Hebrew-speaking Snow White

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Yevgeniy Zingerman , Jerusalem: Jul 16 2008

Made Popular Jul 17 2008

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Establishing concepts of modern Jewish art and supporting new artists was one of the main goals of the founders of the State of Israel. Painting and sculpture, crafts and architecture, cinema and music were always important in our young Jewish State. But there is one sort of arts that only now begins to emerge in the Middle Eastern only democracy and until now was far from the creative minds of Israeli Bohemians. I mean animation.

With the establishing of animation department in the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem (the foremost and some may say even the only educational institution for the future artists in Israel) a new era of Jewish animation has begun. Starting with round fifteen students eight years ago, now it consists of three parallel classes counting more than twenty students each, and consequently the number of animation movies sent to international festivals is growing in geometrical progression. Short award-winning films as “Beton”, “Illuminations”, “Golem”, “Circles”, “Smile” and “Celestina” – all of them produced in the last three years by the students of Bezalel – have placed Israel in the same row with such empires of animation as Great Britain, Russian Federation, United States, France and Germany.

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The latest “harvest” (as it’s called here in Israel) of fifteen animation films by this year Bezalel alumni is currently presented in the intimate “viewing rooms” of Bezalel in Jerusalem: loop after loop, one film running another from eight A.M. to the midnight. The show will go on until the end of the week, and then the best of them will make their way to their first festival: three warm August days dedicated to animation, caricature and comics in Tel-Aviv. This will be their gateway to the world.