Israel Film Festival opens in Sydney
The eighth annual Israeli Film Festival opened to a packed house in Sydney on last night.
Oz Zehavi
Two cinemas at the Palace in Paddington were crammed with almost 400 people attending the opening night film, Avi Nesher’s critically acclaimed ‘The Matchmaker’.
AICE founder and chair Albert Dadon AM said the festival was more important today given the support for cultural boycotts of Israel.
Einat Weiss, a spokesperson from the Israeli Embassy in Canberra, said the movie revealed Israel’s “underbelly”: love.
“Love is the power that brings us all together, the international language, the esperanto of the soul,” she said.
Oz Zehavi, Israel’s latest screen star whose film ‘Infiltration’ is also being screened at the festival, was in town as a guest of the festival. “As an artist your biggest ambition is that your ideas will touch people,” he said. “It is encouraging to know that there is a community at the other side of the earth that supports our art.”
The festival continues this week in Sydney and next week in Melbourne.
AICE was founded in December 2002 following a joint declaration made by then foreign minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and then foreign minister Alexander Downer in Canberra.
