Yair Qedar

OUTSIDER. FREUD is a new creative documentary film, that takes us on a journey into the life and work of Freud in four acts - a combination of animations, dreams, leading psychoanalysts in the world, in a thought-provoking journey about Judaism, biography, psychoanalysis, and the role of marginalization as a strategy of power in shaping one of the most influential figures in modern times, with Itay Tiran as Freud.

Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky? Most people don’t know much about him. Most people know he was the father of Herut movement, a revisionist. And who really knows what revisionism really means. A few people know that he translated Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee; even fewer read his historical novel, Samson. The Raven tries to fathom Jabotinsky’s deceptive character. The film follows his conflicted, controversial character, the meaningful choices, desires and abilities that eventually led him to end his life prematurely but left a huge mark on Zionism and Israel. - See more at: http://nfct.org.il/en/movies/the-raven-zeev-jabotinsky/#sthash.WoPKutbi.dpuf

In 1985, there were three gays who were out of the closet in Israel. By 1998, there were 3,000. In this short, intensive and dramatic period, Israel came out of the closet in one of the quickest and most colourful revolutions of the end of the 20th century.

By the age of thirty he’d already become the most famous poet in the Jewish world. He spent very few years living in Tel Aviv, but he loved the city dearly. Some 100,000 people attended his funeral in 1934. “King of the Jews” is a portrait of the most beloved Jew of his day, Chaim Nachman Bialik. Combining special animation, a voice track by Chaim Topol, rare archival footage, long-forgotten photographs, poems by Bialik performed by Ninet and interviews with the foremost Bialik researchers and fans in Israel and around the world, this film retells the story of the little boy from the shtetl, who became King of the Jews.

Who was Avot Yeshurun, also known as Yehi’el Perlmutter? The film travels between a biographical narrative and a portrait of his poetic life through the eyes of his daughter, Helit Yeshurun, who is joined by friends, literary critics, and poets.

A cinematic journey into the world of Yona Wallach, an Israeli poet, whose radical life and poetry ended with her death at an early age, leaving behind a myth and a trail of admirers. More than 25 years after her death, seven recorded tapes from her last interview, which were made with Helit Yeshurun, are discovered. In these tapes, Wallach confesses to her attraction to madness, her experiments with drugs, her relationship with god and about the dangers of writing. The film weaves her testimony with interviews, with rare archival footage, with her poems and with animation that revives Wallach's thoughts, images and visions.

The excommunication of Baruch Spinoza, the Dutch Jewish philosopher who revolutionized modern thought, is a formative, mysterious event in the understanding of his work. Director David Ofek takes us on an intercontinental journey tracing six reasons for Spinoza's excommunication. Between Amsterdam, the Hague, New York, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv, he makes some surprising discoveries, and traces the figure of a man who continues to intrigue our culture with his ideas, which remain revolutionary, spiritual, and radical to this day. This is the 17th film in The Hebrews project.

Very few details are known about Rabbi Shalom Shabazi, but 400 years after his death, Shabazi is as popular as ever and is considered one of the greatest Yemenite poets. The film takes the audience on a journey through the extraordinary life of one of the greatest Hebrew writers.

In a time when democracy is in danger and truth under attack, the film returns to the life story of the greatest activist of all, Karl Marx, who gave us tools to analyze reality, through an encounter with Israeli activists – Jews and Arabs, who tell about Marx’s influence on them, and open a window into his world in an attempt to present Marxism as a multigenerational and multicultural phenomenon, found in every aspect of our lives.

In 1921, six dead bodies were found near the Red House between Tel Aviv and Jaffa. One was the body of Y.H. Brenner, a brilliant author, the sharp critic of his generation, a man of ambiguous sexuality and the characteristics of a raging prophet; he was well known throughout the Jewish world. An official report, written but sealed shortly after these events, was discovered only recently. It features in this film, along with animated sequences by David Polonsky (“Waltz with Bashir”), conversations with Brenner scholars, rare period stills, and selections from his works.

He is considered one of the greatest Hebrew writers, though he only spent a year in the country. Who was David Vogel? The man who left behind a corpus of wonderful Hebrew novels, novellas, and poems that depicted sexuality and desire like no one before him, but who only gained recognition after his death.

A documentary on groundbreaking queer poet Hezi Leskly, who lived and worked between Tel Aviv and the Netherlands and died of Aids

In a little Jerusalem apartment, surrounded by dolls and cats, Miriam Yalan-Shtekelis wrote children’s songs that have captured hearts for many generations of Israelis: The Doll Named Zehava, The Soap that Cried a Lot, Michael, and many more. The director, photographer, editor, designer and writer Reuven Brodeski created the atmosphere of a Russian legend about Yalan-Shtekelis, using miniatures that he fashioned himself for the film, interviewing people who knew her, and telling the story of Israel’s most important figure in children’s literature.

She lived in Cairo, Paris, and New York, but died in an old-age home in Givatayim, Israel. She was charismatic and admired, but only a few people actually knew her well during her life. She was the first to write of Levantine and Mizrachi identities, Director Rafael Balulu goes on a journey in the footsteps of “Levantine thinker” and author, and through encounters with her friends in Paris, with intellectuals in the Mizrachi discourse, and with Levantine artists, he not only draws a portrait of this impressive thinker and writer, but also chronicles the trajectory of Levantine identity in Israel as a cultural option.

Documentary on the life of Hebrew poet Rachel Bluwstein, known simply as Rachel, considered a national poet of Israel. Includes interviews with literary researchers, poets, historians, and biographers.

Behind the international success story of Amos Oz, a symbol of the Israeli conscience and a writer translated into 45 languages, lurked a double tragedy. When he was 12-years-old his mother committed suicide, and a few years before his death his daughter accused him of being physically and mentally violent, ending all communication with him. A series of conversations with his latest biographer presented in the film, weaves biographical passages, literature and conversations with the main people in his life, as Amos Oz tells his last story.

A loving portrait of A.B. Yehoshua, the prominent Israeli writer. Dealing with a terminal illness, widowhood, and loneliness, but does not for one moment give up his joi de vivre, faces death with unflinching honesty, and still embraces a new book. A rare and fascinating look at one of Israel’s most beloved writers, who passed away in 2022.

Rabbi David Buzaglo was the greatest Hebrew liturgical poet of the twentieth century. Born in Morocco in 1903, his literary output had a major impact on a community of hundreds of thousands of people. From his prolific period in the Diaspora to the years he spent in a ruptured Israel, Buzaglo's poetry initiated an abrupt shift in Sephardic liturgical writing, but it also served as a vital link between the modern era and a tradition that dates back to Spanish Jewry's Golden Age. But Buzaglo was more than just a great poet. The actions he took at seminal moments in history had a critical impact in shaping the identity of Maghreb Jews. This film is an intimate look at Buzaglo's life and career, from its roots in the rich tradition of Hebrew poetry in Morocco through the liturgical revolution in Israel.

She published her first book of poetry at the age of 53 and became a prominent figure in the field of Hebrew literature. Niece of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, living alone in Jerusalem, writing poems of pieces of paper, surrounded by a small court of lovers and admirers. Through never-seen berfore archival footage and meetigns with her loves and friends (Amos, Chava Alberstein), the film gently sketches a portrait of the first religious female poet.

The story of the wonderful transgender actress that never existed - Bebe Goldberg, in this surprising and often amusing Mockumentary/documentary film. 'Bebe' tells the story of the Holocaust survivor, wannabe actress, Chaim Goldberg. later known as Bebe. Having to survive and a young transgender, she had to be a sex worker and later on changed her gender. Performing in Cabarets in Europe, she later returned to Israel where she established her own cabaret. Her story is told by the spectacular Gila, Stephanie and Nancie, the oldest transgender in Israel, teling about Bebe but mostly drawing a collective biography of a generation.