Subject Librarian
Lucinda M. Hall
Contact:
Evans Map Room, Baker-Berry Library
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-0962
Website Skype Contact: d1128r8@kiewit.dartmouth.edu
Other library resource(s)
Israeli cinema from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286Scholarship on Zionist and Israeli cinema is in agreement as to the major periods and movements in this corpus. During the prestate period, and especially after the 1920s, the Zionist movement used cinema to propagate Zionist ideology and to gather financial and political support. Following the 1948 independence of the State of Israel, and during the 1950s and 1960s, Israeli films continued to comply with the Zionist master-narrative.- Holocaust cinema from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286The study of Holocaust representation in cinema is located at the intersection of film studies and Holocaust studies. The scope of issues dealt with in the field is defined by two sets of tensions: first, tensions between history and narrative, and second between Eastern and Western understanding of the Holocaust. The tension between history and narrative emerges in response to the famous dictum by Adorno that there is no poetry after Auschwitz. The filmmakers—and the scholars studying their films—must engage with the thorny questions about the representability of atrocities on screens. ...
Internet resource(s)
- The Israel Film CenterThe Center at JCC Manhattan is a leading resource for Israeli film, with the goal of expanding Israel's emerging film industry and promoting Israeli culture in America.
- Israel Film FestivalThe mission of the Israel Film Festival is to brand Israel as the lively and innovative nation that it is; as well as shining a spotlight on Israel’s thriving film and television industry and enriching the American experience of Israel’s social and cultural diversity.
Introduction to Israeli film
Film production in British-controlled Palestine can be traced back to the era of Jewish settlement in the 1920s. During this period and into the 1930s, European and Jewish filmmakers produced documentaries and informational propaganda films designed to show the settlement of Palestine in a positive light, including L’Chayim Hadashim/Land of Promise (Judah Leman, 1934) and Avodah (Helmar Lerski, 1935). The ‘Carmel Newsreels’ produced and directed by Nathan Axelrod provide a visual record of this foundational period, and Axelrod also acted as producer for the first Israeli-produced feature film, Oded Hanoded/Oded the Wanderer (Chaim Halachmi, 1932). Some films in Yiddish were screened during the 1930s, but these were subject to criticism from pro-Hebrew language campaigners (see yiddish cinema). After the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, a cycle of ‘ethnic films’ that addressed the experience of being Jewish in Palestine formed one part of a range of nation-building activities. Films valorizing the experience of the pioneers were popular at this time, as were Israeli versions of the war film, such as Giv’a 24 Eina Ona/Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer (Thorold Dickinson, 1954) and Hem Hayu Asarah/They Were Ten (Baruch Dienar, 1960), the latter the first Hebrew-language film to be distributed internationally. ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Israel, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 21 May. 2021
Searching the online catalog
You can use the subject heading below to find resources in the online catalog. The call number range is also included.
- motion pictures israelcall number range PN 1993.5 .I86 on Baker Level 4. Please note: these are not the only call number ranges, but they have the majority of items.
Introductory reading(s)
Cinema and Zionism: the development of a nation through film by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780853038955This book examines the connections between the cinema of the Yishuv (Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine) and the Zionist idea. The book follows the plans to create the figure of the New Jew in Eretz Yisrael, as part of a personal, national, and universal revolution, and it explores the figure and traits of the pioneer. It also examines how cinema has presented the Zionist idea. ...
Companion encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African film by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780415187039The Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film is a unique, one volume work which illuminates a fascinating variety of cinema which is little known outside its own area. The Encyclopedia is divided into nine chapters, each written by a leading scholar in the field. Each chapter covers the history and major issues of film within that area, as well as providing bibliographies of the leading films, directors and actors. ...
Israeli film: a reference guide by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I86 K76 2003ISBN: 9780313321443Israeli cinema is a central tool for understanding the contemporary challenges facing Israeli society as it has developed its identity during the past decades. Although films can be considered individual pieces of work, we can gain a unique perspective on the nation's society through a careful analysis of the subject matter, issues, and styles of expression of this unique medium. Since its inception, Israeli cinema has been occupied with the hardships of an ongoing war, problems of Jewish-Arab relations, and the major survival issues of the state. ...
The modern Jewish experience in world cinema by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .J46 M54 2011ISBN: 9781611681994Most people have seen Exodus, Fiddler on the Roof, Yentl, and Schindler's List--well-known films with obvious Jewish subjects. But the Jewish experience in film is far richer than this. Over the past century, Jewish-themed films have emerged from the Americas, Europe, Israel, and North Africa. This remarkable anthology brings together 54 new and classic essays by 49 scholars in 8 countries to analyze the Jewish presence in world cinema. ...- World cinema: Israel byCall Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I86 K76 1996ISBN: 9780838636978The fascinating account of filmmaking in Israel from the early pioneering newsreels and documentaries through the establishment of the State of Israel, as well as the relationship between Arab and Jew, is examined in this history. The book also offers an analysis of Israeli film as a reflection of social issues and cultural development.
Selected book titles
Beyond flesh: queer masculinities and nationalism in Israeli cinema by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780813533766Zionism was not only a political and ideological program but also a sexual one. The liberation of Jews and creation of a new nation were closely intertwined with a longing for the redemption and normalization of the Jewish male body. That body had to be rescued from anti-Semitic, scientific-medical discourse associating it with disease, madness, degeneracy, sexual perversity, and femininity even with homosexuality. The Zionist movement was intent on transforming the very nature of European Jewish masculinity as it had existed in the diaspora. Zionist/Israeli films expressed this desire through visual and narrative tropes, enforcing the image of the hypermasculine, colonialist-explorer and militaristic nation-builder, an image dependent on the homophobic repudiation of the "feminine" within men. ...
Identity politics on the Israeli screen by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780292747241The struggle to forge a collective national identity at the expense of competing plural identities has preoccupied Israeli society since the founding of the state of Israel. In this book, Yosefa Loshitzky explores how major Israeli films of the 1980s and 1990s have contributed significantly to the process of identity formation by reflecting, projecting, and constructing debates around Israeli national identity. Loshitzky focuses on three major foundational sites of the struggle over Israeli identity: the Holocaust, the question of the Orient, and the so-called (in an ironic historical twist of the "Jewish question") Palestinian question. ...
Israel/Palestine: border representations in literature and film by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781474456128Since the early 1990s, Israel has greatly expanded a system checkpoints, walls and other barriers in the West Bank and Gaza that restrict Palestinian movement. Israel/Palestine examines how authors and filmmakers have grappled with the spread of these borders. Focusing on the works of Elia Suleiman, Raba'i al-Madhoun, Ghassan Kanafani, Sami Michael and Sayed Kashua, it traces how political engagement in literature and film has shifted away from previously common paradigms of resistance and coexistence and has become reorganised around these now ubiquitous physical barriers. ...
Israeli cinema: East/West and the politics of representation by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .I86 S56 2010ISBN: 9781845113131When the Hebrew edition of this groundbreaking book came out, it provoked a stormy public debate. The author has now up-dated Israeli Cinema, adding a substantial new postscript that reflects on the book's initial reception and points to exciting new trends in the cinematic representation of Israel and Palestine. Ella Shohat explores the cinema as a productive site of national culture, dating back to the early Zionist films about turn-of-the-century Palestine. She offers a deconstructionist reading of Zionism, viewing the cinema as itself participating in the 'invention' of the nation. ...
Modern Hebrew literature made into films by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.3 .H26 2001ISBN: 9780761819844This book analyzes seven important works in the field of Modern Hebrew fiction that were translated to English and adapted into films. The author presents a brief history of Modern Hebrew literature, and a brief survey of Israeli cinema and of the adaptation of Israeli prose fiction into films. The chapters include a presentation of the literary world of the author whose work is studied and an itemization of his literary works in English translations. At the end of each chapter there is a discussion of the cinematic adaptation of the literary work studied in that chapter followed by a bibliography.
Place, memory and myth in contemporary Israeli cinema by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780853038450This book examines several Israeli fictional and non-fictional films, and how their portrayal of landscape and territory provides a unique perspective on Jewish and Israeli identity. The book demonstrates how space in film is not only a 'container' for events in the plot, but an event in and of itself, since space and place are significant elements in the on-going negotiations regarding Jewish and Israeli identity. Films capture more than just the outward appearance of a place: they also record a web of unruly traces of economic, social, and political systems. ...
Remaking Holocaust memory: documentary cinema by third-generation survivors in Israel by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780815654780Since the late 1990s in Israel, third-generation Holocaust survivors have become the new custodians of cultural memory, and the documentary films they produce play a major role in shaping a societal consensus of commemoration. In Remaking Holocaust Memory, a pioneering analysis of third-generation Holocaust documentaries in Israel, Liat Steir-Livny investigates compelling films that have been screened in Israel, Europe, and the United States, appeared in numerous international film festivals, and won international awards, but have yet to receive significant academic attention. ...
The unlikely settler by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1998.3 .P446 A3 2013ISBN: 9781590516836The Unlikely Settler is about a young Bengali journalist who moves to Jerusalem with her English-Jewish husband and two children. He speaks Arabic and is an arch-believer in the peace process; she leaves her career behind to follow his dream. Jerusalem propels Pelham into a world where freedom from tribal allegiance is a challenging prospect. ...
Finding journal articles
Our collection does not have journals that cover Israeli cinema exclusively. You can use Film & Television Literature Index to find articles or use the search box at the top of the page.
Film & television literature index by Call Number: Electronic resourceUse this index to find articles about this national cinema.
Screen studies collection by Call Number: Electronic resourceA comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.
The web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Selected movie titles
Find more Israeli films in the library's online catalog.
Bikur ha-Tizmoret = The band's visit by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #7191ISBN: 1424898293The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrives in Israel from Egypt for a cultural event. Once there, they find the expected delegation is not there to meet them. Arrangements to get to their destination of Petah Tiqva have not been taken care of either. They find their own ride and arrive instead at the remote town of Beit Hatikva. Stuck there until the next morning's bus, the band, lead by the repressed Tawfiq Zacharaya, gets help from the worldly lunch owner, Dina, who offers to put them up for the night. As the band settles in the best it can, each of the members attempts to get along with the natives in their own way. What follows is a special night of quiet happenings and confessions as the band makes its own impact on the town and the town on them.
A borrowed identity by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #19227Gifted Eyad, a Palestinian Israeli boy, is given the chance to go to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Jerusalem. As he desperately tries to fit in with his Jewish schoolmates and within Israeli society, Eyad develops a friendship with another outsider, Jonathan a boy suffering from muscular dystrophy, and gradually becomes part of the home Jonathan shares with his mother, Edna.
The bubble = ha-Buʻah by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #6296Three young Israelis, two guys, Yali and Noam, and a girl, Lulu, share an apartment in Tel Aviv's hippest neighborhood. Noam meets and falls in love with a Palestinian man and he and his friends conspire to help Ashraf stay on in Tel Aviv illegally.
Etz Limon = Lemon tree by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #9527ISBN: 9780788611933A drama based on the true story of a Palestinian widow who must defend her lemon tree field when a new Israeli Defense Minister moves next to her and threatens to have her lemon grove torn down.- Private Popsicle = Lemon popsicle IV byCall Number: Jones Media DVD #4986Three Israeli friends, Bobby, Benji and Hughie have been drafted into the army, but they're not quite ready to give up the freedom they've enjoyed for so long and submit to army discipline. They spend most of their time chasing women, trying to get out of doing any work, and avoiding their no-nonsense sergeant.
Tel Aviv stories by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #2617ISBN: 9781560861713Follow the important moments in the lives of three outspoken and humorous young ladies. One is on the hunt for Mr. Right, one takes hostages in a desperate attempt to find her estranged husband and another puts Tel Aviv on edge trying to save a kitten.
Ushpizin by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #4623ISBN: 9780780654778A heartwarming and light hearted look at the daily lives of ultra-Orthodox Jews learning, livinig and loving in modern-day Israel. The story of a family facing hardships who must rely on their faith for miracles to happen during the holiday season.
Keeping up with the journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for a national or regional cinema? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's you can download and read the articles you want.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's now available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.