The Winds of <i> Glasnost</i> Carry Soviet Film Makers to Israel

A mile away in the Old City, Palestinians in the morning had stoned archeologists digging close to their holy shrines, and the Israeli police countered with tear gas and seven arrests. By noon last Sunday, the confrontation had ebbed, at least for the day. Thus, the historic outdoors lunch in the Ben Hinnom Valley below the Jerusalem Cinematheque could proceed as scheduled.

While a lone policeman stood vigilant with a rifle on a wall above, Israel Foreign Minister Simon Peres, in jacket and tie, sat down for a catered non-kosher meal and a formal conversation with the first delegation of Soviet film makers ever allowed by their government to visit Israel.

These included Aleksandr Askoldov and Nonna Mordiucova, director and star of “Commissar,” and Alexander Chervinsky, screenwriter of “Theme.” Both films, invited to the Jerusalem Film Festival, were made at times in the Soviet Union when controversial Jewish subject matter was forbidden. Shelved permanently for the Brezhnev era, they were dramatically resuscitated under Mikhail Gorbachev last year, for worldwide release.

Peres spoke solemnly through a Russian translator, quoting Tolstoy and other lofty Soviets. Journalists and international film makers, gathered for the festival, joked at nearby tables, “Peres looks like Elia Kazan’s brother,” marveled a British producer. “It’s like Nixon playing Ping-Pong with the Chinese,” said an acerbic Israeli journalist.

Still, everyone was amazed and impressed, for Fest ’88 had produced an extraordinary coup with international political implications.

With the Soviet film makers’ arrival in Jerusalem, a truly unprecedented cultural event, Gorbachev’s glasnost has been extended and opened to Israel.

“I have no doubt that Mr. Gorbachev knows what we are doing,” director Askoldov told Peres. “The fate of ‘Commissar’ and also my own are closely associated with Gorbachev.”

Peres, due back in Tel Aviv, promised to see “Commissar” in a special screening.

“I’m going to ask a naive question,” Askoldov interjected boldly. “Are you thinking of candidates for the first Israeli ambassador to my country?”

Although there are no diplomatic ties between the Soviet Union and Israel--not yet!--Peres assured him that such discussions were indeed occurring.

“I’d like to raise a toast to this possibility,” Askoldov said excitedly, and led an exuberant clicking of wine glasses.

“The sooner, the better,” Peres said. He added a few minutes later, almost parenthetically, “You can invite Mr. Gorbachev to Israel.”

Fest director Lia Van Leer, who began the Israel Film Archives in 1961, is among the few in Jerusalem who remember a cordial relationship with the Soviet film industry. She attended the 1959 Moscow Film Festival. “But after the Six-Day War in 1967, there was no possibility again to get pictures from the Soviet Union, or from Hungary, Poland or other Eastern countries either,” she said.

The 5-year-old Jerusalem Fest has proved a major venue for a thaw with the Eastern Bloc, in part because of its strong reputation for showing Third World cinema. That includes, when available to it, works of Arab film makers.

Also, the festival is staffed predominantly--and quite openly--by “softliners” on Palestinian sovereignty. So the Hungarians, Poles and Yugoslavs have sent films, actors and directors to Jerusalem. This year was the Soviet’s time.

“We had closed the festival selections, written up our booklet,” Van Leer said. “Then we got a Telex several weeks ago: ‘If it’s not too late, we’d like to send a Soviet delegation.’ ”

And back in the Soviet Union?

“For several years, Mrs. Van Leer had invited Soviet film makers,” screenwriter Chervinsky explained over a hotel coffee. “This year, Andrey Smirnov, the acting secretary of the Union of Soviet Film Makers, struggled for it. He insisted at the Foreign Ministry that there must be a delegation. He said that it’s the policy of our union to enlarge the showings of Soviet film makers everywhere. In Israel, there are lots of people speaking Russian. Also, it’s a film market. There’s money!”

Chervinsky, who is Jewish, experienced the Brezhnev policies first-hand. In part because his screenplay for “Theme” included a subplot about an unhappy Russian emigrating to Israel, the 1979 film was never released. Because his sister and brother-in-law emigrated to America. Chervinsky was kept from traveling abroad.

“In Brezhnev’s time, a character in a film could be Jewish, but only in a very specific way,” Chervinsky said. “He could be in the war, very bold and brave, and die while everyone lives. Or he could be a friendly, funny Jew. I don’t have to tell you--it’s the same as black persons in American movies.”

Chervinsky plans to confront Soviet anti-Semitism, past and present, with a script describing the true-life rigged trial of Jewish doctors at the beginning of the 1950s, just before Stalin’s death. He also has a comedy script in mind, to be made in English for an American company, about the friendship of a Russian truck driver from Eastern Siberia and an American Jewish lawyer.

And being Jewish in Jerusalem under siege?

“I’m very glad that Gorbachev said that both the Israeli state and Arabs should live in safety. I think those words did much good for our travel here. But to be able to think politically is too much for me now. Let me say that being here is something great, a new page in my life. I begin with the Wailing Wall, old Roman cities in the desert, Christ’s grave, things I dreamed about all my life and never thought I’d see with my own eyes.”

A last delicate question: Have things changed so much that there are no secret spies in the six-person Soviet group?

“The first few days I thought about it a lot,” Chervinsky confessed. “I always thought a delegation had an ‘official’ man, like in ‘Moscow on the Hudson.’ But they said at home: ‘The official man is you: the head of the delegation.’ I nearly fainted when I heard it. I’ve never headed anything in my life and I don’t know the official point of view.”

Chervinsky laughed heartily because he is the most likely candidate to be KGB! “Maybe they did something to me and I didn’t notice,” he joked freely in Jerusalem.