Haim Watzman The Sapir College faculty member who introduced Bruno Dumont’s Hadewijch, screened at this year’s Cinema South Festival in Sderot, said that Dumont seeks in his films to understand the intricacies and intimacies of religious faith. Hadewijch is a technically fine, formally intriguing film, one in which it is clear that the director has [...]

[Read more →]

Haim Watzman I misstated the director’s name in the original version of this post. My apologies. In this friendless week for Israel it’s refreshing and instructive to get away to Sapir College’s annual Film Festival of the South and be reminded that loneliness is sometimes a fact to be lived with, and that history gives [...]

[Read more →]

Haim Watzman I proudly present an animated short by my daughter, Mizmor, now entering her third year in the animation program at Sapir College.

[Read more →]

Haim Watzman One presents an American Idol spinoff in Afghanistan as a training ground for democracy and the other how the decay of society under years of guerilla war has made rape the common fate of millions of women in central Africa. Havana Marking’s Afghan Star and Osvalde Lewat-Hallade’s A Love During the War, screened [...]

[Read more →]

Recommendation: Check out the short animation films created by students in the animation program at Sapir College in Sderot–including “Shadow and Man,” by my daughter Mizmor. I wrote about this unique incubator of young Israeli creativity and talent in my Jerusalem Report column “Animated Identities.”

[Read more →]

Haim Watzman Sderot was celebrating yesterday–it’s been celebrating all week, in fact. Who cares about the missiles coming over from Gaza when you can catch a good flick–lots of them? The Cinema South Festival, held in Sderot each year under the sponsorship of the film school at adjacent Sapir College, is one of the most [...]

[Read more →]