booth take over the world.
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Speaker 14: the scarlet banner triumphantly.
Speaker 15: Steal rising workers, You check them, dravery, We're vanish under
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Speaker 2: Come rally around it.
Speaker 3: Go show your bravery.
Speaker 13: The scarlet banner triumphantly.
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