I am here with Asi Levi, the star of the film “Aviva My Love.”   She is a hardworking mother with a great deal of talent and passion for writing stories. Between her job and taking care of her family at home, she still finds time to write.

Ali – Hello, Asi. How are you?

Asi – Thank you. It is great to be here.

Ali – How do you think your audition for this part set you apart from others?

Asi- Basically, I don’t have a clue. Honestly, I know I did my best. Audition is a slick process. If you don’t get the part it does not mean you are not good. It means you were not suited for that part. I think it is important to be authentic, to be real and not to be excited too much.

Ali – How do you see the character you played, “Aviva,” and do you have anything in common with her?

Asi – We have a lot in common. Aviva is a very special character. We are similar in the fact that she is very committed to her family. As an actress I take the things that lead the character and I connect them into my personality and emotions.   You always find a connection.

Ali – How did you prepare for the part?

Asi – I learned how to cook, how to cut vegetables, and how to break eggs with one hand. Other than that, I tried to learn about Aviva and understand her.

Ali – How long have you been acting?

Asi – Since I finished the drama studio, the end of ’95.

Ali – Did you study drama in Israel?

Asi – Yes, 3 years in drama studio. I started in theatre and TV and then film.

Ali – Is this your first film screening outside of Israel?

Asi – No, my last film, “Avanim,” was a big success in Europe and I was nominated for best actress in the European Academy Awards.

Ali – What is the message Aviva has for the audience?

Asi – To follow your dreams and that you can always find a way to have your family and career. Basically there is a huge message particularly for women, and that is to always follow your dreams no matter what.

Ali – You are a known actress in Israel, and you still had to audition for this part?

Asi – Yes. And I am still auditioning. We call it TESTING when you are in a certain stage of the game. You don’t audition on your talent; you audition to the part.

Ali – How was it working with Shemi, the director?

Asi – Amazing. He is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. He is very talented, but what is so special about Shemi is he is an enormously generous human being, and he loves actors. He adores actors.   They are very important to him. This is not the case with every director. He also writes brilliantly. It is amazing that a man wrote this script. I think he has a woman’s soul.

Ali – Asi, thank you for your time. I look forward to seeing the film, and I wish you luck.

Asi – Thank you.

Ali Saam

Israel Film Festival – Ali Saam interviews producer Eitan Evan, director Shemi Zarhin, and founder of the festival Meir Fenigstein.

It is a soft and cool evening in Hollywood. I am at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to screen a film called “Aviva My Love” from the Israel Film Festival. There is a line of 40 to 50 people waiting to get their tickets and go inside to watch this film.

I met the founder of the festival, the producer, the director, and the star of this film; and had a chance to interview them and get to know more about the film.

Eitan Evan, the producer –

Ali – Hello, Eitan, and congratulations on the success of the film.

Eitan – Thank you, it is great to be here.

Ali – Where did you shoot the film?

Eitan – The entire film was shot in Israel. 60% of it was shot in Tiberia, and the rest was shot in Tel-Aviv.

Ali – How long did it take to make the film from conception to completion?

Eitan   – Six years. However, in the meantime we also worked on another film. Once we finished the last draft, it took one   year from shooting to releasing it. We wanted to release it in the summertime, so we waited until July to screen it; but the war between Israel and Lebanon started. However, we went ahead with the screening and the premier in Tiberia in an underground shelter. We got great coverage on TV, which brought us a big audience to see the film. We had the best admittance for this film in Israeli cinema for the past 20 years. It sold over 300,000 tickets.

Ali – Are you planning to release it internationally?

Eitan – Yes, We started with Chicago Film Festival and won the best script. I just came from Berlin Film Festival, where it attracted buyers and we are now in negotiation.

Ali – What was the budget of the film?

Eitan – About $1.2 million, which is a medium size budget for Israeli films. It is probably the size of the catering budget for the American films!!!!! (laughing and joking of course)

Ali – Thank you for the information. I wish you great success.

Eitan   – Thank you.

Now I get to speak with Shemi Zarhin, the director and writer of the film.

Ali – Hi, Shemi, how are you?

Shemi – Thank you. Great.

Ali – How long did it take for you to find the cast?

Shemi – It really didn’t take that long because I already knew who I wanted to cast for this project while I was writing it. The main challenge in casting was to find the main character Aviva. It took four months of auditioning so many beautiful and talented actresses before we decided Assy Levy was the right actress for the part.

Ali – What about Assy caught your eyes for this part?

Shemi – Well, on the outside she looks very strong and you would think she will not break because of her strength. So when she feels pain you know it must go deep and you would actually feel her pain when she is going through it.

Ali – How long did it take you to write the script, and what inspired you to write it?

Shemi – I wrote the first draft 8 years ago and it took me 2 or 3 weeks, but I decided to put it aside for a year and do more research. So I rewrote it 14 times.   When I submitted it for funding, it took me two to three times before it was accepted for funding.

Ali – How close are the script and the film to the vision you had in mind?

Shemi – It is very close. There are no exacts in art.

Ali – I would like to congratulate you on the film and I wish you luck.

Shemi – Thank you.

Now I finally was able to pull Meir Fenigstein, the founder of the festival, away from everybody so I could interview him and get more information on the festival.

Ali – Hello, Meir. Where are you from and where do you live?

Meir – I am from Tel-Aviv and live in California.

Ali – Have you always been involved in the film industry?

Meir – I used to be a musician in the early 70s. I played in an Israeli rock band called Poogy. It was the biggest rock band in Israel at the time. In 1976 I acted in a couple of Israeli films (“The Troop” and “Aunt Clara”) and I acted in Jerusalem theatre for a year.

Ali – How did you decide to start a film festival?

Meir – I moved to Boston to study music in Berkley College of Music. I then decided to switch from music, and that is when I found a new passion, creating a film festival. I thought this would be a good idea to stay in touch with Israel since I wanted to live in the U.S., and felt by creating a festival I will be in touch with Israel and I can also stay in the entertainment world. This also helped me to sustain my vision and keep it alive. So I did a small festival in Boston. Next, I did one in LA and one in Boston and then one in Chicago. On the 10 th year anniversary of the festival, I realized four cities is too much, so I mainly focused on LA and NY.

I stayed with those two cities for five years until the 15 th year anniversary when I decided I was getting bored with only two cities, so I went ahead and added Miami and Chicago to the list. By the 20 th year I noticed four cities getting to be too much work, so I dropped Chicago.   I have been trying to sustain the festival in three cities.

Ali – Do you have a hand in picking the films that are admitted in the festival?

Meir – I have a hand in it but am not the program director. I have two American program directors that pick the films because I am Israeli myself and want this to be more objective. They recommend the films, and we discuss it and make the decision based on the quality of the film, the subject matter. I am happy to tell you this year we have even a greater lineup of films. The best that we have ever had. The films will be running in

• Laemmle’s Fallbrook 7
• Laemmle’s Sunset 5 Theaters
• Laemmle’s Town Center 5

After the festival we then move to Miami and then to New York.

Ali – What is your vision for this film festival today and the future?

Meir – The festival should continue in the three cities, bringing more American people to see the films. I am hoping to get the American audiences to come and see Israel through the lenses of the cameras of the Israeli filmmakers and not just the news and the headlines of newspapers and television.

I would also like to mention that one of the films in this festival that is called “Sweet Mud” got the first prize in Sundance film festival and also the winner of the youth category in Berlin Film Festival.

Ali – Are you going to take the festival to other countries?

Meir – Well, I have thought about taking it to some of the English-speaking countries, due to subtitle translation issues.

Ali – Thank you for your time, and I congratulate you on the success of the festival.

Ali Saam

“The San Francisco Film Society embraces the art, technology and innovation of the world’s most imaginative storytellers who use the moving image to celebrate humanity while educating, entertaining and enriching the audiences of the world.”

The San Francisco International Film Festival has been a visionary from its very beginning; and throughout its several decades, it has upheld that tradition.  Each period of its life has been forward thinking in its own way, and it continues to be so.  From December 4, 1957, when San Francisco International Film Festival founder Irving Levin kicked off the first International Film Festival, to the upcoming 50th anniversary, numerous people have contributed to the yearly endeavor of planning, producing, and staging what is the annual SFIFF.  And this year is no different.  Graham Leggat, the new executive director of the San Francisco Film Society gives us his take on the thriving and pioneering festival this time around.

Graham, what was it that made you decide to get involved in running the San Francisco Film Society?

Well, it’s one of the best planned film festivals in the country, if not the world.  It’s a fantastic region for filmmaking, and in fact, renovation of all kinds.  It’s an enlightened city government here and a great staff and board, and a fantastic film culture in San Francisco in both making films and watching films.  There are some great writers here.  I left a great job in New York.  It is probably the only place I would have come to.  The chance to run the show here was just something I couldn’t pass up.

Wow, that’s pretty amazing.  And that’s quite a move, too. So what’s it like being involved in San Francisco at all as opposed to New York for you?

San Francisco is the opposite of New York.  In New York there’s an overwhelming density of cultural offerings.  And every sort of square inch of space has been developed in one way or another.  San Francisco has a much greater openness.  There’s much more opportunity, much more room to expand into new areas.  San Francisco is a frontier for the kind of work that we do, and so in short, it’s extremely exciting to be here.  This place is like a powder keg to me.

O. K., having been involved in this festival, why don’t you tell me about some of the highs that you’ve experienced.

Well, this is a big festival that tries to excel in a number of different areas, so we’re always trying to get the very best film speakers, interviewers, panelists, jury members, etc.  And we hold ourselves to very high standards.  Everyday we are on the phone or on email.  I won’t say fighting, but doing our utmost to land films and talent that we think will be most exciting and most enlightening for our audiences, so all the highs and lows revolve around that, especially now, when we’re launching the program.   We suffer setbacks and have glorious triumphs almost on an hourly basis.  For a couple of weeks, it’s almost like a sporting event at this point.  It has that kind of total engagement, an almost physical engagement and exhilaration; and like a sporting event, you don’t feel your injuries while you’re playing.  You know that you wanted such and such a guest at such and such a film, and for some reason [he/she] is not available; and so it hurts a little bit.  But you have to keep going as you would if you want to play.  You just keep going and going.  That’s the phase we’re in right now.   Once the dust settles a little bit next week, we will know what’s in the program, and then we’ll start sort of shaping it, thinking about how we’re going to present it.  And we’ll also notice things that we didn’t notice in the heat of the moment.  For example, we have a suite of films about “X” theme or “X” region, which we may have been vaguely aware but didn’t realize fully until after the program is locked.  Then we can start talking about motifs with journalists and filmmakers, and so on.  It’s like putting the icing on the cake at the festival.

What’s the biggest film that actually came out of your festival?

This is the 50th International San Francisco Film Festival.  We’re the longest running film festival in the Americas.  No other festival from Alaska to Argentina has reached the 50-year markdown.  So your question is not an easy question to answer since we have a full house section.

Tell me one or two that were great successes.

Back 20-odd years ago we did a world premier of She’s Gotta Have It by a little known filmmaker named Spike Lee.  Since then he’s gone on to brilliant things.  Last year, our State of Cinema address was given by British actress Tilda Swinton.  She received a prestigious standing ovation after her talk.   The transcript of that talk’s on our website.  In the early ’90s’ festival, many Iranian films came to this country at a time when very few other cinemas were showing them.  And Iranian cinema was one of the great national cinemas in the ’90s.  The list goes on.  The festival has technically invented beyond stage tributes, where actors, actresses, directors, and producers talk at length about their careers.  We pioneered that in the late ’60s.  We also were the first place to show the films of the great Japanese director Kurosawa.  This festival has been a cultural treasure for the region, bringing the world to the Bay Area for literally half a century.  It’s a pretty extraordinary legacy to have stewardship of.

Do you see certain trends in particular types of films that are coming in festivals annually?

You may say that, yes.

Is there any particular trend you are seeing a lot of in this particular festival?

Well, we’re not quite at the point where we can see that type of motif kicking out.  But obviously the festival has always had a strong tradition of showing really good documentaries; and unfortunately over the last five years, the world has really gone to hell in a hand basket.  So the documentary section despite—or probably because of—so many terrible state of affairs, for instance famine and so on, we have a very powerful suite of documentaries, and our audiences are very interested in them.  So one trend is to see increasingly unflinching cold eye views of many of the difficult social issues around the world, whether it be global warming or wars in the Middle East or healthcare issues.  We show all sorts of other documentaries, too, but you can see that documentarians with an eye for social issues are making stronger and harder hitting films.  We see that very much in our festival.

What final words would you want to say in regards to this festival and possibly the future of it?

The San Francisco International has been visionary from its very beginning, and throughout its several decades it has upheld that tradition.  Each period of its life has been visionary and forward thinking in its own way, and it continues to be so.  We’re not only interested in upholding a great tradition, but in continuing to reinvent ourselves in relation to the contemporary world.  So we have a section devoted to new platforms, new moving image platforms, and new audiences.  We’re always so very interested in the amazing innovation and creativity that runs throughout the Bay Area.  We have a special section devoted to the Bay Area filmmaking.  We’re doing a world premier of a film called Fog City Mavericks, about the last four years of filmmaking in the Bay Area.  As always, from the beginning, the city in this festival has always been very outward looking.  This is a very international city.  So the sense of bringing the world to San Francisco is something that is very important to us.  So we’ll bring in more than a hundred filmmakers.  And audiences just eat them up.  They love it.   It’ll be a blast!

For updates and to purchase tickets for the San Francisco International Film Festival, April 26 through May 10, visithttp://fest07.sffs.org.

Interviewed by Kaylene Peoples

Transcribed by Lisa A. Trimarchi