The Israeli films showing over the next nine days vary in voice and in message. Topics include a family coming to terms with its past on Israel's 40th Independence Day, to the significance of Black Panther protests in Israel in the 1970s.
The film festival, called "The Mizrahi in Israeli Literature and Cinema," is sponsored by the UT Department and Center for Middle Eastern Studies and began Tuesday night with the first film "Who is Mordechai Vanunu?" It will continue through March 10 with two other feature films, two documentaries and a panel discussion with three of the films' directors.
Yaron Shemer, the festival director and a faculty member in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, said the films all bring attention to the depiction of the Mizrahi people of Israel.
The Mizrahim are Jews who originated in the Muslim Middle East. When many of the Mizrahim immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and '60s, they "were often treated as second-class citizens," according to a statement from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. A group of Israeli scholars and artists, including those who will be featured at the festival, take the position that the Mizrahim have been and still are affected by "ethnically-based power imbalances."
"The films provide valuable insights into some of the issues that lie at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict," said Ohad Meyer, a graduate student in Middle Eastern Studies. "The festival invites people to contemplate Israel from a perspective different from one we're exposed to on TV or in newspapers."
Shemer said he chose these particular films because they are radical and entertaining. One of the two feature films, "Turn Left at the End of the World," is currently the highest-grossing film in Israel and tells the story of two daughters who forge a friendship while their families compete with one another in a culture war. The director, Avi Nesher, with the other filmmakers Sami Shalom Chetrit and Ella Shohat, will hold question-and-answer sessions after their films are shown.
The three will also conduct a panel discussion on the last day of the festival to speak about the Mizrahi people, discussing specifically how literature addresses the problems the people face.
Shemer, who has directed at least eight other Middle-Eastern or Israeli film festivals in the past 15 years he has been at the University, said he wants people to attend because the Mizrahi festival will "reveal an aspect overlooked in Israeli society and very directly pertains to ethnic issues of other societies."
"It's a cultural expression that we feel is important for students to be exposed to," said Margot Sack, associate director of Texas Hillel and sponsor of the festival.
"The Barbecue People" will be shown tonight in the Avaya Auditorium, Aces 2.302. The next film showing is March 7.
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