Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
What
Beaufort
, along with
Waltz with Bashir
(Ari Folman, 2008), a groundbreaking ani-
mation documentary;
Forgiveness
(Udi Aloni, 2006); and
Walk on Water
(Eytan Fox and Gal
Uchovsky, 2004) have in common is that they deal with national traumas by exploration of
private ones.
Waltz with Bashir
deals with repressions of traumatic memory — that of an IDF
soldier (Folman himself ), who was in Lebanon at the time of the Sabra and Shatila mas-
sacre and is haunted by guilt. Through a mix of two seemingly contradictory art forms —
documentary and animation —
Bashir
creatively re-creates and explicates memories. The fi lm
won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009 and was nominated for
an Academy Award in the same category.
Israel continues to develop its rich cinematic tradition, producing both critical and popular
fi lms that refl ect and critique societal trends. In the pre-state and early state years, Israeli fi lms
served to solidify and strengthen Zionist ideology, Jewish connection to the land, and the
rebirth of the New Jew. Since then, Israeli cinematography has gone through many stages as it
has developed, portraying and including marginalized voices in society, examining and chal-
lenging certain central ideas of society, and ultimately coming to use the art form as a means
for examining and dealing with troubling, traumatic events in the nation's past and the daily
lives of its people in the present.
MUSIC
Music is central in shaping and understanding what it means to be Israeli. Each musical style
has struggled for recognition, legitimacy, and dominance as the true Israeli national music, or
at least for a signifi cant part of that title. At the same time, musical developments express and
emphasize important Israeli social and political developments. The result is the creation of a
unique national musical culture.
Early Folk Music
In the early years of statehood, the lyrics of folk songs, known as songs of the Land of Israel
(
Shirei Eretz Yisrael
), revived the Hebrew language and expressed a sense of what it was like
to be an Israeli. The songs were often sung by large choirs or performers together with the
audience. Such sing-alongs, a main form of entertainment during a period of austerity and in
a pre-television era, were a chance for the population to experience a feeling of membership
in the new nation. From 1948 to 1973, from independence to the Yom Kippur War, folk songs
were also a major component of music lessons in the education system and of broadcasts on
the radio.
Religious songs, often focusing on a future return to the Land of Israel, had been a staple
of Jewish religious services for a thousand years. Songs expressing similar longings in a mod-
ern Zionist — that is, secular and political— mode already existed in Europe by the end of
the nineteenth century. Songs that refl ected a sense of the Hebrew nation, however, were not
produced until around 1930. In the following years, a group of composers and lyricists (among
them David Zehavi, Mordehai Zeira, and Alexander Argov) wrote the songs that became sym-
bols of Israeli rootedness and the use of Hebrew language.
