Posts by Anne Joseph

Gatekeepers director Dror Moreh: Why I had to make this film

Anne Joseph — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:00:18 +0100

"I knew I had dynamite on my hands," says director Dror Moreh. He is talking about his Oscar-nominated documentary The Gatekeepers which has provoked wide international debate across the political spectrum since its release. Even Israeli embassies have had to grapple with how to respond to its frank revelations, admissions and insights. The Gatekeepers, wrote Israeli journalist Chemi Shalev, 'is like a waterboarding of the soul'.

The film comprises a series of extraordinary in-depth interviews with six former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence and security service, also known as the Shabak. The six - who have never been interviewed about their work on camera before - speak with remarkable candour about their role as protectors of the Israeli State since 1967.

Supported by computed generated imagery (CGI) and archive footage, the film provides an overview of the country’s policies in the occupied territories, the agency’s counter-terrorism campaigns and the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

There is no spy glamour about their work. They speak about torture, targeted assassinations and personal and political moral dilemmas. But each comes to the same conclusion: the current status quo regarding the occupation cannot continue.

"You can’t make peace using military means. Peace must be built on a system of trust," says Avi Dichter, who headed the Shin Bet between 2000 and 2005.

"For Israel, it’s too much of a luxury not to speak with our enemies," asserts Avraham Shalom (1980-86). Indeed, when pushed by an off-screen Moreh, he emphasises that he means, "everyone, so it includes even Ahmadinejad, whoever… I’m always for it."

These security giants have served their country since their army service until their retirement from the Shin Bet, but "they feel that the security of Israel is deteriorating all the time and the cause that they spent their life trying to achieve is getting further and further away," explains Moreh, speaking in London ahead of the film's UK release on Friday (April 12).

He was inspired to make The Gatekeepers while he was filming Sharon (2008), a documentary about the politician Ariel Sharon. During the film Moreh had interviewed Dubi Weisglass, Sharon’s Chief of Staff and one of his closest advisers. Weisglass told him that Sharon had been deeply influenced by an interview with four heads of the Shin Bet that had appeared in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s most popular newspaper in 2003.

They stated that if Sharon continued to run Israel as he was, it would lead the country into disaster. Weisglass said that these remarks had greatly influenced Sharon, precisely because they came from the heart of the defence establishment, from people who were dealing with the Palestinians all the time and knew them well.

Moreh says: "As a filmmaker in Israel I want to create films that will change reality." In Sharon he wanted to explore how and why the right-wing politician shifted his thinking. He recalls hoping that his Gatekeepers film idea might have a similar effect on others, "in a way like the interviews did on Sharon. And I was right," he laughs.

He initially approached former politician and Shin Bet head Ami Ayalon, who then helped him to recruit the other directors.

But will anyone listen to these six men? Morah recounts a tale that he confesses made him very happy. After Israel’s latest election - an election result that Moreh refers to as Netanyahu’s defeat (he lost 12 seats in the Knesset) - an IDF Spokesman was questioned about the causes for this result. One of the reasons given was The Gatekeepers.

Also cited was an interview Moreh did with Yuval Diskin, one of the Shin Bet heads (2005-2011) two weeks prior to the election, which was printed in Yedioth Ahronot. "So," Moreh says, "I think it does have an impact." But, not for the far right he claims. "They are lost. Nothing will persuade them. Nor the far left."

There were numerous occasions during filming when Moreh was shocked by what he heard but more profoundly he discovered that the Israeli narrative he had grown up with - that the Israelis always wanted peace and the other side always refused - was not quite so.

"The Israelis and the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity," he says, rephrasing Abba Eban’s famous quote. "This is the tragedy of the conflict because a lot of people who could be with us now are buried in Israeli and Palestinian cemeteries."

Conversation turns to discussing the chapter in the film that addresses the events surrounding Yitzhak Rabin’s death, and the visible distress that Carmi Gillon (1994-96) displays when talking about it.

Moreh’s voice drops:"It was the most devastating moment in my life." He explains that November 4, the date of Rabin’s assassination, is his birthday. "Every time I see that sequence - around 3000 times - I have tears in my eyes."

He and Gillon were recently in Los Angeles conducting a Q&A session together for the first time; someone posed a question about it and Moreh says that he almost started to cry and had to pass the microphone over to Gillon.

He says: "If there is someone who understands the consequences of that assassination, it’s Gillon. He was the one who was head of the organisation that was supposed to protect the Prime Minister, and he failed. He will always carry that."

Moreh is openly critical of Netanyahu and sees contradiction in his rhetoric. He is also unequivocal when it comes to the extreme right.

"They are the most danger to Israel. If they think that to maintain the occupation is pro-Israel, then they are gravely mistaken. If there is something damaging the state of Israel, it is the maintenance of that policy." His belief and that of the gatekeepers is that "it is enough. It is devastating us from within."

Moreh plans to have The Gatekeepers subtitled into Arabic and wants it shown in the West Bank. He hopes the film will also reach Gaza. A five-part series is being made for Israeli TV - Moreh has over 70 hours of material - as well as a book.

For Moreh, the political future is bleak. Israelis and Palestinians alone cannot resolve the conflict. Pressure, he says, must come from outside, from the EU and America. He has little faith in the current Israeli political climate.

"The task of leaders is to lead to a better solution. At least honestly strive for that."

Eytan Fox: on the return of Yossi and why he wants to make a musical

Anne Joseph — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 11:52:41 +0000

Reprising a film role is never easy.

Israeli writer-director Eytan Fox discovered as much when he first approached actor Ohad Knoller about recreating his starring role in Fox’s influential work, Yossi & Jagger.

“Ohad, who’s a dear friend, was ambivalent about the whole idea,” recalls Fox.

Yossi & Jagger, released in 2002, was regarded as groundbreaking in its portrayal of a gay relationship between two combat soldiers stationed at a remote outpost on the Lebanese border.

Fox has been credited with being one of the people responsible for beginning the new wave of Israeli films with this non-political, tragic love story.

Knoller won best actor in the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival, in New York, for his performance as Yossi.

Fox managed to convince Knoller of the value of the project — both wanted to develop the character so that he would be credible and exact.

The resulting movie is Yossi, which received its world premiere at Tribeca earlier in the year, with one review describing it as possibly Fox’s “most accomplished work to date”.

Its British premiere will be at the UK Jewish Film Festival this weekend.

The film’s story picks up 10 years later. Yossi is now a cardiologist and remains in the closet until he finally discovers how to define himself.

Fox says the film is about someone who is post-traumatic, about how he learns to live again and accept who he is.

It is a thoughtful, sanguine piece of cinema, with a solid supporting cast, including Lior Ashkenazi, an actor who, like Knoller, has appeared in other Fox films.

Sitting in Cafe Noir, a buzzy bistro in his Tel Aviv neighbourhood, Fox explains that he did not originally set out to write a sequel at all and is happy to hear that Yossi manages to work as a stand-alone film, as a character study about growing older.

He agrees that there is a universality about the story and reveals that: “Ohad and I went through a few bumpy times in our personal lives in the last two years.

"We felt that a lot of the issues we were dealing with were similar for both of us and could come into Yossi’s story”.

Addressing conflict is a prevalent theme in all of Fox’s films. It can be of a military, personal or political nature, sometimes a fusion of all three.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is integral to The Bubble (2006), impacting on all the character’s relationships in the film. Military service and the first Lebanon War provides the setting in Yossi & Jagger.

Fox’s characters can experience doomed love affairs; sexual relationships are presented — in particular but not exclusively gay relationships — as often fraught with tension.

Fox believes that films can act as a catalyst to change opinion, as a platform for dialogue, both between himself and his viewers and between the viewers themselves.

He says that he is considered by some Israelis as a person who is “supposedly, but wrongly, anti Israeli.

"When people say that I’m doing something that is anti-Israel, I say these films bring people closer to Israel, closer to understanding that there’s a different kind of Israel.

"I come from a place of deep love and concern about the country. For me, there are so many interesting examples that make these films worthwhile and meaningful.”

He proceeds to tell a story about an Iranian woman who recently contacted him via Facebook. She told him that she had believed “Zionists were Satan but had stumbled on The Bubble and decided to watch it”.

Afterwards she wrote to thank him for changing her understanding and “for learning that the realities in Israel are very complex”.

Fox adds: “You could argue with her approach, the way she had been educated, but the fact was that she saw a film of mine and was moved by it”.

For the director, responses to his work do not get any better than that.

Essentially Fox is not making political films, although politics sometimes do form part of the narrative.

“Yossi is less political than a film like The Bubble or Walk on Water [released in 2004]. But I think — and this is a cliche — everything is political, especially in Israel.”

Fox, an openly gay man, says that Israeli society has changed in its views of homosexuality, “in tremendous ways, but being gay is still an issue. I think it will always be a struggle for the older generation”.

Yossi reflects this shift in attitude and acceptance through the character of Tom (Oz Zehavi), a young gay soldier who Yossi meets on his road trip.

But we also learn about the limits of this new openness — Tom does not feel able to tell his parents about his sexuality.

Yossi received favourable reviews and Fox agrees that it was surprising that it did not receive any nominations for the 2012 Ophir Awards (the Israeli Oscars).

He admits to being disappointed “for about two hours,” but adds that he was more upset by the lack of a nomination for Ohad Knoller’s performance.

The director acknowledges that he is “not loved in Israel as I am abroad”’ and muses whether it is because his films can sometimes make Israeli audiences feel uncomfortable.

He has, however, developed a significant following in France, and Walk on Water, was the first Israeli film to be nominated for a Cesar Award, a French national film prize, in 2006.

He is now busy juggling several films, all at different phases in their development and although “you probably shouldn’t say never,’’ he does feel that Yossi’s story “is done now”.

Current projects range from a biopic about Israeli pop star and depressive, Mike Brant, who achieved fame when he moved to France in the early 1970s but committed suicide.

He is also working on a “girl’s film” about a group of women who are neighbours. To its detriment, he believes that Israel has lost its sense of community and that neighbourhoods have the intimate character they possessed when he was a child growing up in Jerusalem.

But given the choice, he would be working on a very different project.

“If you asked me if I had all the money in the world and all the possibility, what would you make, I’d say a musical,” he reveals.

It is an ambition he has almost fulfilled. He is in the process of editing possibly his biggest film to date — “not quite a musical, it’s a feel-good musical comedy, and we don’t have a lot of those in Israel.”

Adi Nes's uneasy images of a changing Israel

Anne Joseph — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 11:50:36 +0100

Village life can evoke a sense of charm, nostalgia or simplicity. Indeed, a first glance at Israeli artist Adi Nes’s latest photographic series, The Village — his first UK show — reveals images that appear shiny, lush, beautiful. But examine the pictures for more than a moment and the multi-layered complexities become apparent.

“When I created The Village I thought to create an image like a dream,” explains Nes, one of Israel’s most acclaimed photographers. “In many ways dreams are fantastic and pastoral but also full of fears and all the things that we deny.”

He describes The Village as a metaphor for Israel, “a small place that was built after a tragedy”. There is an external beauty but at the same time “under the surface there is something dark and not quiet”. Certainly a sense of unease runs through the series.

The Jewish Museum in London is exhibiting 11 of the 13 large format photographs (the biggest is nearly two metres square) from the series. His style is “staged” — and all the images are set in a constructed reality, in a fictional village, taken in a different place, at a different time. Nes shot the series in the Jezreel Valley, the heart of the early pioneering Labour Zionists, an area where he lives.

In an age when everyone is a photographer — from the use of small cameras to mobile phones — “my challenge,” Nes says, “is to work with compositions that trap the viewer in front of the image for more than one second”.
The almost cinematic scale of the work helps him achieve that aim. For many years Nes worked in the film and TV industry and he explains that “usually staging photography is like film. When I’m creating a project, I work like a film director. I write myself a script, I make a storyboard.”

Behind each image lies extensive research and he uses non-professional models; people he has met via Facebook. The series took five years to create.

Nes had several inspirations for the project. The first was Nietzsche’s book, The Birth of Tragedy, which argued that art was created from the conflict between Apollonian (representing reason and calm) and Dionysian (frenzy and unrestraint) forces. As a result, all the pictures show some tension between the meeting of opposites, be it between “the open and the closed, light and dark or the old and the young”, such as in his picture of four people watching an eclipse (shown right). That image is a nod towards the shifts in the generations. “It is a world that is changing; even the sun doesn’t work as it used to,” Nes says.

Pieter Bruegel’s 450-year-old painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus was another source. Nes was struck by the way that drama and art happen alongside daily life. The painting shows a farmer working the land, indifferent to Icarus who is falling from the sky, plunging into the ocean. The work’s influence is seen in Nes’s photo of a man holding a chicken with its wings spread — perhaps the man is an Icarus-like figure, but in keeping with Nes’s multi-layered approach, the image is also reminiscent of kaporot (a ritual some Jews perform before Yom Kippur).

Nes’s work is partially autobiographical. Issues of identity form the main aspect of his art and the series brings together themes that have dominated his other works — Soldiers (1994-2000), Boys (2000), Prisoners (2003) and Biblical Stories (2004-7). He says: “I deal with Israeliness, masculinity — maybe because I am a man, maybe because I’m gay — and all the different layers of my personality.”

His is certainly an outsider perspective — as he observes: “I grew up in the periphery, in Kiryat Gat, a development town in southern Israel, the son of Iranian immigrants.” The Village addresses “the tensions between the centre and the periphery, ethnic issues such as Sephardim and Ashkenazim”. Women, once largely absent in Nes’s work, have taken a greater role, reflecting their significance in his life now he is a parent of four children through the surrogacy process.

He is known for referencing well-known compositions. His image of two men, one young, one old who is holding a shovel recalls Grant Wood’s painting, American Gothic.

But to fully appreciate Nes’s work, do you have to have an art historian’s knowledge? He says not. “The beautiful thing in art is that everyone can understand whatever they like and can interpret the picture in many ways.”

This is another reason why none of the images is titled. “I want to leave everything open to the viewer.”

Todd Solondz - why the director of Happiness loves a loser

Anne Joseph — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:29:59 +0100

A Jewish wedding forms the opening frame of indie film-maker Todd Solondz’s film, Dark Horse. Guests are seen dancing to the sound of loud music pumping, all with the exception of Abe (Jordan Gelber) and Miranda (Selma Blair), who are sitting awkwardly next to each other at a table, barely communicating.

Solondz’s latest offering of suburban angst is set in secular Jewish New Jersey —a familiar milieu for the director. It depicts Abe, an infantalised tubby man in his mid-30s who lives at home with his parents (played by Mia Farrow and Christopher Walken). Abe clings to his youth; his bedroom is an adolescent shrine, still adorned with a collection of action figures. He works for his father, a real-estate developer, but shows little skill or interest in the business.

Abe craves love but is far from lovable. Soon after meeting her, he clumsily proposes to Miranda, a depressive, heavily medicated aspiring writer. Abe sees himself as the dark horse of the film’s title. He believes that he is one of life’s secret winners, whose surprise comeback victory will act as revenge against all those who ever doubted him.

Solondz is renowned as one of America’s controversial writer-directors and is no stranger to addressing challenging subject matters with his darkly funny stories of alienation, family dysfunction and suburban anguish. He is perhaps best known for 1998’s Happiness, which caused considerable outrage for broaching the subject of paedophilia.

Speaking on the phone from Chicago, he explains in his slightly high, halting voice why he wrote Dark Horse. “I knew I had to write something low budget,” he says, “and I approached it really as a boy-meets-girl movie. The short answer, I suppose you could say, is that it is a kind of alternative to the man-child movies that are very popular.”

He is referring to films like Judd Apatow’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but adds that Abe is “something of a tragic, real-life version” of the character of George Constanza in the sitcom Seinfeld. “Often the perception of the man-child is someone cute and cuddly and I just wanted to get it from another angle. I didn’t want to sentimentalise it.”

It is unusual for a Solondz film to be described as tame, which is how some audiences and critics have responded. It is not a description he agrees with. “It’s beside the point whether people think it’s tame or adventurous. I’m happy with the film, but I don’t think the word ‘tame’ would come to mind,” he says.

As with all of Solondz’s work to date, the film’s location is a place he knows well. “I’m shaped and informed by New Jersey. It’s the world that I grew up in,” he says. “If I’d been brought up in New York, I’d have a different set of films.”

He acknowledges that Dark Horse is “very challenging for an audience in many ways. Abe presents as a character who is abrasive and off-putting and someone, I think, we don’t want to have dinner with, someone that we would rather dismiss as not worthy of our attention”.

What interests Solondz is testing the limits of our sympathy towards Abe. The character is seen as a loser. At one point, his mother tells him: “Everyone knows Richard [Abe’s doctor brother] is the success and you’re the failure”. So is the film questioning society’s judgment of winners and losers? “We do live in a certain kind of world where failure is he greatest stigma — it’s a kind of taboo,” responds Solondz.

Where should blame, if any, be apportioned? Is it the fault of society, family? Solondz says that he is not much of a finger-pointer. “I present a condition; one that I suppose is a kind of pathology. Certainly living at home in your 20s is understandable — it is so expensive to get a financial footing in the world — and even into the 30s. But there’s a certain point when it becomes something of a pathology.” Solondz does not seek to explain it — instead, he says, he presents a reality that he recognises.

Jewishness pervades the film while not being central to the story. “To be honest I didn’t really think about it much, says the director. “It’s a Jewish family; they are secular Jews. I don’t advertise their Jewishness, I take it for granted that they are.”

Aside from the first scene, there are several Jewish references: Abe makes a comment about kabbalah; he wears a T-shirt with the emblem “Matzo Baller” on it. There is also a poster of Israel in Abe’s parent’s hall. “I didn’t want to imply a certain facile kind of critique of their politics but I felt, yes, it would be reasonable to think that they would have such a poster,” says Solondz.

Ultimately, he insists that whatever the audience’s reacton to Abe, he has nothing but warm feelings for him. “If I didn’t love Abe, I certainly wouldn’t have troubled myself to make the movie, even if I don’t make him so lovable.”

Welcome to Jewish New Jersey - don't expect happiness

Anne Joseph — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:28:03 +0100

A Jewish wedding forms the opening frame of indie film-maker Todd Solondz's film, Dark Horse. Guests are seen dancing to the sound of loud music pumping, all with the exception of Abe (Jordan Gelber) and Miranda (Selma Blair), who are sitting awkwardly next to each other at a table, barely communicating.

Solondz's latest offering of suburban angst is set in secular Jewish New Jersey -a familiar milieu for the director. It depicts Abe, an infantalised tubby man in his mid-30s who lives at home with his parents (played by Mia Farrow and Christopher Walken). Abe clings to his youth; his bedroom is an adolescent shrine, still adorned with a collection of action figures. He works for his father, a real-estate developer, but shows little skill or interest in the business.

Abe craves love but is far from lovable. Soon after meeting her, he clumsily proposes to Miranda, a depressive, heavily medicated aspiring writer. Abe sees himself as the dark horse of the film's title. He believes that he is one of life's secret winners, whose surprise comeback victory will act as revenge against all those who ever doubted him.

Solondz is renowned as one of America's controversial writer-directors and is no stranger to addressing challenging subject matters with his darkly funny stories of alienation, family dysfunction and suburban anguish. He is perhaps best known for 1998's Happiness, which caused considerable outrage for broaching the subject of paedophilia.

Speaking on the phone from Chicago, he explains in his slightly high, halting voice why he wrote Dark Horse. "I knew I had to write something low budget," he says, "and I approached it really as a boy-meets-girl movie. The short answer, I suppose you could say, is that it is a kind of alternative to the man-child movies that are very popular."

He is referring to films like Judd Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but adds that Abe is "something of a tragic, real-life version" of the character of George Constanza in the sitcom Seinfeld. "Often the perception of the man-child is someone cute and cuddly and I just wanted to get it from another angle. I didn't want to sentimentalise it."

It is unusual for a Solondz film to be described as tame, which is how some audiences and critics have responded. It is not a description he agrees with. "It's beside the point whether people think it's tame or adventurous. I'm happy with the film, but I don't think the word 'tame' would come to mind," he says.

As with all of Solondz's work to date, the film's location is a place he knows well. "I'm shaped and informed by New Jersey. It's the world that I grew up in," he says. "If I'd been brought up in New York, I'd have a different set of films."

He acknowledges that Dark Horse is "very challenging for an audience in many ways. Abe presents as a character who is abrasive and off-putting and someone, I think, we don't want to have dinner with, someone that we would rather dismiss as not worthy of our attention".

What interests Solondz is testing the limits of our sympathy towards Abe. The character is seen as a loser. At one point, his mother tells him: "Everyone knows Richard [Abe's doctor brother] is the success and you're the failure". So is the film questioning society's judgment of winners and losers? "We do live in a certain kind of world where failure is he greatest stigma - it's a kind of taboo," responds Solondz.

Where should blame, if any, be apportioned? Is it the fault of society, family? Solondz says that he is not much of a finger-pointer. "I present a condition; one that I suppose is a kind of pathology. Certainly living at home in your 20s is understandable - it is so expensive to get a financial footing in the world - and even into the 30s. But there's a certain point when it becomes something of a pathology." Solondz does not seek to explain it - instead, he says, he presents a reality that he recognises.

Jewishness pervades the film while not being central to the story. "To be honest I didn't really think about it much, says the director. "It's a Jewish family; they are secular Jews. I don't advertise their Jewishness, I take it for granted that they are."

Aside from the first scene, there are several Jewish references: Abe makes a comment about kabbalah; he wears a T-shirt with the emblem "Matzo Baller" on it. There is also a poster of Israel in Abe's parent's hall. "I didn't want to imply a certain facile kind of critique of their politics but I felt, yes, it would be reasonable to think that they would have such a poster," says Solondz.

Ultimately, he insists that whatever the audience's reacton to Abe, he has nothing but warm feelings for him. "If I didn't love Abe, I certainly wouldn't have troubled myself to make the movie, even if I don't make him so lovable."

'Dark Horse' opens in cinemas across the UK on 29 June. A Q&A with Todd Solondz takes place tonight at the Curzon Soho, London W1 (www.curzoncinemas.com)

The Ahava woman who beat the boycotters

Anne Joseph — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 15:00:39 +0100

‘We’re a four- film- buff family. We watch films from Kazakhstan, from France, from Italy, as well as British and American films,” explains Odelia Haroush. She is one of the co-founders of SERET, the first-ever London Israeli Film & Television Festival, which opens next week.

Considering the tremendous impact that TV programmes such as Homeland/Hatufim and BeTipul (In Treatment) have made in the UK as well as overseas, it seems an opportune time to be launching such a festival, although the founders could not have anticipated such a favourable climate when the idea was first conceived last year.

But Israel’s cinema has commanded a significant international presence for several years. Long gone are the days when Israeli films were virtually unknown outside of the country, banished by award-gathering successes such as Footnote, Strangers No More, Ajami and Lebanon. But that list is far from exhaustive. It is not surprising that Judy Ironside, the founder and executive director of UK Jewish Film, has described the Israeli film industry as “world class”.

Haroush, an Israeli who has lived in London for over 10 years, has taken a moment away from dealing with the long list of tasks involved in organising a film festival. Drinking coffee in the calm of her living room, she says that Israeli film and TV has been “amazing” in the past five years and attributes the strength of the country’s creative talent to “what’s going on in Israel; the political and cultural atmosphere, its social diversity. In such a small country, there’s so much and I think a lot of these issues come out in its drama”.

Haroush is hoping that, as well as supporters from the Jewish and Israeli community, the festival will attract anyone interested in film. However, she is aware that there are some people who will question the need for an Israeli film festival, considering that UK Jewish Film Festival, now in its 16th year, has such a strong presence.

Her view is that there is room for both. The UKJF concentrates on the Jewish angle, and, she says, “our aim is to focus just on the Israeli; more national”.

She and her colleagues conducted research that showed there are other countries that manage to host both types of film festivals, also only a few months apart from the other.
“I’m not just talking about the United States,” she says. “You have one in Paris for example, and in Amsterdam. In Israel, there are so many good films — features as well as documentaries and shorts.
“There are hundreds of films made every year so the UK Jewish Film Festival can take some, we can take some, and we can share some.”

SERET (the word means “movie” in Hebrew) will be showing over a dozen films in cinemas across central and north London. Although a small, five-day festival, it offers an eclectic mix of relatively recent features and documentaries — from coming-of-age drama The Fifth Heaven, set in 1944 Palestine in a girl’s orphanage, and The Queen Has No Crown, an intimate 2011 documentary about family and loss, to 2 Night (2010), which sees two strangers embarking on a journey together to find the seemingly impossible — a parking place. There will also be an opportunity to hear from some of the directors and actors with Q&A sessions following selected screenings.
Seizing the zeitgeist, SERET has also chosen to screen (subtitled) episodes from two awarding winning television series: Ramzor (Traffic Light), a sitcom which has been adapted by the Fox broadcasting company, and the first episode of Pilpelim Tsehubim (Yellow Peppers), a drama which has been bought by US studio, Lions Gate.

Tel Aviv University Trust is also showcasing four short films made by students from its Film and Television School, an institution whose graduates include many of Israel’s well-known writers and directors — Hagai Levy (In Treatment), Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir), and Gideon Raff (Hatufim/Homeland) are all alumni.
Conversation inevitably turns to the boycott of Israel. Haroush had been Ahava’s UK marketing manager and manager of the beauty firm’s shop in Covent Garden before it closed last autumn, and she says that it was not until then that she had direct experience of the boycott movement.

There were regular anti-Israel demonstrations outside the shop and the landlord chose not renew the lease when it was due for renewal.

“I tried to talk to the protesters and tried to understand,” says Ha-roush. “We sat around a table once or twice and we asked why they were doing it.

“These people have a view and you cannot change it. But what was very, very difficult for me to see was that some of the boycotters were Jewish; a group of Jews against Israeli products — that I couldn’t understand. After I closed the shop, I felt like I was in mourning. I was very sorry. I’m a person who meets challenges head on — I don’t shy away. Just the opposite.”

This is fortunate as she admits that there have been numerous challenges facing the three founders of SERET. None of them had any previous experience of organising a film festival: Anat Koren is publisher and editor of ALondon, a magazine for Israelis living in the UK, and Patty Hochmann, who is based in Israel, is director of a film department at Cinematyp Ltd studios. As a member of the Israeli Film Academy she has been instrumental in helping select the films.

But the overwhelming challenge was raising the necessary funds. The current economic situation meant, says Haroush, that “pockets are not very open. At one point we had films, we had venues but we didn’t have money. We’re still chasing but we’re now in a position that we know the festival is going to happen.’

Not only is the festival going ahead, but they have organised an industry day. TV and film professionals from the UK and Israel will participate in a project-sharing workshop which is, according to Haroush, the first of its kind. “The dialogue between Israel and the UK is extremely important to us. This is one of the reasons we did this. We thought it could be a great opportunity for people from here to see what people from Israel are doing and vice versa. We’re very, very excited about it.”

Haroush says she hopes the festival will be an annual event. “We’ve already started thinking about next year. I know so much now, it’ll be much easier.”

Behind the scenes at the museum of ourselves

Anne Joseph — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:10:44 +0100

After a £10 million, major redevelopment, and amid national publicity, on March 17 2010, the Jewish Museum London reopened its doors.

Two years on, at the launch of its latest exhibition, No Place Like Home: Photographs by Judah Passow, there is a palpable buzz of excitement. The 150 or so guests are thronging the building, in particular the gallery space where Passow's work is exhibited. The atmosphere chimes well with the museum's aim of creating a vibrant educational and cultural centre, welcoming to everyone.

Nonetheless, these are challenging times for the Camden Town institution - the harsh economic climate is having its effect. "I think is it the same for all arts and cultural organisations. It does have an impact," reflects director Rickie Burman.

What makes it more difficult is that the museum does not receive any government funding. "Most other European Jewish museums do, but we don't," says Burman. This means it has to charge visitors for entry and has to rely on contributions from donors, patrons, charitable trusts and legacies to survive. "It is fundamental to enable us to carry out our work," says Burman.

She hopes the position will change but "until we receive government funding, there's all the more emphasis on encouraging the Jewish community to support the museum. I am told that people love the museum but at the same time there are people who say they keep meaning to visit. More work has to be done in turning passive interest into active interest and involvement."

Changing exhibitions is one way to attract repeat-visitors and the aim is to have at least two exhibitions a year. But, unlike other museums, there does not appear to be a planned rolling programme in place. Once again, funding is a critical factor. Burman says that, long term, the hope is to set up a dedicated exhibition fund which will put an end to the current arrangement of having to "take each one step by step".

In spite of the ongoing financial issues, there have been successes. Any weekday visit is likely to coincide with a school-group trip and Burman describes the museum's contribution to interfaith understanding through its educational work as "having a really beneficial impact. Ninety per cent of the schools that visit are not Jewish".

Professor David Cesarani, the historian and member of the museum's advisory council, believes that non-Jews can get a huge amount from visiting. The museum "conveys a sense that being Jewish is a way of life that is full of wonderful things, and not simply a religious calendar", he says.

Feedback from a visiting group of Year 9 girls who were part of a 90-strong, mixed school group from The Coopers' Company and Coborn School in Upminster, seems to endorse his view. One pupil described some of the displays as "really moving". Another said that Passow's pictures had made her "reflect about my own life".

"This is an area that is certainly succeeding," says the museum's head of learning, Caroline Marcus. In January alone, 1,500 students took part in the museum's schools programme.

Another success are the museum's volunteers. They welcome visitors and explain the exhibits. Some work directly with groups. Their contribution "is immense and positive visitor feedback shows that they so enrich the visitor experience", says Burman.

Before 2010, they were a small group of about 40 people; now the number stands at 150-200. Leonie Warner, front of house co-ordinator, whose responsibility includes management of the volunteers, acknowledges that "we couldn't function without them. They are the backbone of the museum".

Although the museum had 60,000 visitors in its first year (no detailed visitor survey is currently available), Burman is aware that they need to do better, particularly in attracting overseas visitors - an area where there is potential that has, as yet, remained largely untapped. Additionally, she is keen for the museum to be used as a communal resource, from family events to meetings.

The Jewish Museum was recently long-listed for the Sunday Telegraph Family Friendly Museum Award 2012 and, last week, 150 of its exhibits were selected to be part of the Google Art Project, an online virtual compilation of artworks from galleries worldwide.

The museum's first-ever chief executive, Abigail Morris, is naturally proud of these latest achievements but her thoughts are very much on the challenges ahead - which means money.

"I am bursting with ideas of how to develop this amazing museum but I am mindful of the current economic climate. We are very fortunate that we have Friends and donors who support us, but this is an area we will need to expand. We need to ensure consistent levels of funding."

www.jewishmuseum.org.uk

Interview: Gideon Raff

Anne Joseph — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:15:35 +0000

A dimly lit Frankfurt hotel room filled with tension. A knock at the door; a letter is hand-delivered. A An elderly man's face occupies the screen; he wipes the sweat off his brow. "What now?" his colleague asks. "We wait," he replies. Eventually there is a telephone call. "It's a done deal," the elderly man says. "They're coming home."

This sequence is the opening scene of Hatufim, Israeli television's latest quality drama. The award-winning series - Hatufim means "abducted" in Hebrew - focuses on the fictional story of three IDF soldiers who had been taken captive in Lebanon and are released (two alive, one in a coffin) 17 years later as part of a prisoner exchange. The series follows the former soldiers' struggle to reintegrate themselves into their families and society. Meanwhile, questions are raised regarding their loyalty to their country.

From May, Hatufim will be shown in the UK - in Hebrew with English subtitles and retitled Prisoners of War - on Sky Arts 1. Israeli series rarely, if ever, get a showing on British TV, but Hatufim's cause may have been helped by the fact that it was the inspiration for Homeland, the award-winning American-made drama starring Claire Danes and Damian Lewis, that is currently being aired on Channel 4.

Hatufim began life when writer-director Gideon Raff came up with an idea for a PoW drama that started at a point where most other PoW dramas finished.

"I came to the network -Keshet Broadcasting - and said we're going to do a show about prisoners of war and the first episode is going to be their homecoming," he recalls. "Everybody expects it to be the last episode, everybody thinks that is the happy ending. In fact, that's the beginning of their journey."

The Israel-born Raff hit on the premise while he was living in Los Angeles, where he attended the American Film Institute. During the nine years he was away, he would regularly return to Israel and notice "'that the place would seem a little bit more distant, a little strange. Everyone moves on with their lives, not just you. Somehow that got connected to wanting to tell the story of somebody coming home after a long absence. It resulted in Prisoners of War."

He says that any criticism of PoWs in Israel is taboo. But in spite of its delicate storyline, the series has been incredibly successful; it is the highest-rated drama in Israel of all time. Raff was not prepared for its success, nor for what he calls the "ridiculous" attacks on him that went with it. "It became an issue even before the show was aired in 2010," he says. "Once people heard about the plot, the criticism started - 'how dare you turn to such a holy subject and make money out of it".'' However, he adds, when the show began "and people saw we treated the subject with sensitivity and respect, that shifted".

Raff undertook extensive research about PoWs, including the psychological aftermath of captivity. In Israel, he says, there are about 1,500 former PoWs and he interviewed many of them. He says they "were all for the show, they wanted their voice finally heard. They kept calling me every Saturday after the show was aired to tell me how similar it was to their own experiences".

Prior to writing Hatufim Raff had had no involvement with PoWs. However, he learned of a family connection when examining the experience of 300 former military hostages who had been returned after the Yom Kippur War and sent for treatment in a rehabilitation centre in northern Israel, where army personnel had interrogated them. "They were treated in a way that somehow reproduced captivity for them," he explains. "At the time there was a lack of sensitivity. People didn't really know what they went through." A document found by one of his researchers highlighted that his father had been one of the interrogators.

The series addresses the soldiers' battle with psychological trauma but the effect of their return on their families is profoundly evident". In Israel, Raff says, "we all think: 'bring back the boys'. The show revealed that it's a lot more complicated than that."

But the question of inappropriate timing and the blurring of fiction with reality has been leveled at Raff, particularly because of Gilad Shalit, the former prisoner who was still being held by Hamas in Gaza when the show was initially aired. But Raff argues that no timing is ever going to be right.

"If it's not Shalit, it's Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev or Ron Arad. Unfortunately there will be other PoWs."

Undoubtedly, the national tragic resonance has contributed to the series' popularity, but Raff firmly believes that "issues that are sensitive are the issues that we should see in theatres and on television. It sounds presumptuous but many people have said that Hatufim changed the public perception's of how PoWs need to be treated".

Raff wrote the pilot for Homeland, along with Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, the producers of 24. He is also an executive producer on the show. Some of the pilot was shot in Israel, in the same location that Hatufim was filmed, with the same crew. The series has received rapturous reviews and garnered much praise both here and in the United States, and has picked up two Golden Globes.

There are echoes of similar plot lines but the writing was altered to reflect the "astonishing" differences of how each country regards its captured soldiers. In America, Raff says, "it's just not a subject that is talked about on a national level. On a community level there is interest, but in Israel it is something that drives the country crazy. Everybody is part of the campaign. In the US there is a no negotiation policy, which is why we changed the beginning of Homeland.'

In Hatufim the emphasis is on how captivity affects the characters' domestic life. It later develops into thriller mode. "In Homeland,' Raff says, "we went for the thriller element straight from the beginning."

Raff is currently finishing editing the second series of Hatufim. The signs are promising that it too will reach an international audience.

Interview: Zach Braff

Anne Joseph — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:59:28 +0000

Zach Braff begins by wishing me a hearty "Shalom!"

The American actor-director, well known for his role as Doctor J D in the award-winning television series Scrubs, is in London ahead of making his UK stage debut in his first penned play, the comedy All New People. The work was originally staged in an off-Broadway run last summer without Braff - he explains that he was advised "to sit it out the first time because I was the writer and the play needed to be workshopped and rewritten".

Glad of the advice, he says the experience allowed him to get the play to a place where he felt confident enough to appear in it, even though he will continue to "tweak and work on it".

But will a work that has been performed to an American audience make a smooth transfer to the British stage? Braff is confident. Apart from needing to alter a pop culture reference or two, he says: "The themes are pretty universal; it is a story that could happen in the UK, just as easily as in the US".

Braff plays Charlie, a man in his thirties who has hit rock bottom. Alone, in the depths of winter he escapes to a desolate beach house in Long Beach Island, New Jersey, only to be interrupted by a group of misfits who show up and change his plans. From the synopsis there is little to suggest that it is a plot with jump-off-the-page humour. In fact, he says, that "if you try and talk about some of the issues that are raised in the play, without comedy, it becomes quite maudlin".

But he is attracted to a style of comedy in which drama bubbles underneath. "I think it's how we always dealt with drama in my family, as do a lot of people. I can remember coming home in the limo from my grandmother's funeral, on the way to sit shivah, and someone making a joke and we all just started laughing. I've found that, especially with my family, even the darkest of subject matters or in the most twisted of situations, we always find a way to smile to get through it."

The inspiration to write All New People came after he had gone to visit Long Beach Island in winter to choose a summerhouse to rent for his father. "It was so haunting. There were thousands of houses but not a person in sight, and the whole place was covered in snow. It was this spooky ghost town and I was just so taken with it. I thought this is a powerful setting for a story about loneliness and isolation."

An additional influence was the play, God of Carnage, in particular the real-time aspect of it. All New People is 90 minutes long and the events that unfold between the four characters take place in real time.

Braff says there are aspects of Charlie's character that are based on his own. He too has dealt with feelings of isolation, and although Braff has a tight-knit group of friends, "there have been times in my life when - and I'm sure many people can relate to this - being surrounded by lots of people can feel even more lonesome".

In the past he has talked candidly about suffering from depression. Uncertain as to why so many creative people battle with the illness, he quips that he thinks it makes for good art, but then offers a more serious explanation. "Maybe some people's depression comes from a realisation that this life is it. What am I doing with it? Am I using my time wisely? And that's an incredibly intimidating thought process."

Perhaps this is why he ensures that his career is never static. He admits to having a lot of ideas. "I was so blessed to have the TV show for so many years and now I want to explore these ideas and ways of performing that I wasn't able to do before."

As well as acting, Braff has worked as a director, directing episodes of Scrubs, various music videos and the 2004 film Garden State, which he also wrote and starred in. He has been involved in other film projects such as Chicken Little and The Last Kiss, and recently filmed Oz, a prequel to The Wizard of Oz. After the play, he says, his main goal for this year is to direct another film - a project he is hoping to secure during his stay in the UK.

But it is writing that he describes as being "by far the most challenging. Mostly because acting and directing involve collaborating with people, whereas writing is so isolating. For someone who battles with feelings of loneliness it means sitting in an empty room, staring at the wall, at a blank screen. But when I do create something that I'm proud of, it brings me a lot of pleasure."

He explains that where he "relates to being Jewish the most - because I am not very religious - is through humour and comedy". Judaism has been influential in shaping characters he has played or written. Raised on a comic diet of Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Jackie Mason, he says: "I think that when I write, the star is a sort of secular Jew, one who identifies with something culturally Jewish, which, for me, is humour".

He jokingly refers to himself as a "nerdy Jewish kid" and says that as a child he had little interest in sport but loved performing. "I used my humour and my writing to make people laugh. I needed friends, not through being the handsome quarter-back on the football team, but rather by being the funny, wacky class clown."

This is the first time he has lived in London, although he has visited the city as a tourist. "I love walking the streets and I love theatre in the West End. Nothing moves me more than a great play and I have such reverence for the performers here. There's such unbelievable talent," he enthuses.

Braff joins a host of other Hollywood stars that have come to tread the boards in the West End. Although intimidating, he says: "It's such an honour. I have dreamed of doing a play in the West End for many years, but I never dreamed it would be my own."

Interview: Bernard Kops

Anne Joseph — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:46:07 +0000

'I believe that energy has to be used to get more energy," says Bernard Kops. And his is a remarkable energy. He has written more than 40 plays for television, stage and radio, nine novels, seven volumes of poetry and two autobiographies. According to the writer, producer and one of Kops's playwriting class participants, Michael Kustow, he is "one of Britain's most celebrated and prolific authors". In recognition of this literary contribution, Kops has the rare honour of a Civil List pension, bestowed on him in 2009 by the Queen.

To commemorate his recent 85th birthday, the Jewish Museum in London celebrated with a sell-out staged reading of his first play, The Hamlet of Stepney Green, which was first performed in 1958 at the Oxford Playhouse. Kops describes it as is "a sad comedy with some songs", but it is also thought of as one of the cornerstones of the then new wave in British kitchen-sink realism, a trend that had begun with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. It was also the play that catapulted Kops to recognition and success.

Kops's work can be unashamedly Jewish. It is witty, dark, vulnerable, sad yet full of vitality. The son of Dutch Jewish immigrants, his writing is often influenced by his poor East End upbringing, his despair at wanting to leave home and a turbulent adulthood.

It has been said that he is concerned with the individual who is trapped within the confines of a close Jewish family. "I've always said that the things you run away from, you run right into," muses Kops, sitting in the living room of the West Hampstead flat he shares with Erica, his wife of over 50 years. "Family," he says, "is the sustaining force. My life is dissected into all the concerns and joys of the family", all of whom live in close proximity. He acknowledges the irony - that he created the very thing he had wanted to escape, and notes: "It was sheer sheer luck that I met Erica because [without her] I could not have survived".

Kops is skilful at chronicling an individual's search for identity and it is a theme that he returns to in his latest novel, The Odyssey of Samuel Glass, due for publication in February 2012. He agrees that much of his writing has been about "the journey; the quest is important", and adds that this was why he chose to put the word "odyssey" in the book's title. Samuel, the 17-year-old protagonist, is eager to get away from home and embarks on a voyage of discovery in 19th-century Vitebsk where he meets his great-great grandmother, the leader of a small group of anarchists. He joins her and a "red rabbi" in a plot to assassinate Tsar Alexander II - a story based on real events. "His desperation to get away leads him straight into action and the book is a series of terrifying and funny conflicts," explains Kops. "In many ways all the characters are different aspects of me. Certainly a lot of the words that come from Samuel's father or mother and grandparents are me."

The personal and the creative narrative are intertwined as Kops was an anarchist and a communist, although he describes himself as "a great joiner and a great getter-out-of sort of person. I went from selling the Daily Worker outside Whitechapel station to moving up to Soho".

The conversation turns to last August's riots and he says he tries to understand the motivation of those involved. He says his work in prisons, where he ran writing workshops, and the experience of being on the "edge of non-survival" - he spent some time in a psychiatric hospital - has shown him that "morality, justice, freedom, friendship and trust can at some point seem to fly out of the window. Possibly out of desperation".

Although he has not been part of any campaign against library closures he is aware that many people have used his poem, Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East to demonstrate their importance. In fact the first nine lines of the poem are illuminated in the window of the archive room in Whitechapel Art Gallery. Having left school at 13, Whitechapel Library gave him his education and he became "sucked into that world of great poetry and great drama".

Kops has always been obsessed with Yiddish theatre and remembers as a child going to see The King of Lampedusa at the Grand Palais (a Jewish folk theatre on the Commercial Road) with his father at the end of the war. His attraction to Yiddish theatre is because "audiences believed they were part of the play". During a performance of King Lear in the East End, he recalls a woman standing up and calling out to the actor playing Lear: "How can you do that, you bastard? To nice Jewish girls?" He says it was not out of humour. "I suppose theatre balanced the terrible lives that people were going through. They composed themselves into the drama - they weren't divided from it." Kops believes that one of the reasons for the emergence of Jewish writers in the 1950s - including Arnold Wesker, Harold Pinter and Peter Shaffer - was a reaction to the fact that theatre then was "very upper middle-class".

He says: "We brought our backgrounds, our experiences and our traditions. We were writing about the kind of things we knew or felt or dreamed of. An authenticity came and wiped away the middle-class, like [Terence] Rattigan - a marvelous writer, but the audiences didn't want that any more."

He no longer goes to the theatre as much as he did, perhaps twice a month, but he still teaches playwrighting from his sitting room. He reveals that he gets up at 5am to write. "There's something about the stillness of that time. The only thing I can hear is the foxes screaming."

He thinks that the enduring quality of his work is simply that "I just love people". He is constantly watching what goes on around him and says that he can go out for coffee with Erica and suddenly have an idea but has to write it all over his arm as he often forgets to bring paper. "I never trust memory," he says.

As the interview draws to a close, the phone rings. It is his granddaughter. It seems that his family, of which he is so proud, is never far away.

Israel is tense and violent — perfect horror material

Anne Joseph — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:46:30 +0100

'It's like an emotional roller-coaster. You're going to be scared, you're going to laugh and sometimes it's going to be dramatic," enthuses Israeli film director Navot Papushado, talking about the experience of watching a horror film.

Papushado is one half of the writer/director partnership (the other is Aharon Keshales) that has made Israel's first horror film, Rabies (Kalevet in Hebrew), which is showing at the UK Jewish Film Festival next month. It debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, with one critic describing it as "whip smart", and has continued to create waves of attention at subsequent festivals around the world. A few weeks ago it was awarded an Ophir, the Israeli equivalent of an Academy Award.

Frightening, funny, and surprising, with appropriate lashings of blood and gore, Rabies is the dramatic tale of a psychotic killer on the loose in the woods, who crosses paths with a couple, a ranger, a group of unsuspecting tennis players and two police officers. But all is not what it seems and the film plays on the viewer's expectations, culminating with an unpredictable, thrilling twist.

Horror films often serve as a commentary on issues within contemporary society and Rabies is no different. Papushado says that his film "makes a statement about human nature, and about living in Israel".

Aged 31, both he and Keshales grew up in Israel and went into the army. They met as student and professor - the 35-year-old Keshales is a lecturer and film critic - at Tel Aviv University Film and Television School. Rabies is their first feature film.

"We didn't want to make a horror film that was just violent; we wanted to make a film that would show a particular aspect of Israel," Papushado says. "It is a very tense country, people here have a short fuse and frequently situations escalate to violence. A normal situation, like driving here, can be scary. So we decided to take a different approach and make a film about violence as a disease, a dormant disease waiting to spread."

He says that he believes that each of us "has this button that you push and all of a sudden you can become violent. That is the reason why we chose the title". But as well as interpreting violence as an epidemic, he acknowledges that the title also reflects a form of madness - a group of outwardly ordinary people go crazy and behave in an utterly unexpected manner.

The film makes certain culturally specific references, such as the influence of the Israeli mentality in creating an incompetent slasher character. "Israelis are not lazy but they leave things for later on," he explains. "The expression, 'ye'hiyeh beseder' - "it'll be ok, everything will be fine" - sums that attitude up, so we thought what could be more Israeli than having a slasher who doesn't kill anyone!"

Until now the horror genre has not taken off in Israel. The general opinion, says Papushado, is that the country has suffered so much war and terror that people do not want to see more violence on the screen. But the director's response is that Israel is famous for its war films, which show realistic violence. "Watching an Israeli film can make you feel like you are being taught something. Often they are about an important issue or make an important statement," he says. "The violence in horror films is more of a catharsis. I think people are afraid of something that is pure entertainment." However, he feels that attitudes are changing - Rabies has been popular with Israeli audiences.

Both Papushado and Keshales grew up watching mainstream horror films made by John Carpenter, Wes Craven and Quentin Tarantino. Papushado says that these movies have a "second layer, a subtext, but first of all they are really entertaining, which is what we believe a film should be. It is maybe later, when you have thought about it, that you find other aspects to it. For us that was the film we wanted to make and watch."

He adds that he and Keshales have been hugely influenced by Korean cinema in recent years because of its ability to play with the tone of a film. "One moment there is action, in another it is drama, then it moves to comedy. You never feel safe as the tone is always changing. Much like the Coen brothers or 1970s exploitation films."

According to Papushado, a good horror film needs several components for it to work. Cinematography and editing are crucial, as is the soundtrack. He says that dramas depend on a solid storyline and acting, "whereas in horror it's not that simple. You have to know how to scare the crowd, how to make them laugh".

Rabies presented many challenges. They had to shoot in only 17 days, in winter when there is eight hours a day of light, rather than 10 in summer. They also insisted on doing all the special effects, shootings and explosions in one long take. However, having two directors on set was an asset. The pair are good friends who think alike - "sometimes people say we share one mind", says Papushado. In fact, in Israel they are called "Papshales", a playful combination of their surnames.

Perhaps a mark of the duo's credibility is that they managed to secure a number of Israel's leading actors, such as Lior Ashkenazi and Menashe Noy. It is unusual for the slasher genre to attract a strong cast and their involvement contributed to "a domino effect. Everyone heard about these two big actors playing in this small indie horror film and it became easier to cast; even minor roles went to well-known actors. They delivered something emotional to the film and I think it is one of the reasons that it has been so well received," he says.

Papushado and Keshales are currently writing another film together. It is, Papushado says, "a brutal twist on the kidnap genre". They have continued with the same approach, that of combining comedy and horror, but with more violence. Filming is due to start in the next few months.

They will have to wait and see if they can repeat their debut success, but what is certain is that, after watching Rabies, a walk in the woods will never feel the same again.

The secret of Marvin Hamlisch's success? The 'mazel factor'

Anne Joseph — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 11:23:24 +0100

The lyrics from his 1978 musical They're Playing Our Song - "Oh ho, they're playing my song, oh yeah, they're playing my song" - seem to be an apt way to describe Marvin Hamlisch. The legendary, multi-award-winning composer/conductor is the creator of some of the best-known American show tunes. He has written compositions and musical adaptations for approximately 45 film scores, including The Way We Were, an adaptation of Scott Joplin's ragtime music for The Sting - famously winning a combination of three Oscars in one night for both films - and Nobody Does It Better (the theme from the Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me). He is one of 13 people to have received all four of the major entertainment awards - Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and Tonys, as well as Golden Globes and a Pulitzer Prize. Given his prodigious output, it is a fair assumption that somebody, somewhere is playing his song.

Sitting in a quiet, discreet room at the Ivy Club in Soho, close to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane where the London production of his musical, A Chorus Line, was first performed in 1976, Hamlisch explains that he is in town for just 24 hours. He will be returning in early October for a couple of concerts; firstly conducting Idina Menzel at the Royal Albert Hall and then performing for one evening with the singer Maria Friedman.

Hamlisch came from a very musical family. His parents moved to New York from Vienna and he says he was "thrown into music because my father was a musician; [he was an accordion player and a bandleader]. There was the piano, and that's how it began".

From an early age it was obvious he had talent. "I had a good ear for music and took to it very quickly." He could imitate what he heard, from his sister's piano lessons to songs on the radio. Just before he was seven he auditioned for the famed Juilliard School of Music, in New York, showing that he could play a contemporary hit song in any key.

He has been described as a child prodigy but says that "being gifted doesn't mean to say you are going to make it - it just means you are gifted. There's a mazel factor to all this. There are people who are not that gifted but are huge stars and people who are more gifted than I am who are in trouble."

In case he was unsuccessful his mother advised him to have a plan B, so he obtained a teacher's degree. He says: "I can play, I can conduct, I can arrange and I can write. I think of music in my life as a kind of three- or four-lane highway that I can go from one lane to another. That way you don't collapse if it doesn't work."

He believes that: "There's an advantage to knowing what you are going to do at the age of six. Some people might think it's not good but it can be very helpful. You don't have to worry about it; you know what you're going to do." Although at Juilliard they wanted him to become a concert pianist, he prefered composition. "I was very nervous about performing, particularly when it was a piece that everyone knew."

The family home was a Jewish one, "in the sense that we went to Temple every Friday night and my mother always circled Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Pesach on the calendar. To this day, when I buy a calendar I do the same".

His perception of Jewish music is that "the lyrics are simple but direct, which is one of the things I like about Country and Western music. The difference is that instead of being happy-go-lucky, Jewish music always comes with a little bit of a haunting element". He cites the songs in Fiddler on the Roof as a good example, especially "the melody in If I Were a Rich Man. Some of the songs are said with a twinkle in the eye, like 'do you love me? Do I what…?' That's also very Jewish."

But musical theatre is not what it used to be, he says. There has been a shift in what directors want out of a musical. "Up until 20 years ago the music and lyrics were expected." Not so now. A successful show depends on it being based on a great book. And while accepting that they are here to stay, Hamlisch says that he is not a fan of musical revivals. "When I was growing up, the joy of going to Broadway was to see something new." However, he is quick to add that, "it doesn't mean the shows are no good".

He says that he is envious of singers such as Elton John as "they just sing; they don't have to audition. I'm always in the state of auditioning for someone. The combination of getting a song to an artist who wants to do it, who then does and it becomes a hit is a process that has to come in the right form."

His is seemingly unaffected by his stature as one the most recognised songwriting influences of our time - he has worked with some of the greats, including Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand - but confesses that he would "do anything to perform with Bette Midler". He admits that he is most proud of A Chorus Line for which he won the Pulitzer and a Tony. "I had been a dance-music arranger for years. I understand the brain and power of a dancer. I was the right guy to do it and I feel very comfortable about saying that."

At 67, Hamlisch travels and performs around the world. He holds the position of principal pops conductor for six orchestras and he is currently working on a new show for DreamWorks film studio.

Some composers embrace the technological opportunities available to them but Hamlisch is not one of them. He says that when he writes, "it's just usually me and the piano. I'm still the old-fashioned guy with the pencil and paper. I don't own a computer. I have a cellphone, that's as far as I go".

It seems to be more than enough.

LJCC chief cooks up a cultural alternative

Anne Joseph — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 12:43:10 +0100

The London Jewish Cultural Centre's new chief executive is seeking to build on the interest of those "looking for other ways to identify being Jewish".

Louise Jacobs - who succeeds Trudy Gold at the LJCC this month - says that people "aren't necessarily identifying through their synagogue, or through Israel. Where they are identifying is through culture and education."

In more than five years at the centre, she has been responsible for introducing initiatives such as the Hampstead and Highgate Literary Festival and the Ivy House Music and Dance.

Although the 47-year-old feels she knows the organisation well, stepping up to the top job "is scary. There's no better educator than Trudy. She's been unbelievably supportive."

However, Ms Jacobs brings to the post considerable commercial and media nous. After a business degree in French and German, she spent 15 years with financial PR Citigate Dewe Rogerson, becoming director of its UK business. She moved on to work for her father Sir Harry Solomon, co-founder of Hillsdown Holdings, one of Europe's largest food firms. Her involvement was in a family business, Heathside Investment, which helped to grow small companies.

During this period, she did a number of LJCC programmes, including Trudy Gold's modern Jewish history course. At the time, she was considering taking an MA in modern Israeli studies at UCL and needed an academic reference. "So I went to see Trudy, who I didn't know well, and explained what I wanted to do. As I hadn't studied for so long, I also needed to write an essay, which she helped me with."

When she cooled on the idea of an MA, Ms Gold suggested that she came to work with her instead.

"I was bought in to examine the LJCC, what they were doing, to look at where they sat in the community. It was during a period of transition - moving from being a small education organisation to a bigger, wider one, forging relationships with external organisations." When a vacancy emerged, she took over cultural programming.

Ms Gold is staying on to run the educational department. But Ms Jacobs feels "we have to move it [the centre] in a different direction".

A youth wing soon to be built will allow the centre to develop its provision for young people - "one of the really exciting things that we've been doing. What we offer is skill-based, such as drama courses or film-making."

An increase in these activities outside the LJCC premises excites her. "I'd love to do more of that. We've been approached by a number of Jewish schools to programme for them."

Married with three teenage children, Ms Jacobs has homes in Golders Green and Israel, where she has been actively involved in welfare charity the Jaffa Institute.

She is also a UJIA trustee and was for many years was on the Jewish Care campaign executive. "With my trustee hat on, I believe if you give up a lot of time to work in an organisation as a lay person, it's important for the chief executive to fully involve you. I've learnt a lot from [UJIA's] Doug Krikler and try and make sure our trustees are dealt with appropriately and so feel committed."

She feels her lay leadership involvement will benefit the centre as "it makes me understand the community better. The LJCC needs to be positioned at the heart of the community, so we want to make sure that we work with a number of other communal organisations."

Her communal responsibility stems from a philanthropic family. "My dad was involved in UJIA and in Jewish continuity so that has definitely had an influence. It's a natural step for me to be doing this."

Interview: Steve Reich

Anne Joseph — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:25:51 +0100

In a 2006 South Bank Show documenting Steve Reich's career, presenter Melvyn Bragg described him as being "one of the major players in contemporary music since the 1960s. His particular style has marked him out as a composer of rare invention and originality". Acclaimed as America's "greatest living composer" by the New York Times, Reich has received two Grammys (for Music for 18 Musicians in 1999 and Different Trains in 1990) and in 2009 the piece Double Sextet earned him a Pulitzer Prize. Music students study his work and over the years he has been the subject of a string of television and radio programmes.

Earlier this year the Barbican was host to the European premiere of WTC 9/11, a meditation on the attack on the World Trade Centre. As part of his 75th birthday celebrations Reich will be back in London, performing in a late night Prom with Ensemble Modern, featuring three of his seminal works of the '70s and '80s: Clapping Music, Electric Counterpoint and, for the first time at the Proms, Music for 18 Musicians.

Reich is often referred to as a "minimalist" composer but this is not a term that he necessarily agrees with. Speaking on the phone from his home in New York, he explains that: "Labels are not my job. There may be some rough similarities in basic thinking. I studied with [minimalist] sculptor Sol LeWitt for example, and in my early pieces there is a great deal of repetition and regularity, which you'd find in a Sol LeWitt sculpture. There is a certain je ne sais quoi feeling that because people inhabit the same world, they can be grouped together. Music is an art in time. Metaphors have some value and also apply generally to certain periods. You can use that minimalist phrase up to my work, Drumming, but once you get to Different Trains there's no analogy whatsoever."

The composer's work is defined by phasing, a technique of two or more identical melodic patterns gradually moving out of sync then, after a number of repetitions, coming back together. His music is incredibly technically precise and rhythmically complex, however he says it is "less difficult to perform that it might look on the page".

Reich was born in New York in 1936. His father was a lawyer and his mother a singer and lyricist. His parents divorced when he was one year old and his mother returned to Los Angeles. "My mother was mostly trying to pursue her career so I had very little contact with her," he says.

Until he was five Reich spent six months with his mother and six with his father, travelling by train across the country with Virginia, his nanny, before deciding to go and live permanently with his father in New York. He had little interest in music until he hit his teens. He has said that he never heard a note of music written before 1750 and never heard any music after Wagner, but then at 14 all this changed. A friend introduced him to Bach's Brandenburg Concerto, Stravinsky, the drummer Kenny Clarke and bebop.

The music moved him to form a band. "My friend was a better piano player than I was so I said I'm going to be the drummer. I immediately started studying Roland Kohloff (who became principal timpanist of the New York Philharmonic)," he says.

According to Reich: "It was common in '50s America to hear the Hit Parade or Broadway shows, possibly a bit of Gershwin and maybe a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan but Stravinsky or Bach? - that was a bit more risqué. In a middle class, not particularly overly artistic family, that was my experience, so I discovered these things for myself. They immediately magnetised me."

His father did not approve of Reich's career choice. "The divorce was not amicable at all. He saw I was going to be like my mother and he was disappointed. We didn't have much communication until I had a full page in the New York Times – that's not an ideal way to invigorate a parental relationship but it was about the same time that I became re-involved with Judaism and I decided that it was my responsibility."

Reich's Jewish reawakening occurred in the 1970s. Having spent 10 years of being involved with eastern religions, "as many people did in the 1960s", he felt that something was missing but did not know what it was. After a period of studying Kabbalah, he and his wife, the video artist Beryl Korot, eventually went to Lincoln Square Synagogue and signed up to its adult education programme.

Although raised as a Reform Jew, Reich is disparaging about Reform Judaism. "As a child I learnt nothing. I was given a transliteration to read from for my barmitzvah. I may as well have been a parrot and this made me highly resentful and somewhat antisemitic, which I think it would make any normal, well-disposed young man."

Reich believes that the only recognisable body of Jewish music is to be found in the synagogue and "only in the synagogue". His enthusiasm for "rejoining" his own religion resulted in Tehillim (1981), a setting of Hebrew psalms. He went through the entire book of Psalms, in Hebrew and in English, looking for texts that he felt could be said to anybody, both Jew and non-Jew. He has referred to it as perhaps one of his most conventional pieces and also one of his best.

Tehillim was the first piece to have voices singing and "have a full-blown melody. I think it's a great piece. It also opened the door to a lot of new techniques", he says. It was to be the first of many works that explore his religious heritage.

Different Trains (1988), which was performed in Jerusalem as part of the city's Season of Culture this month, also broke new ground by being both autobiographical and because the music is adapted to the rhythm of speech.

The piece recalls the childhood train journeys that he took across America and compares them with the train journeys Jewish children in Europe were making at the same time, using pre-recordings of trains, Virginia's voice, the voice of a Pullman porter and those of Holocaust survivors. The musicologist and critic, Richard Taruskin, has described it as "the only adequate musical response to the Holocaust".

In 1993 Reich and Korot collaborated on The Cave, a video opera set at the site of the cave of Machpelah in Hebron where Abraham is reputedly buried and where subsequently a church and then a mosque were built. It explores the roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam through the words of Israelis, Palestinians and Americans who are asked the same five questions.

In 2006 he produced the Daniel Variations a tribute piece to the murdered Jewish journalist, Daniel Pearl, which was partly commissioned by the Daniel Pearl Foundation. Politics never seems far from Reich's work, although he says "forget about politics and think about religion. It regulates how you live your life, therefore it has what we could call political connotations and how we respond".

Reich's website lists numerous concerts of his music being performed around the world. "Perhaps that's the best possible birthday present that any composer could get. Musicians want to play my music and audiences want to hear it. That's the best it can be."

The director who beat The Promise to a Bafta

Anne Joseph — Thu, 26 May 2011 11:12:35 +0100

By now, Michael Samuels will have just about climbed down from cloud nine. That is where the director has spent most of the week after winning two awards for his TV adaptation of William Boyd's acclaimed novel, Any Human Heart, at the Baftas on Sunday.

The series, which was broadcast on Channel 4 last year and starred Jim Broadbent and Gillian Anderson, won in the best drama serial and original music catagories. For Samuels, the victory came as a complete surprise.

"There had been rumours circulating that it had been one of the other shows that had won in our category," he says. "We all had convinced ourselves that we weren't going to win, which was great because I didn't have to worry about learning a speech. So it was such a shock when we won, but obviously a fantastic shock."

Samuels worked closely with Boyd who adapted the book - about the life of a novelist from 1920s Paris to 1980s London, featuring many real-life figures - into an acclaimed television drama. "You'd imagine that some writers would be quite protective of adapting their work but one of the many things that I loved about working with William was that he was very excited about the fact that the story was going into a new medium," he says.

The north London-born director says that he was interested in making films from a young age. He describes himself as "one of those irritating teenagers that used to destroy my parent's home by making films. My holiday activity was to get my friends together and make a home movie".

After studying history at Manchester University he went to the BBC and started directing films for the Holiday programme. He then moved into documentaries and subsequently onto working on Brookside and EastEnders, a period he describes as "invaluable".

"The Falklands Play [Samuels's hit TV film about events leading up to the Falklands war] was shot in eight days. I wouldn't have had the confidence to do that if I hadn't had the experience of soaps, where you have to shoot a lot of material in a day."

Since then he has directed a range of drama - rather than specialising in a particular genre, he is interested in "what makes people tick. It could be a historical piece, science fiction or thrillers. What matters is substance".

He believes that he is drawn to characters who are "not black and white, who are more complex and real. Sometimes there can be a tendency - in television as well as in film - to over simplify. But as a director it's that complexity of character which is fascinating to explore".

This perspective is born out in the film, Mrs Mandela (aired on BBC Four), which Samuels both wrote and directed. He says that he was attracted to doing a drama about Winnie Mandela because of the fact "that you have someone who does extraordinary things, things that you applaud and celebrate, but who can also be absolutely terrifying".

He believes that writers have a particular duty when writing a script based on a real person. "You have a responsibility to research that character. Although you are depicting something that is obviously an interpretation of history and you need that interpretation otherwise the story is incredibly dull, but it has to be rooted in fact."

He is unequivocal when it comes to the question of how faithful television should be in relation to its portrayal of actual historical events. "If you make a drama, particularly if it's set more recently, you have a responsibility to portray things accurately; to research things as thoroughly as possible."

However, he insists a filmmaker should have a point of view, be it in a drama or a documentary, "otherwise it does become an interminable list".

Referring to The Promise, Peter Kosminsky's controversial drama about Israel which Any Human Heart pipped for the drama Bafta, Samuels says: "I respect it for having a point of view. You have to have that, otherwise you are not writing".

Asked if he would be interested in exploring work with a Jewish theme Samuels replies, "absolutely". In fact, he reveals that he is currently exploring something with "a profoundly Jewish theme".

Why Meg Rosoff's best-selling teen fiction is secretly so Jewish

Anne Joseph — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:03:08 +0100

This is an exciting time for teen-fiction writer Meg Rosoff. Her novel The Bride's Farewell has just been shortlisted for the 2011 CILIP Carnegie Medal. The manuscript for her next book, due for publication in August, is with her publishers and shooting for the film version of her prize-winning debut work, How I Live Now, is planned for the summer. She has also recently returned from a two-week author trip to China.

Rosoff first arrived on the scene in 2004 with How I Live Now. However its success was double edged. Publication coincided with a breast cancer diagnosis, the disease that had already killed one of her sisters a few years earlier.

The Boston-raised Rosoff confesses to a "very long search for identity" and consequently came relatively late to writing. But with it came an urgency "to be the best in a way that I never felt about anything else that I've done".

In 2007 she was awarded the prestigious CILIP Carnegie Medal for her second book, Just in Case, and recalls being "absolutely struck dumb. For me the Carnegie is the big one because it's the prize for literary fiction and I consider myself a literary writer." Since then she has been shortlisted for numerous other awards. To date she has six fiction novels and three picture books to her name.

She is emphatic that she takes none of this success for granted: "You never tire - ever, ever, ever - because it could all disappear tomorrow. Fear is part of the process and it's what keeps you sharp".

Rosoff fell into writing for the teenage market by mistake - she acquired an agent who had just started a teen list - but is also a believer "that your subject finds you. Adolescence as a subject is very interesting to me. I don't consider that it necessarily takes place between 13-19. In fact between the ages of 20-40 I feel that I was an adolescent in every way. Getting fired all the time, being mouthy, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life". She finds the idea that "you have solved everything by the time you are 21 such a terrible thought".

Yearning for a sense of belonging, identity and love are recurrent themes in Rosoff's work and she admits to thinking that "all my main characters are me". So when Pell, the heroine of The Bride's Farewell, escapes an impending marriage, it reflects Rosoff's own escape to London 22 years ago from the American suburbs. "I went as far away as I could, as soon as I could," she says. "I hated the suburbs."

Her father was a professor at Harvard Medical School which meant that "all the intellectuals we knew were Jewish. Everybody who was anybody was Jewish but it wasn't so much a religious thing. All four of us were batmitzvahed and I read Hebrew. I've been an atheist all my life but it doesn't make me any less Jewish," she says. "Being Jewish meant being intellectual, being clever, and being educated; it didn't mean being too religious."

At a recent event in Norfolk Rosoff was asked when she was going to write her Jewish novel. The questioner commented that she was always writing around the subject through her themes of belonging and journey. "Always the journey. All that introspection. I was quite excited about that," she says.

Although she acknowledges that these themes are not necessarily Jewish, she feels that Jews are always searching for something, "which I'm not sure that C of E English people do - this is their home, they belong here."

She claims also to have a constant sense of doom. She says that she would never give up her American passport and jokingly adds that she sleeps with it under her pillow because "you never know…"

Footballers whose goal is peace in Israel

Anne Joseph — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:00:34 +0100

A group of men and women in tracksuits and coloured bibs are dribbling footballs through cones, whooping and exchanging high-fives as they complete a circuit. It is a common enough sight on pitches up and down the country, but this training session, taking place at Brighton University's Chelsea School of Sport in Eastbourne, is different. It features 54 Arab and Jewish community sports coaches who travelled to the UK from Israel, along with 12 others from Jordan and nine from Ireland. They have joined 60 volunteer trainers from universities in England and Germany to take part in a five-day specialised camp run by Football 4 Peace (F4P).

According to its mission statement, F4P aims to help build bridges in divided neighbourhoods, by training coaches in its "unique methodology, which promotes values such as respect, equity, trust, responsibility and inclusion". Put simply, it uses football sessions and team-building exercises to bring Arab and Jew together. Once the coaches return to Israel they transfer what they have learnt by running regular mixed football teams with local Arab and Jewish children.

F4P also works with refugees and children in Jordan and children from either side of the border in Ireland. Partially funded by the EU, the training is also designed to prepare volunteers for the main summer camp in Israel and Jordan in July.

"By doing this I really believe that we can change ideas," says Mohammed Yousef, a sports manager in Dabouria, an Arab village in northern Israel and the person instrumental in bringing the Jordanian coaches to the project. "I've been involved in F4P for six years and I see a difference - for the good."

Although he has many Jewish friends and colleagues, and Dabouria has frequent contact with its Jewish neighbours, Yousef admits that encouraging the children to attend is not always straightforward because "initially people can be suspicious", but once they do, "it's easy. Everyone likes sport."

F4P was founded in 2001. Last year over 1,500 children aged between 10-14 from 36 communities in Israel participated in the programme. Its approach has been developed by a "coalition of partners" including The British Council Israel, the University of Brighton, the Israel Sports Authority and Sports University in Cologne.

According to its director, Professor John Sugden, there is "nothing specific about sport that makes it successful - it's how you handle it and what values you give it. We thought hard about how we could use the sports curriculum to generate the kind of ideas that the kids could use. Football is the pull but it's not the only thing that we do. Our programmes use several activities such as orienteering, swimming and other games. Anything to get more and more contact."

In Eastbourne it is only the first day of the course and already mixed groups of coaches are engaged in team building and trust exercises. In the gym one set is using a Kin-Ball; a participant stands on top of the large pink ball and tries to walk, relying on the ability of the rest of the group to work together in order to push the ball along.

"Co-operation is what makes it work," says Shiri Harroch. She is a PE and gymnastics teacher in Regba, northern Israel, and this is the second time she has attended the training course. "I remember it being so much fun. Right from the beginning you are working in teams. In one game you fall and you know that your partner is going to catch you. In another a person is wearing a blindfold and you have to trust that he or she is going to help you in whatever task you have to do."

Harroch has also taken part in a F4P summer camp which was, "awesome. Really". She strongly believes that the teaching of trust and co-operation games has a direct influence in how Arab and Jewish children can communicate together on (and off) a football pitch. She sees the same process occurring between the coaches during the training. "You forget race, you forget the divide," she says.

However, the political situation inevitably affects what the coaches can achieve. Ghazi Nujidat, project manager for the Israel Sports Authority, explains: "In 2006 when rockets were coming from Lebanon we had to cancel F4P activities at the last minute."

Harroch hopes that the children she works with will maintain the values that they learn as they get older, but she acknowledges that there are times when politics can get in the way of what she is trying to do. "A couple of weeks ago an incident happened in my village and I had to try to put all politics aside and continue with the job," she says.

Yousef agrees that it can be difficult but says that continuing with the project is vital as part of the solution to the division between Jews and Arabs. But he also voices frustration at the media's apparent lack of interest in reporting "peaceful work, but if an Arab kills a Jew the press descend to see what's happening".

Veteran coach, Eli Fractovnic, has been involved with F4P in Misgav in the Galil since the project began. "In the beginning we had a dream but we didn't know exactly how to achieve it. We knew that football was not the point, it was how the children behaved without the ball."

He has seen many changes since those early days. Parents have altered their views as a result of their children's involvement, he says, and some of the children who grew up with the project are now coaches; a scenario that he hopes will continue.

In the last three years F4P has expanded to other areas of the country and programmes now exist in the south of Israel and around Tel Aviv, Jaffa and Jerusalem. Future plans include a F4P league. According to Fractovnic: "People can and have changed how they think about each other. It's happening."

After 1,000 years, is this the end of the story for books?

Anne Joseph — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:27:44 +0000

'The only thing more exciting than collecting boxes of Yiddish books was opening them. What treasures lay within!' writes Aaron Lansky in his book, Outwitting History, which describes his attempt "to rescue the world's abandoned Yiddish books". He began collecting in the early 1980s and eventually founded the National Yiddish Book Centre in America where 1.5 million Yiddish books are preserved.

Similar projects may become all too common if fears over the future of books turn into a reality. The rise in popularity of the electronic reader - which allows reading material to be accessed and downloaded onto a variety of different devices in seconds - has cast into doubt the book's long-term survival. It is a question much on the minds of authors, publishers and industry figures in the run up to next month's Jewish Book Week.

There is no question that "these are interesting times," says Jonny Geller, literary agent at Curtis Brown and managing director of the leading talent agency's books division.

According to Nielsen BookScan, which charts UK national books sales, 226 million books were sold in the UK last year. Although no organised track of electronic book sales exists, figures based on publishers' records of e-downloads indicate that one to two per cent of these overall sales were e-books (approximately three million copies). However, in the US the percentages are much more advanced, says Geller. "It is becoming, as we predicted, a very, very big market. Although the UK is slower, I anticipate a big leap in the e-book industry."

Benny Har-Even, the JC's technology correspondent, agrees. Overall he does not believe that the printed book is doomed, but he does think that it will be heavily affected by the e-book. "The e-book will become increasingly dominant. In 30 years I believe that new printed books will be rare. But they will always maintain a place in the hearts, minds and shelves of the public, even though eventually they will become a niche, specialised product.

They will remain as a special experience for reading to young children and revered texts, but school text books will be predominantly digital."

"It is a transitional time," says Penguin Classics and Reference publisher, Adam Freudenheim. EBooks are of enormous significance, he believes, but it is too soon to say exactly what their influence will be. He accepts that the UK will follow the US market trend - "they've not yet had a big impact here but I expect they will in the next couple of years."

The arrival of Amazon's third-generation Kindle, which became available in the UK last summer, has created the potential for a dramatic change in the way we read. Although there are no specific UK Kindle sales figures, in early January the trade magazine, The Bookseller, reported that Amazon had announced that the Kindle electronic reader was its bestselling product of 2010. The internet retailer also revealed that the Kindle has become its biggest selling product of all time. On one day alone, November 29 2010, Amazon said it had received a staggering 13.7 million orders worldwide.

Numbers aside, electronic readers are simply "great devices,' says Har-Even, with the Kindle 'hitting a sweet spot for performance and price".

With the possibility of books being read on a growing choice of tablet computers and mobile phones, Har-Even believes that it will become more attractive to buy digital books. Geller agrees. In the US, he says, a hardback is priced at $26 and an e-book at $9.99. Looking at the cost alone, the attraction of the eBook is obvious Not all technological advances are viewed positively. Authors are concerned "whether there will be publishers still in business to pay them in a few years time or whether they are going to have to publish themselves, which is something they don't want to have to do," says Geller.

The increase in book-buying over the internet has seen a decline in the number of bookshops on the high street, which in turn has pushed even more people towards the internet, Geller says. "And once you're on the internet you're thinking, well, maybe I should just download this book" rather than buy it in its conventional form.

He believes this is a natural progression and predicts that 35-45 per cent of all book sales will eventually be downloads. But he adds: "I don't think it's bleak. I think there will be room for probably very big book sales. Books may have to become more beautiful and sort-after objects and probably higher priced. A lot of independent bookshops will sprout up and with independent bookstores you get wider choices."

Nicola Solomon, a lawyer and incoming general secretary of the Society of Authors, is acutely aware of writers' concerns. "Authors need to ensure that they know what can be done with their books and negotiate the amount they are paid for rights on e-books, which currently is a pathetic amount," she says.

"We're at the edge of a new age," she adds, "and there is a completely different delivery mode happening. But I don't think there's such a huge need to be scared. It is also a time of great opportunity."

These opportunities may lead to travel books with pop-up maps, novels describing a song and then being able to play it, speculates Solomon.

"These sorts of things are tremendously attractive if people have the money to pay for that kind of enhancement." Book design and illustration will be able to incorporate interactive pictures, adds Har-Even, and other possibilities could involve pay-per-chapter with cliffhanger-style endings.

But are we danger of losing the physical and emotional connection that reading a printed book allows? "No," says Freudenheim. "People will always read deluxe editions; hardbacks or paperbacks. And ultimately it's the quality of writing that matters.'

He wants new (music) tracks for the Olympics

Anne Joseph — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:31:53 +0000

Asked to consider what he thinks has been his most significant achievement as an arts benefactor, former GP Dr David Cohen pauses for a moment before choosing his answer carefully. Then, without a shred of pomposity or fanfare, he explains that he has actually just returned from the launch of New Music 20x12 - a programme designed to put new music centre stage of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. "We're doing something which I think is giving us a feeling of satisfaction," he says.

New Music 20x12 was an idea initiated 18 months ago by Cohen and his wife, Jillian Barker. It arose out of a discussion, he says, "about the Olympics and what legacy it would leave. We thought that over and above the sporting legacy, if any, there ought to be something cultural to mark 2012. We played around with the figures '2012'; I was thinking about commissioning a piece of music for the year 2012. But as we were talking we both thought of the idea at about the same time."

What they came up with was a plan to commission 20 pieces of original music, each lasting 12 minutes. They went to the Arts Council and from there were introduced to the Performing Rights Society for Music Foundation and to LOCOG (The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games). With the additional help of friends, they managed to raise £200,000. A committee was set up with the three organisations, as well as the BBC, to decide on who to commission. The names of the 20 artists are due to be announced today, with musicians of the calibre of jazz pianist Julian Joseph and Scottish composer Anna Meredith expected to be involved.

At 81, Cohen remains one of Britain's most active cultural philanthropists. He has served on the boards of many of Britain's finest institutions, such as the Royal Ballet Schools, the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre Development Council. Current commitments include the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Trust. It is no surprise that he was awarded a CBE in 2001 for charitable services, especially to the arts.

His motivation is simple. "I love all the arts. I couldn't imagine a life without music for instance. One of my early ambitions as a schoolboy was to be an architect. In fact, when I was about nine or 10, I wanted to go to art school. My parents were not impressed. They felt I should get a good education first."

This good education included a degree in Oriental studies at Oxford and then being awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study mediaeval Jewish philosophy in the United States. He qualified as a doctor from Westminster Hospital, working in general practice, which he says he "enjoyed enormously". He retired from medicine in 2001.

His career in philanthropy started back in 1965, when together with his father, John S Cohen, he and his mother and brother set up the John S Cohen Foundation. "My father, having left home at 15 without much formal schooling, was quite passionate about education so in the early years this was the trust's strongest interest," he says. Much money was given towards Jewish causes, in particular to the Hebrew University. (Cohen says of his Jewishness now: "I've become totally non-practising as a Jew. I don't go to shul.")

Later, the foundation merged with the David Cohen Family Trust (founded by Cohen in 1980 with his then wife, Veronica). The trust, which deals with around 3,000 requests for money a year, focuses on education, conservation, environment and the arts, including the David Cohen Prize for Literature, a £40,000 biennial prize that was established in 2002. It honours a living writer, from the UK or the Republic of Ireland, for a lifetime's achievement in literature. The last recipient was Seamus Heaney who joined a distinguished list including V S Naipaul, Beryl Bainbridge and Michael Holroyd. "But," adds Cohen wistfully, "we've missed a lot of great writers, who have been in contention and died before the end of the process." The winner of the 10th prize will be announced in March 2011.

He does admit to being embarrassed that the prize is in his name. It had not been his wish but "the one who pressed for it was P D James. She spoke so forcibly about it, I let it go," he says.

Unlike the Man Booker Prize, there is no shortlist. "We think it's invidious that somebody should be on a list and drawn to the public's attention that they're not the best. We are low key, discreet," he explains. Whatever his opinion of published shortlists, he is "very pleased" about Howard Jacobson's recent Man Booker win.

"I've enjoyed reading and listening to him," he says.

Interview: Neil Gaiman

Anne Joseph — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:21:38 +0100

Neil Gaiman has been described as a writer of extraordinary imagination. This imagination has been responsible for producing decades' worth of award-winning fantasy and science-fiction work, for readers of all ages. His novels, American Gods, Anansi Boys, Coraline and The Graveyard Book have all been New York Times best-sellers. He is well known for his graphic novel series The Sandman, for which he has a cult following, but he is also a prolific creator of poetry, short stories, journalism, song lyrics and drama. He wrote the screenplay for Beowulf and two of his books, Stardust and Coraline, have been made into films. In fact, earlier this year, Coraline was nominated for an Oscar for best animated feature film. It is a career that he describes as "big, strange, rolling, rather peculiar and very badly thought out, but which works incredibly well for me".

He was in London last week (Gaiman lives near Minneapolis in the American mid-west) to receive his most recent award for The Graveyard Book: the prestigious CILIP Carnegie Medal, given to a writer of an outstanding children's book.

He is the first author to receive both the Carnegie and the Newbery Medal - the equivalent award in the United States - for the same book. He says that "the hugeness of it hasn't sunk in and if I did start internalising, believing and accepting it then I might never pick up a pen again".

Nonetheless, the "hugeness" had sunk in enough for him to have wanted his family - three children, ex-wife and fiancé - to fly to London from the US and be at his side at the award ceremony.

The Graveyard Book is a tale about Nobody Owens - Bod for short - who, as a baby, escapes from the brutal murder of his family and is brought up in a graveyard by ghosts, vampires and a werewolf. It is very much a story about family, growing up, life and community and much less about death.

Sharing a comfortable roomy sofa in a smart Covent Garden hotel the likeable, black and grey tousle-haired Gaiman, clad in his customary dark T-shirt and jeans, talks with just a hint of an American accent. He had had the idea of The Graveyard Book 25 years ago as he watched his eldest son, then aged two, pedal his tricycle around a graveyard, which happened to be over the road from where they lived. He began writing the story, then thought his writing ability was not up to doing the idea justice and left it.

Now that the book is finished and published, Gaiman realises that he has unconsciously written about "the joyful tragedy of being a parent". He believes that he could not have finished the book had he not been a parent of grown-up children, now aged 26, 24 and 15, and reflects that: "The tragedy of parenting, which is also the joy, is if you do your job right, you have helped create these absolutely wonderful people that you adore and you send on their way. If you do it badly and you broke them, they may never leave."

Published as a crossover novel, The Graveyard Book, in both adult and children's editions, has been immensely successful; commercially and in award terms. But it also seems to tap into the current horror, fantasy writing wave that is so in vogue for young adult readers, although Gaiman wonders, not wishing to sound "big headed", whether this particular trend exists because "I was doing this stuff before". It may certainly be a contributory factor. Gaiman agrees that children love the anticipation and the thrill within these kinds of books. He does not believe they are in any way dangerous - readers are well aware of the difference between fantasy and reality, he believes, and, in any case, a book is "safe because you can put it down, you can close it". The reader is "a collaborator in how scary the book is".

But it is not a new phenomenon that children enjoy books that scare. He remembers that the "big books in school, the ones that were getting passed around hand to hand" when he was 11, were the Dennis Wheatley thriller and occult novels and the Pan Book of Horror Stories which had covers of such "photographic and lurid ickiness" that he thinks they are now no longer available on the bookshelves.

Gaiman was born in Hampshire and moved to East Grinstead as a young boy. The household was one in which books were always "floating through… I was the kind of kid who spent my pocket money on books".

He says he was "bookish weird", a fact that he only realised when he was bringing up his own children. He saw his youngest daughter, a book lover, choosing not to alphabetise her books. As a child, he had adored the library, a place he visited often, and thought nothing of recreating its shelving system with his own books at home.

Gaiman acknowledges there is little that is particularly Jewish about his life in the United States. "For me, the funny and the weird thing about being Jewish in the US is that in America they only have room to put you in one box or another. So, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show gets to be Jewish, I'm English and so that puts me in the English box."

But he does think that Judaism features in his writing, "because fundamentally the perspective on almost all of my fiction, particularly something big in Sandman, is 'outsidery'; being part of a culture but also being part of the 'other'.''

He is regularly asked how he knows so much about the Midrash, which is solely down to his barmitzvah teacher, Reb Lev. For two years Gaiman spent every weekend going to stay at his cousin's house in Harrow-on-the-Hill, north-west London, managing "to get Reb Lev off the subject of learning for my barmitzvah and on to learning about the Midrash, as this was the stuff that really fascinated me". The myth-loving Gaiman could not get enough of the stories.

Gaiman turns 50 this year and his imagination shows no signs of slowing down. He is working on a non-fiction book about China, as well as just completing his sixth draft of a Doctor Who episode - natural Gaiman territory - which will be aired in the UK next summer. Not bad for a "badly thought out career".