Passion and Commitment Mark Films Slated for Israel Film Fest

Although none of the films available for preview in the 5th Israel Film Festival, which runs Saturday through June 16 at the Cineplex Odeon Fairfax Cinemas, could be called masterpieces, they all have merit and integrity. Irrespective of subject, period or degree of artistic accomplishment, they are all marked by a passionate sense of commitment and an almost palpable quality of painful experience. Given Israel’s past, present and uncertain future, how could it be otherwise?

Opening the festival at 8 p.m. is one of the strongest offerings, Renen Schorr’s autobiographical “Late Summer Blues.” The time is summer, 1970, during a break between high school final exams and formal graduation ceremonies, which for the boys means an inevitable draft into the army as the War of Attrition drags on at the Suez Canal.

Although Schorr is self-indulgent in regard to his meandering pace, he does cleverly structure his film by having it unfold in four parts, each one focusing one of four friends. They are the easy-going Yossi (Omri Dolev), the first draftee in the class, called up even before the graduation ceremony; Arileh (Dor Zweigenbom), an intense, ardent draft protester; Mossi (Yoav Tsafir), a nice kid who almost unconsciously finds himself maneuvering himself into a safe, cushy job in the army; and Margo (Shahar Segal), a diabetic ineligible for the draft who serves as the group’s historian, recording their good times with his 8-millemeter camera. (He’s clearly Schorr’s alter ego).

Following “Later Summer Blues” at 10:30 p.m. is Yoel Sharon’s dynamic “Shell Shock,” perhaps the best realized of the films, which centers on two patients at an army hospital, the dark, intense Micha (Dan Turgeman) and the big, burly Gideon (Ashar Tsdarfati), both of whom have been left shattered by the Yom Kippur War. Bleak but impressive, “Shell Shock” unfolds with totally persuasive psychological validity.

It’s unfortunate that writer-director Tzipi Trope is such an academic, uninspired film maker, for he explores a major, complex theme in “Tel Aviv-Berlin” (screening at 6 p.m. next Tuesday. His morose hero, Benjamin (Shmuel Vilozny), has somehow managed to escape from a Nazi concentration camp and make his way to Palestine in 1942--that would be a movie in itself. It is now 1943 and Benjamin is obsessed with a longing for Germany, its culture and language--plus a desire for revenge. Trope could not be more passionately committed to his story--or more heavy-handed in its telling.

Tamir Paul’s fine film of Galila Ron-Feder’s novel “On My Own” (next Tuesday at 9 p.m.) is a refreshing change-of-pace because it’s free of history or politics. It is a sensitive, perceptive rendering of the predicament of an 11-year-old (Arik Ohana, who’s wonderful), first drifting into an indolent gang of petty criminals and then coping with life in a comfortable upper-middle-class foster home.

You have to give director Uri Barbash and writer Benny Barbash full marks for having the courage to depict, in “Unsettled Land” (June 9 at 8 p.m.), the early Zionists as fierce, near-crazed ideologues, as neurotic as they were strong and determined.

But Barbash directs with such a heavy hand and lays on a brotherhood plea between Arab and Jew so thickly that from start to finish the film is a totally grueling experience. The festival is composed of nine films, many of which will be repeated, plus several special events. For schedule and further information: (213) 463-6060.