A few minutes ago, Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman lost his bid for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Hebrew speaking Waltz With Bashir, an animated documentary film, or documation, was Israel’s eighth nomination in this category and while everybody here hoped it would be Israel’s first win – unfortunately that was not in the cards tonight. Previous Israeli nominees include:
Here is Ari Folman sitting at a bar, drowning his sorrows, apparently holding someone else’s Oscar statuette (…yes, I manipulated the photo in advance):
After winning numerous awards including a Golden Globe, Ari Folman’s documation ‘Waltz with Bashir’ has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Minutes ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made its announcement for the 81st Academy Awards ceremony, that will be held exactly one month from today, on February 22, 2009, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California.
An Israeli anti-war film wins a prestigious award amidst a war: Ari Folman‘s Waltz with Bashir received last night a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Some called it the first animated documentary, or documation, but as I mentioned before that is not the case.
The film is based on Folman’s own experiences as a 19-year-old IDF infantry soldier during the 1982 Lebanon War. American-Arab blog KABOBfest predicts that “in about 20 years, one of the Israeli soldiers currently partaking in the invasion of Gaza will make an award-winning film called ‘Waltz With Abbas’, recounting his experience in committing war crimes, with some psychoanalytic prelude that exonerates himself from responsibility for own action”.
I wanna dedicate this prize, as we promised to do, to the eight beautiful production babies who were born in our tiny studio in Tel Aviv during the making of Waltz with Bashir, four years – and I hope one day when they grow up they’ll watch this film together and they see the war that takes place in the film, it will look to them like an ancient video game that has nothing to do with their lives whatsoever. Thank you so much!
– - Ari Folman, Golden Globe Awards, January 11, 2009
Readers of my blog may have been wondering about the outcome of the Bread and Roses art sale I participated in. A couple of days ago I was quite taken aback by a phone call. It was the organizers of the charity auction calling to ask for my address, as they wanted to send me a cheque. You see, this specific charity event appealed to me, as aside from actually helping people in need, which is always nice, the organizers promised that the money collected from each artwork sold would be divided and 75% of it would be donated, while 25% were promised to be paid back to the artist.
Now, while receiving money is always fun, this cheque represents the first ever artwork of mine that was sold in an exhibit, by a stranger who actually raised his finger towards the wall, pointed to my work and said ‘I want to have this!’
The sold artwork is called ‘Jaffa Gate, Summer 2006‘ and it is a photo mosaic of one of the gates in the wall that surrounds the old city of Jerusalem, created using photos of the 119 fallen Israeli soldiers during the 2nd Lebanon War. The actual print size of the work is 80×60cm, which is important as it looks different from a distance and up close. Use the + zoom option to have a similar experience:
